Essential Korean Grammar: Your Essential Guide to Speaking and Writing Korean Fluently!

I thought this would be an overview of grammar that even beginners could read through with little trouble, or at least people who have experience learning languages. It is more for intermediate users of Korean since some sections point out that you should already know or be familiar with certain concepts. I didn't find it easy to locate certain topics either since it's not organized in a way that is similar to other grammar books. I didn't return it though since I think it will be useful once I get better at Korean. Still looking for an overview of Korean grammar that is not too dense or confusing for beginners or polyglots who just want to get the basics at first.

I immediately fell in love with this grammar book. Not only are the lessons clear and easy to understand (best geared for Korean learners at least at upper beginner level, imo), but the writer is WITTY and CLEVER. Each lesson is fun to read, simply for the author's writing style. I have laughed while studying, making the experience that much more enjoyable. Korean students should have this book in their library. it's a must!

Laura provides a resource that is sorely lacking in Korean textbooks. This book is an excellent guide to Korean grammar, breaking down points into logical categorizations and providing solid explanations for the slight variations in the usage of similar grammar points, which make the difference between being able to understand and speak Korean to also being able to pick up on subtle nuances. The only note I would have about the best time to use this book would be that you should have some background in Korean, such as being high-beginner up to low-advanced being the idea proficiency range to get the most out of this book.

Wish the romanization wasn’t so used, takes away from the proper pronunciation

Very thorough, well organized. I particularly like the star system, which lets you know which usages are most/least common while still giving a comprehensive description. Not to be read cover to cover, but a really useful resource.

The e-book version of this book is very hard to use, as the the chapter titles are not very useful when looking for a specific grammatical construction, while the index refers to pages that are not in the e-book, which makes it impossible to use the index.

There's a lot of very useful information and concise explanations in this book, which is great, but it's not a straightforward read. The related grammatical points are very condensed; if I hadn't been breaking them down through my notes, I'd been completely lost!

Nice book to have among your learning materials. I just keep wondering why such books still have every single sentence romanized. It really gets in the way of your reading and is of no help whatsoever. Also, I found the Kindle version pretty OK to read.

An excellent resource for intermediate and advanced Korean language students.

Excellent product.

I thought this would be an overview of grammar that even beginners could read through with little trouble, or at least people who have experience learning languages. It is more for intermediate users of Korean since some sections point out that you should already know or be familiar with certain concepts. I didn't find it easy to locate certain topics either since it's not organized in a way that is similar to other grammar books. I didn't return it though since I think it will be useful once I get better at Korean. Still looking for an overview of Korean grammar that is not too dense or confusing for beginners or polyglots who just want to get the basics at first.

I immediately fell in love with this grammar book. Not only are the lessons clear and easy to understand (best geared for Korean learners at least at upper beginner level, imo), but the writer is WITTY and CLEVER. Each lesson is fun to read, simply for the author's writing style. I have laughed while studying, making the experience that much more enjoyable. Korean students should have this book in their library. it's a must!

Laura provides a resource that is sorely lacking in Korean textbooks. This book is an excellent guide to Korean grammar, breaking down points into logical categorizations and providing solid explanations for the slight variations in the usage of similar grammar points, which make the difference between being able to understand and speak Korean to also being able to pick up on subtle nuances. The only note I would have about the best time to use this book would be that you should have some background in Korean, such as being high-beginner up to low-advanced being the idea proficiency range to get the most out of this book.

Wish the romanization wasn’t so used, takes away from the proper pronunciation

Very thorough, well organized. I particularly like the star system, which lets you know which usages are most/least common while still giving a comprehensive description. Not to be read cover to cover, but a really useful resource.

The e-book version of this book is very hard to use, as the the chapter titles are not very useful when looking for a specific grammatical construction, while the index refers to pages that are not in the e-book, which makes it impossible to use the index.

There's a lot of very useful information and concise explanations in this book, which is great, but it's not a straightforward read. The related grammatical points are very condensed; if I hadn't been breaking them down through my notes, I'd been completely lost!

Nice book to have among your learning materials. I just keep wondering why such books still have every single sentence romanized. It really gets in the way of your reading and is of no help whatsoever. Also, I found the Kindle version pretty OK to read.

An excellent resource for intermediate and advanced Korean language students.

Excellent product.

Love but the font is way too small for my 51 year old eyes...boo hoo. Wish they made a large print edition. Guess I'll have to break out my glasses (almost never need to). lol Book is full of great Korean grammar that I "know" but can't seem to remember. Go figure. Learn now before you turn 51! lol

I give it 3/5 stars because I did not receive the same version as pictured.

Great for reference

Love it

I love it.

This book has three parts and two appendices: Part One: Basics of Korean (about 25 pages); Part Two: Grammar Points (about 330 pages); Part Three: Frequently Seen Word Parts (4 pages); Appendix 1: How to Sound like a Native (7 pages); and Appendix 2: Useful Korean Language Resources (3 pages). The core of the book, accounting for 85% of the total pages is Part Two: Grammar Points. It’s basically a Korean pattern dictionary, which includes a large, unnumbered (and uncounted by me) set of entries grouped into 47 sections. The sections are pretty coherent and tend to be functionally oriented, bringing together patterns that can be used to express a particular kind of concept and explaining how they differ or for that matter don’t, i.e. are interchangeable. The problem with this section for me is that it is very hard to find things in it. If you already know the Korean pattern you can simply look it up in the index, but if you are trying to find the Korean pattern or patterns that you can use to express something you can only characterize in English you will have a hard time, because it’s often not easy to guess from the section names, and there are no English entries in the index (or, alternatively, there is no English index to complement the Korean index). Apart from this problem, which I think is a major one, there are other things that could be better (for example the Part One: Basics of Korean, is kind of shaky, and the lists of examples are often more repetitive than they need to be; also the Romanization, though intending to follow the South Korean 2000 Revised Romanization standard, is rather inconsistent), but the overall quality of the book, and particularly that of the Grammar Points, is high, and offers information and insights not found in other books. I would probably give the book five stars if it had an effective English index. As it is I give it four.

My favorite aspect of this book is how it rates how common different grammar points are and indicates if they're more frequently used in writing or speaking which is super helpful and often overlooked in many other resources I've looked at. The author also does a good job in explaining each grammar point concisely - which means that this isn't intended to teach them to you, but instead to refresh a previous lesson or possibly build upon some prior understanding. That being said, at the lower-intermediate level there were a lot of grammar points I hadn't encountered before this book and I didn't struggle too hard. I used it as an introduction to each point and then supplemented that with my other lessons. My biggest complaint about this book is that the layout isn't super user-friendly. For instance, if I have an idea of what English phrase I want to translate, I can probably find it using the glossary as the grammar points are categorized and grouped together with similar patterns. However, if I read a sentence in Korean and suddenly can't remember what the ending "~고 싶다" means what-so-ever, I will have a heck of a time tracking it down in this book. I do know what it means so I can guess that it'd probably be under "Emotions: Desires", but if I didn't remember that at all then I wouldn't be able to find it. So if that sort of support is what you're looking for, you won't find it.

Excellent Korean grammar that has been very helpful for me in my Korean studies and teaching