Retro Learns Korean: Talk To Me In Korean Book Review and Thoughts on the Curriculum

If you are reading this I will presume you know who Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK) are. Firstly let's talk about the free content available on the site. This book and curriculum review will be focused on the views as a learner and the worth of the content being provided in comparison to it's cost. It is perfectly fine to disagree, I am not affiliated with TTMIK, neither do dislike them, any criticism should be seen as constructive as I do honestly believe as the most influential figure they have the power to improve the community in turn.

Since the reshuffle of the website it now requires you to log in to view the free course material, although it is slightly inconvenient and may turn a few people away it, they are still the most popular recommendation when it comes to learning Korean. The main curriculum which can now be found in the courses section remains free to use, however the paid content is now the main attraction. I have not used a lot of the paid content so I will mostly be writing about the content I have used.

The Curriculum levels 1-10

As a free product it's great, although it lacks any teaching of hangeul which you can find 100 videos on YouTube for anyway. The content is very streamlined with simple and straight forward explanations makes it easy for new learners to get into the grammar of the language. It shouldn't take the dedicated user to finish the content if they go through it reading the content and ignoring the accompanying podcasts which are far too long and not fruitful enough for the time invested.

Personally I think the curriculum should be remade from the ground up and pre-planned so that the common grammar is all explained towards the beginning. Overall it doesn't cover enough grammar to get you beyond a beginner-mediocre stage.

It would definitely be beneficial for the community if the curriculum covered the vast majority of common grammar even if it takes it up to Level 15. Currently this would be too difficult due to the circulation of the physical books. Speaking of which, the physical books have the same base content as the free online stuff but with a added conversations per lesson and some cultural pages.

I cannot recommend spending money on the level books due to the bulk of the content being online for free plus having to pay shipping cost. If you are a dedicated learner you will not be spending too much time with these books or the curriculum in general. I understand for them the books are a good source of income so they cannot just give up supporting them.

If you want to support the books, you can buy the E-book versions through Amazon here.

500 words

RRP: $25
I paid: $25 + shipping
Available for $9.99 on Amazon

Talk To Me In Korean Book Review my first 500 korean words

I actually enjoyed this book a lot but as with most of TTMIK's paid content it just feels like the price is too high and the content is too low. I was hoping that a follow up to this series would have been released by this point. I really like the way that there is a story provided that uses 10 words which was the main reason more content like this.

However we cannot ignore the price, this book is very expensive compared to the content it provides. While I liked it for the dedicated learner I would suggest picking up Darakwon's 2000 words beginner instead, which is listed as 23,000원 on the site.

Easy reading for beginners

RRP: $18
I paid: $16 + shipping
Available for $9.99 on Amazon

I liked this book and actually did recommend it even though I just wished there was a longer version of it and also asked the team multiple times if they were making a second version or an easy reading for intermediate learners but was met with no response and considering it's been almost 2 years since I guess it's not on the cards.

I liked it but it is very overpriced, you can pick up Yonsei Korean Reading 1 for maybe double the price but it contains triple the amount of content perhaps even 4x the content. I do understand it may be impossible to come across the Yonsei Korean Reading books in your region but this book is definitely way lower in content. One thing I really liked was the use of different speech levels.

Real life Korean conversations for intermediates

RRP: $25
I paid: $27.42 (through Amazon)
Available for $9.99 on Amazon

One of the better paid resources provided by the team but even still I am still waiting for the part 2 because initially there was a little more content for this before it was made into a book. I think more content like this is great especially for situations that are harder to come by in a lot of immersion sources. It's one of the only books I know of that has conversations like this but if you don't want to or cannot afford just any old immersion will give you a similar effect although one of the best parts of this book is the sentence patterns that show what kind of grammar are similar to each other in meaning.

Situational dialogues

RRP: $10
I paid: $5 (sale)

This is the kind of content that they should make more of. Similar to the Real life korean conversations, they're short conversations that occur every day, it's excellent for most learners and especially good for preparing for what people might ask you in many situations. There's just as much content for a fraction of the price. Definitely worth buying and I hope there is more content like this in the future. The main attaction for this book for me was the audio which I repetitively listened to.

Folk tales

RRP: $10
I paid: $5 (sale)

This is pretty good for the price, a decent amount of content and good for getting into reading in Korean. It includes notes on each sentence and gives you translations for words you may not have known. It includes a full translation and even explains some phrases that are good to learn. It feels good to read these simplified versions and it's a great step into moving on to reading native material. Once again if only there was more content like this that makes it easier for learners to get into reading.

Hanja Guide

RRP: $27.95
I paid: $23.75 (through Amazon)

Initially I thought this book was okay but recently I found a way better resource for Hanja with the only difference being the TTMIK one shows the stroke order (which you can find out here why I think it's pointless for learning in Korean) and has way more simple words. The main advantage of this one is that it shows really simple words that relate to all the hanja contained but overall it only has about 200 or so whereas 날로 먹는 한자 which is made for natives has 1800+ hanja for you to learn the meaning of for almost the same price.

News in Korean

RRP: $19
I paid: $25.25
Available for $9.99 on Amazon

Good for getting into reading news and also contains comprehension questions in korean which I am a fan of as it is more reading. I like that they are short but the book gets defeated when you check out this page of YTN News, it has thousands and thousands of articles from 5+ years of news and also contains a video as most of them are just transcripts of the actual news. I highly recommend using the YTN news articles over this book just because of the sheer amount of content available for free.

The role of TTMIK within the community

When it comes to the kind of material that TTMIK should be making it should really be focused on taking people from the beginner and starting stages to being about to consume native content. I feel this is how I used the content and I felt the content that helped me get closer to reading books and watching tv shows easier was the content I wanted more of. I cannot comment on the current subscription plan that they have as I don't believe no matter how much content there is that you could use it for a whole year.

I get that TTMIK is a business and need to maximise their profits to survive but I also want the best for learners and the language learning community so personally I would like to see more content aimed at getting learners from the early stages onto native content. I like that they provide third party books through their website now but you can also pick them up for less at various other websites for less and especially if you live in Korea.

One thing I wish they would do more especially through social media is use their knowledge of growing up in Korea to recommend content such as books, tv shows or movies that are good for learners to immerse with. I would definitely like to see the main curriculum expand quicker so I can feel even better about recommended people use it when they are starting out as currently I have to recommend other resources to make up for all the missing grammar.

You can find the full list of Talk to me in Korean books available on Amazon here.

Retro Learns Korean

Talk To Me In Korean Book Review and Thoughts on the Curriculum