[Review] Talk to Me in Korean 1 (Textbook & Workbook)

TTMIK has been receiving good comments from many people. There are many bloggers and Youtubers recommended this book as it is designed for self-study purpose and it also caters for English-speaker who wish to learn Korean language. You can also look up for their video and audio that are available on their website.

What I like about this book:

The textbook emphasizes on usage of phrases, grammar and simple sentences rather than vocabulary. It explains in a simple and easy to understand way. It gives a few examples on how to apply the phrases too. There are also romanization underneath each of the hangul in the textbook. The romanization might be useful for beginner to know the pronunciation for each phrase. At the end of each lesson, there are some exercises to test your understanding.

The workbook consists of various type of questions. It tests the students the vocabulary, comprehension, translation and simple sentence structure.

Summary notes and audio tracks for textbook can also be found on their website. There are also some audio tracks available for workbook as well. 
Besides, you can also look up their video on YouTube Channel too. Their videos are really helpful which teach you how to differentiate the sounds of vowel, consonant, double consonant. I think that’s very important for beginner to know to differences.

Best of all, these resources are free of charge. You can download and revise them anywhere and anytime that you need.

The summary notes and textbook are the same. The bonus point for textbook is that textbook explains each lesson in more detail and provides more exercises. Besides that, it also shows the usage of phrases in conversation form that’s enable to learner to learn to apply them when they have a conversion with one another.

How to use this book:

These books have to use along with the videos and audio tracks. You can’t just use the books alone to learn the language.

Romanization will only help to pronounce the words correctly. Relying too much on it to read hangul will not help in your learning. Try to focus on mastering the pronunciation with the help of their videos.

Room for improvement:

The exercises are quite straight forward. I don’t find it challenging. It is also insufficient to learn the vocabulary and grammar due to lack of exercises. Thus, I would suggest that learners should look for other resources to practice more on these areas.

Where to buy:

I purchased TTMIK Level 1 (textbook and workbook) from Shopee for only RM 144.00 (include shipping fees). It is much easier to buy from local seller in order to save all the troubles. However, it took about 2-3 weeks to receive them. Besides, it only has limited selection of TTMIK series of books.

I received the books with a free cute pen. Although there are some scratches on the books, the seller offered to exchange a new book or gave me a RM 5.00 voucher as compensation. Her customer service is excellent. I would consider to make a 2^nd purchase from her.

It is difficult to buy from local bookstore as most of them do not have TTMIK books. They only have Korean language books that are useful for travelers.

You can also consider to purchase from TTMIK website as there are more variety of books available in there.

TTMIK website: http://talktomeinkorean.com/store

Shopee: Pearlple Wings (shopee.com.my/taeyongsmrookie)