Teach Yourself Korean is the course for anyone who wants to progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking and writing Korean with confidence. Although aimed at those with no previous knowledge, it is equally suitable for anyone wishing to brush up existing knowledge for a holiday or business trip.

Key structures and vocabulary are introduced in 14 thematic units progressing from introducing yourself and dealing with everyday situations to travelling and making complaints.

The emphasis is on communication throughout with important language structures introduced through dialogues on the accompanying recording. The dialogues focus on real-life situations which feature authentic Korean as it is spoken on the street. The explanations draw comparisons with English to illustrate how Korean is both similar and different, rather than introducing a lot of grammatical terminology. There are plenty of exercises to practise the language as it is introduced and two review units to help the learner to monitor progress. The dialogues are given in the Korean script and a romanised version and a section at the back of the book gives English translations.

The new edition retains the tried-and-tested structure of the lessons but has been updated to make changes to the romanisation system to make it easier to use. Several new features have been added including:

- Korean script as well as romanisation in the vocabulary boxes

- an English-Korean vocabulary to go alongside the existing Korean-English vocabulary

- an index of grammatical terms

The accompanying CD is available separately (0340912499) or in a pack with the book (0340912502).

Jae-Hoon Yeon lectures in Korean at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Mark Vincent studied Korean Language and Linguistics at SOAS.

2007-07-29 Enough for a business trip to Seoul

I thought this was an excellent book & CD set for learning enough Korean to get by after two or three weeks - saying hello, goodbye, ordering food and buying things in shops.

I learned how to read the Korean script - it was fun deciphering how pronounce business cards and words. I really liked the extra snippets on how to conduct business out there (their customs).

I think it could be improved though. My printing had some Korean script that was harder to read (the print was indistinct). The script introduction had the shapes but the sounds were in the descriptive text rather than alongside the symbols. I would have prefered early lessons to start with hello/goodbye, how to get someplace, etc. rather than splitting those over the early chapters.

Anyway, it did the trick for me in Seoul.