Easy Korean Reading For Beginners

A great choice for your first foray into reading in Korean

Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) always produces excellent learning materials, so you can rest assured that no matter what product you choose, you know it's going to be money well spent. If you are a beginner with a knowledge of basic grammar and vocabulary, this would be an excellent choice for your first reader. It comprises 30 short chapters on various aspects of daily life, each of which can be read in less than 10 minutes.

I really appreciate how much care has been taken with the layout in order to present the most efficient learning method to the reader. The first page of each chapter has the title in Korean and English, a 4-panel comic, and a short paragraph of about 5 or 6 sentences (I'd recommend pausing the audio after reading the paragraph and trying to understand as much as you can before resuming).

Once you turn the page, you can see each of the Korean sentences on one side, and the corresponding English translations on the other. The text is read again at a normal speed, then at a reduced speed, with certain words that may cause difficulty being repeated.

The last page of each chapter has a vocabulary list, each word of which is pronounced at a normal speed followed by a slower speed, and occassionally a "cultural tip": a paragraph (in English) with a little more information about the subject.

The audio track for each chapter is only 5 minutes long, so it wouldn't be difficult to read a chapter each day and finish the book in a month. The layout and design is colourful and aesthetically pleasing, which makes it a pleasure to read.

One thing I think is really useful that I haven't seen in any other materials aimed at Korean learners is help with pronunciation in Korean rather than romanization. For example: 싫어해요 [시러해요], 음료수랑 [음뇨수랑], 먹는 [멍는], and so on. Being able to listen to the audio while reading helps, of course, but often books aimed at beginners don't even acknowledge the differences between the orthography and phonology.

The only issue I could possibly have with this book is that it isn't the first book in a series of graded readers from TTMIK. Although they have many books aimed at different levels of language learner, I think they are really missing a graded reader series to complement their textbooks and other learning materials.