With The Power Of A Minus 7.5 Glasses

Integrated Korean: Beginning 1, 2nd Edition by Young-Mee Cho

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first Korean textbook and I love it! It has 8 units and each unit has 2 conversations, a narration, usage example of the lessons learned in the unit, and a piece on Korean culture snipplet. The audio files are provided in KLEAR website.

The Grammar Points and Vocabulary

I have no complain against the grammar taught in this book. At my beginner level, I’d just welcome any points taught and be happy to be able to create more simple sentences throughout the lessons. Since it’s a college textbook, the vocabulary revolves around campus life and it’s perfectly ok with me.

I love it that they only use romanization at some parts in the introduction. I’m not a big fan of romanization. It surely helps at certain point, like when the first time learning 한글, or when we communicate with those who are not learning Korean (btw, 한글 is Hangul, the Korean writing system), or when the tools are not capable for writing in 한글.

For Korean learning textbooks and dictionary, I prefer romanization served at minimum or almost zero rate. That’s why I prefer Collin’s gem dictionary instead of Berlitz. Thanks to Febry, the dictionary is on the way, yay!

The Exercises

The book does not have the answer key and I read that even the workbook of this KLEAR series don’t have the answer key provided. The exercises tend to be short in number and some are only applicable in a classroom or with partners (not quite suitable for a self learner like me). Despite all that, I’m grateful to have those exercises.

Other Parts

I love the introduction, the objectives list, and the closing part of the book. My favorite part of the introduction is the pronunciation rules. It’s the part where I always keep running to whenever I hear different from the sound I am expecting to catch on my ears. I mark this part with post-it.

The objectives list provide us the summary of each unit, which grammar points at which part, what culture snipplet and what kind of usage. Needless to say, it’s one helpful list for ㅁ reference. As the new grammar rules come, I use this list a lot.

The last few pages in this book consist of appendices, grammar index, and the glossary. More references which if I knew about it sooner, it would make my studying time more efficient. I even left out the glossary until I reached Unit 8, the last unit. Before that, I kept turning the previous pages to find what certain word meant and it happened like thousand times! sigh

The glossary is Korean-English, and vice versa. The Korean-English one can be useful to learn the 한글 alphabet order. I’m so gonna use this one for my next books of this series! (Hope the books will arrive safely next week, cross my fingers xD)

이 책을 정말 좋아해요. 여러분, 한국어 재미있지요? ^^

View all my reviews

—

I am.

If any of you happen to see me cry over small matters, you don’t need to tell me that I am such a crybaby.

Because I already know.

What I still don’t know is how to stop my tears from flowing voluntarily so easily.

sigh

—

At some point, I stopped reading Danielle Steel’s novel. I don’t like the after-effects because it can easily stir up my feeling. I didn’t watch J-dorama and K-dorama that much for the same reason. I remember that after I watched my first K-dorama, Coffee Prince, my first impression was that between J and K dorama (I had watched some J doramas at that time), the later had given me longer hangover.

And there’s no other dorama after that. And few months ago, when a friend at the office recommended a Korean variety show, I accepted it without high expectation. And then it was like a rolling snow ball from there. And now I am learning the language. LOL. Wish me luck! ^^

So, as I’m learning, I feel the need to be exposed to the language as much as possible. Thanks to the faithful downloaders around me, I can get to copy abundant Korean shows… and their dorama.

These few weeks, I have been watching 2 titles. I have finished watching Dream High (드림하이). I was happy watching it because besides the story, I recognized few words, grammar usages or custom about Korean that I have learned. Though it’s not much, it gave me a good feeling. About the story, I think they focus on the dancing and singing thingy, most of the casts belongs to a girl/boyband anyway. There are love scenes but not the one that moves my heart whatsoever so it’s ok for me.

The second one is Sungkyunkwan Scandal (성균관 스캔들). I found the Korean language here is different than in Dream High because the story takes place when Korea was still a kingdom. I guess the language used is either in the most polite form (since the characters are scholars) or it’s an old style, I don’t know. They even hadn’t used 한글 (Hangul, current Korean writing system) yet.

I have 5 episodes left and this afternoon I recalled the slight feeling of aaaw.. how cute.. how cool.. how romantic. Hm. Though it was not on heavy dose but it made me remember the no dorama reason I mentioned before.

Maybe it’s me that easily get swayed by things like that. I guess I’m a drama queen indeed. I still don’t like to have my mood swing just by watching some tv series but I don’t know… It’s just that I feel like I want to see more of K-dorama this time.

아.. 어떻게..

—

when the dog bites! when the bee stings!

… cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels…

—

1 star

This book is never meant to be for my eyes and mind. I wish I could burn this book. speechless

2 stars

I manage to finish reading it. It’s o-k-a-y.

3 stars

Hey, what’s this? I like it! Hm.. Fascinating!

4 stars

Love it, love it! I’m grateful to have read this book. There are many things to say about this book.

5 stars

amazed How can there be a book like this? This book… I read it more than once in acceptable period of time.

—

I don’t cook often. I just do it when I feel like it, like today.

The dish is called bala-bala, in Indonesian, or bakwan or ote-ote, depending where you come from. It’s a mix vegetable fritter, usually served as a snack with chili to bite along with.

This is my second try. My first bala-bala didn’t turn out delightful. I recall a very bland taste instead of yummy salty it should have been. It was so bland that I decided to trash it. My mistake was not to taste the seasoning and go straight into frying. It seems that my confidence likes to show up in just the wrong time.

For both times my making bala-bala, I’ve been using the recipe from here. I happily went out to the nearest warung (small stall selling groceries) to find out that 3 of my ingredients were not available, bean sprount (kecambah/tauge?), green onion (bawang daun?) and kemiri. My cooking desire had just picked the wrong date to arrive. I was really lazy today to go to another warung and ended buying only whatever available.

Back in my room in the third floor, I suddenly realized that if I once made an unedible bala-bala with complete ingredients, things could be worse with lacking 3 of them, especially because  green onion and kemiri are for seasoning. Despite the possibility, I still didn’t want to go out again and then decided to take the risk.

About an hour later, I munched gratefully the hot from the pan bala-bala! Yayyy! The reason? Just sprinkle a bit of magic and yum yum, people!

See the mighty MSG up there? We can loose ingredients here and there but once the mighty MSG is here, it’s here to save us all! Heil mighty MSG!

—

I hope this old train breaks down Then I could take a walk around

And see what there is to see And time is just a melody

All the people in the street walk as fast as their feet can take them

I just roll through town And though my windows got a view

the frame I’m looking through seems to have no concern for now

. So for now

.

.

I. need. this old train to breakdown

Oh,

please

just

.let me.

..please breakdown..

Breakdown – Jack Johnson

There is no sunny Bali these days. The sky keeps inviting the rain and the wind comes, too.

Tonight coming home late, the head inside my raincoat was remembering. Was it like this last year?

It seems like the rainy days stay longer and in the morning, the sleepy soul gets harder to drag to the bathroom.

Ha. It feels good to call out the past and catch the differences. At least some things are out of the circle.

—

Nothingness.

Because I think it would be relaxing. But the thing is that it is also a sound I have never heard before but I hope to hear. Someday. But just not so soon. Because I think it’s quite scary, too.

Yeah, I’m thinking about death.

Maybe I should revise my answer. My favourite sound is almost nothingness, just give a bit of place to tickle my ears.

Hm.

This guy said that passion is not enough. So with the big help from this site, I promise my self to write more in 2011.

Hm.

—