Korean Stories For Language Learners: Traditional Folktales in Korean and English (Free Online Audio)

I highly recommend this book if you're learning korean.It has plenty of stories that build up slowly in the language.I particularly like their exercises and the english translations are ok.The letters are big enough to read and it also has pretty drawings that represent the essence of the textbook.It comes with a CD but you can also listen to the recordings online!Highly recommend it!

Fun book, can't wait to continue my Korean learning journey with this! Good for after you have the Hangul pretty much down, and you're working on vocab and sentence structure. Each story builds and gets progressively more challenging.

Love it, the stories go from simple to hard, I recommend it if you want to learn how to read hangug and improve vocabulary

A GREAT resource for language learners, love the read aloud track. Pictures are fun. I know I'm getting better because I've found some typos 🤣🤣🤣

I would highly recommend this book for the mid- to upper-level beginning Korean learner, especially if you are looking to reach the intermediate level. This book is definitely not for the absolute beginner, at least not without other resources to get you started. While I think that this book is truly unique and invaluable, there are some flaws, too.Pros:This is book is by far the best resource I have found for helping me move up from the beginner level, and finally reach the intermediate level in Korean. I find that the textbooks I had been using were getting to bogged down in the details (which is good for formal learning), and the practice reading activities are typically so boring and rigid. However, this book is a game changer. The stories are very interesting and they gradually build in difficulty and I never felt like I hit a brick wall. Every story has a English translation, comprehension questions, and an essential list of vocabulary. I recommend skimming the pre-reading questions and vocabulary before each story to help smooth things out.The inclusion of audio recordings for each story is a true bonus. The speaker speaks at a good pace and has clear pronunciation. Since listening resources are very hard to find at this level, this is another feature that makes this book invaluable. The audio files can be downloaded for free from the publisher's website, which is good if you don't have a CD player or if you buy the Kindle version.Cons:As I stated previously, this book is not for the absolute beginner. It does not explicitly teach you grammar, and many of the foundation words are left out of the vocabulary definition list. You will pickup on the more advanced grammar as it is introduced, but it is assumed that you have a good understanding of the basic rules and words of Korean.A bit disappointing to me is the abundance of typos. I have found at least one semi-major typo for each story. These mistakes range from incorrect definitions in the vocabulary, to entire sentences being completely different between the Korean and English translation. I feel like the vocabulary definition typos should have been easily caught. The translation differences are also strange. I know that everything cannot be translate word-for-word, but entire sentences seem to have been introduced/left out between the two translations. It's almost as if the English translations were written for an earlier draft of the book, but then some of the Korean text was changed at some point, but they didn't update the English text. However, this is not a deal breaker. You can still find 99% of the connections between the Korean/English text, but just be aware that the translations don't seem to be always correct.My last minor complaint is the use of romanization throughout the book. It seems strange that the book expects you to be able to read the text in native Korean script, but all of the titles and vocabulary have the latin script next to them. I find this quite distracting and very unhelpful. Romanization gives absolutely no indication of correct pronunciation, and is only useful for people who do not know how to read Korean text at all. So I don't understand why it is even included, and it just spoils the immersion for me.

Beautiful and very well made. I can’t read this level of Korean yet but this book is helping me get a lot better. If they ever publish more books in this series (many languages have two books so maybe thrill add more), I will definitely buy them.

I've been looking for good graded reading in Korean forever. This book is almost exactly what I've needed.You need a pretty good foundation in the the basics. If you've gone a little beyond a level 01 Korean language learning book, this is probably good for you.I can read these stories without constantly looking up unfamiliar words. I'm approaching the thirtieth story now and it is still just challenging enough, but never overwhelming. Further, you have an English translation and vocab reference.Vocabulary is often repeated within any given story and recurs in subsequent stories.I find that I'm retaining new vocabulary and words that I knew on sight but couldn't call up at will much more easily since I've started reading this book.The stories are wonderful, and I both enjoy reviewing what I've read and look forward to each new one.My only complaint is that, except in quoted speech, they use the extra formal verb endings throughout. This is a minor complaint.I would love to find more and more quality readers like this one.

I love this book a lot! It's set up really well. There is Korean and English to each story. Each story has pre-reading questions, vocabulary, post-reading questions, and a writing prompt. Some stories included relevant cultural information which I found helpful. As a polygot, I think this book is great. The stories get more difficult, but you'll see reoccurring themes and vocabulary. At a certain point the questions don't have English translations so you have to try to figure out what's being asked (there's always a translation for the story). Overall, I really think this is a great book for self-study. Keep in mind that I am a beginner Korean learner, so I can't vouch for the quality of Korean in the book but I love the set up of this book a lot.