Korean Made Simple: A beginner's guide to learning the Korean language Bilingual Edition

I can’t praise this book enough. I had tried Talk to Me in Korean Level 1, but progress felt really slow. Switched to this book and, just in the first 5 chapters, I felt like I was making way more progress - building vocab, grammar, and actual reading/writing skills.What makes this series stand out is how much Korean text you actually work with and how much vocab you’re introduced to. Other books sometimes feel like an English book about Korean, but this feels like a Korean book for learners. You’re exposed to full Korean passages and lots of text right away, but the way it’s broken down makes it click by the end. That little bit of immersion makes a huge difference.The workbook is a must too! Lots of fill-in-the-blanks, sentence building, dictation exercises - so you’re actually using the language. If you’re a beginner self learner and want the best introduction to really reading, writing, and understanding Korean, this is it!

My girlfriend had been using this to practice her Korean. She hasn't spoke a lick of it yet but I think she learned a couple things from this book.

Well-written and easy to understand. Definitely also get the workbook. It really helps reinforce what you learned. I recommend making flash cards for the vocabulary also. It is also well-organized. This is the first language textbook I have ever been able to stick with. I believe this is a great place to start and I recommend going through all three books over time.

I’ve used numerous workbooks and apps to learn Korean, but this has been by far the best. I stumbled upon Billy Go on YouTube and was very impressed with his explanation of the question I had. I’ve learned more in a week than I have in months of other methods. It’s work to learn another language, but Billy Go’s teaching is extremely clear and easy to understand. I have found it to be a super enjoyable journey. I highly recommend this series. I bought the kindle version and love it!

I have been following Talk to Me in Korean (TTMIK) and Go Billy Korean for a while. Korean Made Simple is organized like many language books: pronunciation at beginning, greetings then present tense, etc etc. The lessons themselves also organized like many textbooks with a dialogue, break down of the new concepts in the dialogue, some practice activities and a vocab list at the end. I'm only part way through the book (because of my time management) but what I've gone through has been well explained for a beginner.My main complaint about this version (I do believe he announced earlier this year/2021 that he is working on revisions of this series but I don't know what type of revisions he will be making) is mainly in how he introduces vocabulary. Some of his vocab lists are not cohesive and seem more like a smattering of unrelated but most common words. Sometimes he will introduce groups of words that make sense together and help connect with the grammatical concept taught but then add a word to this group in the next chapter where the lone word now feels out of place/out of context. It makes more sense to give a bunch of locations all in the section about a location-related concept (like the "(going) to" particle) or keep all the food items grouped together (rather than a bunch of fruits in chapter 4 then a lone "cheese" in the next chapter).There was also a point in the book where I saw the new concept could be integrated with the previous chapter but the practice exercises didn't include said integration of concepts. I think I found the discussion of said integration later on but, like with the spread out vocab lists, it felt out of context in a way because newer concepts were being talked about. However this was not as hindering to my learning as the scattered vocabulary.Compared to TTMIK's more modular curriculum, I love how each lesson has the vocab lessons available without needing to reference a separate source/book but, as mentioned above, the vocab needs better organization. Go Billy Korean explains the concepts clearly for beginning language learners and includes some cultural notes throughout (I watched many years of Kdrama before committing to learning the language so these were sometimes a nuisance because I personally don't need these cultural notes but others new to Korean culture will benefit).I haven't checked out all his supplementary videos but I hope they do help others. This is overall a great entry-level Korean curriculum for self-learners.