Sejong Korean. Book 1

I love everything about this book.. I started out not knowing that much, but have now come 2nd in my class after the 1st term....✌🏾

This book is designed for a classroom setting, which is the setting I've used it in. It has numbered sections and a set structure within each section that runs through the basic grammar and relevant vocabulary. You can then complete writing, listening and reading sections, and there are example conversations to help you understand the context in which you'd use what you've learnt. The textbook runs through the basic stuff like time, weather, food, places and the basic stuff you'd need if you just wanted a basic grasp of the language. It's a good textbook but there is no English or romanised Korean (I'm not sure why people are reliant on romanisation though as hangul should be the first thing you learn, before anything else). I would struggle to use this book outside of a classroom setting.

The book, used at King Sejong Institutes, can only be used in class with a teacher. All is written in Korean only, despicable for absolute beginners (considering the difficulty of the language, too). It has no grammar explanations, no translated glossary, and hardly any exercises. Besides, it is expensive to buy it in Europe: the price in Korea is only about 8 euros (one third).

There are two schools of thought on teaching languages - total immersion from day one (with classes, explanations and written text entirely in the target language), and a phased approach introducing concepts and grammar etc in the learner's native language, This book sits 100% in the first camp, and for a challenging language like Korean makes this entirely useless in my opinion. There is not a single word of English in it, not even roman script to phoneticise the somewhat different vowels. The accompanying CD (and it is a CD, no MP3 download option - it's 2015 for goodness sake!) is even worse - padded out with lots of sickening music and lengthy introductions to sections in Korean that would only be intelligible to an already fluent speaker. Avoid at all costs, and spend your money elsewhere. What on earth possessed the King Sejong institute to produce such an umitigated disaster of a textbook is a mystery to me.

This is entirely in Korean, no Roman transcript or vocabulary list, let alone grammar explanations. Useless for self-study. I realise it's intended for classroom use, but woe betide any student who misses a lesson and tries to catch up using this book - it wouldn't be much help.

On line the book has English text translations for Korean text. The ISBN number is correct as indicated on line for English edition. However; the book that arrived was Korean Edition has no English at all. Disappointing... The idea behind the book is for beginners to learn Korean... If it is the Korean version it is not much good unless you are already fluent in the language which would then make the book redundant! Sending it back is not really an option. On a positive note, it did arrive in great condition and a little faster than expected for regular air mail.