Korean Made Easy for Beginners

The title is a bit of an overstatement: there is nothing easy about learning Korean! However, this book is an excellent introduction. It is thorough and explains the complex grammar and syntax clearly and with good examples. It is visually attractive in a way that emphasizes what you need to learn for each chapter. You can use the QR codes to access the dialogs to listen along. The quizzes at the end of each chapter are also useful. I really liked the grammar overview at the end of the book. It is a nice complement to Duolingo, which provides listening drills, but does not explain the grammar. Unfortunately, Duolingo uses primarily the formal polite form, while this book emphasizes the informal polite form, which can be confusing. Highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to (try to) learn Korean.

Before I bought this book, I checked the reviews of others. The reviews were all positive except for one two-star rating that complained about how MP3s were not downloadable. I wasn't sure I understood what that meant, but now I know.The book provides a QR code on pages where pronunciation help is being provided. I had to look for a QR Reader app from the Apple Store and download it. I encountered the first QR Code on page 19, so I used my freshly downloaded QR Reader and scanned the QR Code. I was brought to a web page in KOREAN. Luckily, I saw the customary play/pause icon that I could recognize, and I tapped it, so that's how you get the audio playback for the Korean characters in that section. It is inconvenient; they should've provided a zipped file of all the audio, curated according to chapters or page numbers, and then allowed the user to play it back on their preferred MP3 player. The author should've realized that pronunciation help is abundant on the internet; I see many YouTube videos of instructors demonstrating the shape of their mouths and tongues as they enunciate. Doing this the way they did with QR Codes serves nothing but slightly hamper the learning process, but that's solely my opinion. Considering there are hundreds of them throughout the book makes me groan a bit to have to go through this tedious process.To be fair, if I think the book has merits I may not have experienced yet, such as the pedagogy it adopts; I will be fair and come back to give due praise where it's merited and update the number of stars as well.

I Like the series. I'd say stick to the first-generation books, however. The free mp3 download isn't accessible through a laptop unless you send the link to your phone and even then you have to download each mp3 file separately. There is no CD. They basically force you to either use their unprotected site or a terrible app that redirects you to their unprotected site.

It is indeed a good book but if you ask me it changes topics fast, too fast for me so i would have prefered if some topics would have been talked about for a longer time but still its a good starter korean learning book.