Korean Textbooks for intermediate learners

Until the early 2000s, there weren’t much interest in learning Korean compared to other more popular Asian languages, such as Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. This is probably the reason why there aren’t that many textbooks/resource books for Intermediate Korean (and above) yet.

All textbooks have their weak and strong points, so I believe in using a few books at the same time. In that way, you can to see how different books explain the same grammar point and you can pick up new stuff that the other book misses etc.

The intermediate level is where you get exposed to the intricacies of the Korean grammar and learn the whole load of grammar constructions. Expanding your vocabulary is also important in this stage, but a good intermediate textbook should have detailed explanations of grammar points.

Integrated Korean Series: Intermediate/Advanced Intermediate

I’m in love with this series! What’s not to like? They have interesting dialogues, good grammar explanations, a sizeable of new vocabulary for each chapter (complete with meanings and sample sentences) etc. Good to use as a main textbook

(Available in NLB in SG)

College Korean Intermediate

I think I’ve talked about this in the Korean Resources Page. A great book for learning new grammar construction. The explanations are detailed and yet easy to follow.

(Available in Kinokuniya and NLB)

Practice of Korean Grammar

Blogged about it HERE. Treat it like a grammar dictionary and do not study new grammar constructions from this book. Just like how you won’t study new vocabulary by going through the dictionary. It’s a great book to revise and consolidate what you have learnt! They have a few language versions of the book. ^^

(Available in Kinokuniya in Chinese Section. Have to order it I think)

Using Korean: A guide to contemporary usage

Miho Choo, Hye-Young Kwak

(Available in NLB (reference only) and on Amazon)

I’ve been keeping this gem a secret for quite some time. (I’m kidding 😀 ) Meant to introduce this book for ages, but just didn’t get about doing it.  It’s not really a textbook; I’d rather call it a resource book and it helps to consolidate neatly what you have learnt. It seems to be able to read my mind and while reading it, it answered alot of questions that I’ve been puzzling over.

True to its title, it’s really about contemporary usage and this is what I love most about this book. The example sentences are not the formal ones that you see in most textbooks and it really reflects what Koreans would use in each situation. You get to pick up the colloquial way of speaking. An example of how colloquial is it?  Well, they teach you how to say ‘damn it’ in Korean 😀 I mean, which textbook does that? (I noticed they left out the crude, but frequently used ㅅㅂ) I’m not going to type it out in full!!!

This book will serve you well from the high intermediate stage all the way to the advanced level! They have a section devoted to particles, which is one of the difficult areas of Korean. After a huge chunk of writing, I don’t think I’ve even mentioned 10% of how good this book is. Go and take a look at it HERE and you will know what I mean (:

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mmm that’s it for now! I know all the korean resources recommendations/reviews are all over the place >,< Try to check out the Korean Resources page, the categories Korean studying tools, Korean textbook reviews or simply try the search box. I’ll try to consolidate them. I promise