So after 5 years of living in Korea, I have found some useful ways to study Korean, and some not so useful ones too. Here, I will only list the ones that I have found to be useful, for me personally. There are a few different things here...
1- Active Korean series
This series of books is GREAT for a beginner. It gives new words, situations, and some cultural notes as well. It's easy to follow, and the language used in this book is relevant to what you would use in real-life day to day conversations. This series, I bought at a local bookstore at 15,000w a book. Alternatively you can buy this series here for a little cheaper, and get it shipped to you, no matter where in the world you are... as long as you sign up (which isn't overly difficult).
2 - Korean Made Easy
This book is AMAZING! When I started learning with a tutor, this was the book that my tutor asked me to get. This book introduces grammar gradually, with easy to understand explanations and examples. The language used in this book is very similar to that which is used in the Active Korean series. It's great to start you off, but it doesn't go any further than the beginner level. I would love to see more of this book, an intermediate one, an advanced one... they would be great. You can find this book here.
3 - Sogang Korean
This series, I carried on with after Korean Made Easy, with my tutor. You could potentially study with these books alone as well, but it really pays to study with someone who knows what they are doing, as the grammar in these books gets pretty intense pretty quickly. These books are used at Sogang University in Seoul at respective levels, which you test into and are sold in most stores, and available again, on the same website I have been linking above. Here is 1A Student book, from here, you can search Sogang Korean, and be able to find any of the books in the series. Just make sure you get the Workbook and Student book that are the same level, as they complement each other. You will be looking at about 32,000w for both books. The Student book comes with a Grammar and Vocabulary notebook as well, which is super useful, as this series is SOLELY in Korean (except for a few 'new words' found in the workbooks). The Grammar and Vocab book has the English translation for most of the words you come across in the Student book.
4- Talk To Me In Korean
This is a website, and they now produce their own textbooks that you can buy from their website. The site is designed to be a free way of teaching Korean to people interested in learning. You can download pdf's (which is mostly what the textbooks are made up of anyway) and listen to the podcasts online too. They have some really useful information on their site, and a progressive and comprehensive way of explaining grammar. You can ask questions of the information you have just learned and others will explain it to you too. It's an amazing site, and I can't believe that it's still pretty much FREE!
5 -Fast and Fun Korean for Short Term Learners
This book, available here, is a pretty good book as well. It's like the Active Korean series. As far as I have found, I can only get the first and second books here. I wasn't aware there was a book 3 in this series. These books are about the same price as the Active Korean series but lack the cultural explanations that the Active Korean series provides. It focuses mostly on getting you to recognize and speak phrases as quickly as possible. This might work for some people, but it seemed to be just repeating the Active Korean books for me. I bought this series as it was being used in a church group I was attending, and they were jumping around in the book. This may be okay for someone who is just looking to learn phrases and that's it.
6 - KIIP (Korean Integration and Immigration Program)
(an older textbook - changes have been made)
This is a course for people who are SERIOUS about learning Korean and living in Korea for a long time. You can go to this website and sign up, and take a level placement exam, once the results from that are in (usually about 2 weeks after your exam), you can select a class to sign up for. There are online classes and in person classes. The online classes use a special program, called NSchool, and you need to have your computer location set to Korea in order for the Korean characters to show up in the program. You also need to have your time and date set to Korea too. The online classes consist of up to 9 students and 1 teacher. You will study for 2 hours, 5 days a week at your selected time slot. If you opt for in-person classes, you will have a location that you will be required to go to for every lesson, and they can be from 3 hours, 3 days a week to 8 hours once a week. Either way, you will have a Korean teacher, who will teach and guide you at your level. The whole class is conducted in Korean, and the teachers speak fairly limited English, so you will need to be patient, and perhaps invest in a dictionary to help yourself when you don't know a word. These classes are FREE and provided to help those who are really serious about learning Korean. You will get your textbooks only once you have started the course.
7 - Korean Grammar in Use
These books are amazingly helpful. They are created to explain Korean grammar in easy to understand explanations. The Beginning book makes a great companion for Korean Made Easy and the Sogang Korean series works well with all 3 books. These books have been invaluable while I have been studying with the KIIP program, as the program explains grammar in Korean, and I needed some understanding in English as well. I have recommended these books to several people on the KIIP program, as well as many other Korean studiers as well, and many have bought them, agreeing that these books are great! They have an explanation of how to use the grammar, many examples of the grammar in use, notes for when the grammar can not be used, and comparisons between similar grammar points, and then there are exercises to follow up on with each grammar point. At the back of the book, is the grammar point explanations in Korean as well, so if you are asking a Korean speaker for help, and they don't understand the rules of when to use the grammar point, then they can read the explanation as well, and then explain it to you a lot easier as well. Again, you can find these books on the same website I have been linking above, gmarket. These books are available in English, Chinese and Japanese. So beware of which one you are buying.
I have many other Korean textbooks, some are pretty good, but these ones are the best, I have found. I really like using these resources. They are in no particular order, just in the order which I thought of each.
*Disclaimer: I have NOT been paid by, nor am I affiliated with any of the companies producing any of these products. I have used images found online to show you what the books look like for your own reference.
