December 30, 2023

Just read any other graded reader instead of this

Let's start by the content of the book. It's centered around 8 short stories, each one separated in three chapters, with some vocab, a chapter summary and some comprehension questions. It seems like a good structure, but the stories are actually incredibly boring. The first one is slightly better, but after that, the novelty factor wears off and you're just left with these badly written short stories.

What makes it all worse is the grammar. I don't even how they managed it, but there is only beginner level grammar in this book that's supposed to be B1/B2. And it's not even interesting sentences with that grammar, these are the most straightforward simple sentences that could possibly be made. You could read any beginner level graded reader and the sentence structure would still be more interesting. It's also extremely unnatural sentences, and it's frankly a pain to read. It's like reading the most basic example sentence a couple hundred times in a row, just with some of the vocab varying.

Now, onto the vocab. The vocab used, again, doesn't match B1/B2 at all. It's mostly beginner vocab, with a couple more intermediate words translated. What's annoying is that they aren't translated on the same page as the word is in, so you have to go find the vocab list at the end of the chapter everytime you need to look up something.

The only use for this book would maybe be as a ressource if you've never read anything in Korean and don't really understand how sentences work. That was the case for me when I initially bought this book, but I quickly discovered that there are so many better ressources out there. You'd really be better off starting with the 두루책방 graded readers or the beginner darakwon graded readers (토끼전 and 콩쥐팥쥐전). Plus that way you'd get the audio for free, because for this one you have to buy it separately. And once you've gone through those, then reading through this is going to become almost painful because of the oversimplified sentences.

Gradings:14
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on December 23, 2024
easier than장화홍련전L14
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easier than땡땡의 모험 13L25
on October 24, 2024
easier than나, 여기 있어요L27
on October 10, 2024
easier than신사임당L12
on October 10, 2024
similar in difficulty to할아버지의 정원L11
on October 10, 2024
on October 10, 2024
on October 10, 2024
on October 10, 2024
similar in difficulty to혼자 병원에 갔어요L11
on October 10, 2024
on October 10, 2024
harder than물놀이L11
on October 10, 2024
similar in difficulty to나는 커서 어떤 일을 할까?L13
on October 10, 2024
harder than손톱 먹은 들쥐L12
on October 10, 2024
easier than심청전L28