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

The book came highly recommended to me to learn Korean. I've been a bit lax on my studies but I find the explanations very clear. You'll definitely need some way to supplement your learning through audio practice. I'm fortunate enough to have a korean friend to practice with.

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'm about half way through the book so far, and I feel like I've used it enough to leave a thoughtful and (hopefully) helpful review. The first thing that you should know is that this probably isn't the best "stand alone" book. It's not a textbook, so it's not going to have everything that you need to learn the language. It IS, however, very helpful for a beginner to gain a lot of basic understanding to the language and how grammar fits Korean sentences together. The information is pretty clearly laid out and is to-the-point. Not a lot of unnecessary confusing topics right off the bat, and then it goes a bit deeper into complex rules later on. It's set up in a format that is really easy for me to follow. I really like this book and will definitely move on to the others as I continue learning the language.That being said, there are a few things that I would have liked to see, especially in a beginner's book. Some of these are entirely preferential, so if you're okay with these things missing, then that's okay.Use of a "handwriting" font is extremely confusing. It took about 8 chapters before I felt comfortable reading the Hangul font, and I was often copying down the WRONG spelling due to my complete inability to read that font. I would have liked to see the first chapter or two have both the typical font and the handwriting font for all the words in order to better familiarize the differences between the two fonts. Only occasionally in later chapters are new concepts introduced with the cleaner font, but most new words are in the handwriting font.Though there are audio files available on the site (which are very useful), they are only of the conversations. This is good for listening practice, but there are a lot of new words introduced in each chapter and (especially as a beginner), you kind of have to guess at what they sound like. There's an in-depth Appendix on pronunciation rules, but very few people will read and retain all the rules, and you often find yourself learning a mispronunciation and can't identify the word if you hear it elsewhere. It'd be nice if on vocab words that have special pronunciation, if there was a bit of a reminder "hey, this looks like this, but is pronounced like this!"Not enough repetition. Again, totally preferential, but I find myself diligently taking notes through out a chapter, do the 6-10 lines of practice at the end, and then moving on to the next chapter without realizing I'm not ready due to a lack of real structure in the chapter's end. There are lists and lists and lists of vocab words, most of which were not used in the chapter. It'd just be nice to see a bit more repetition, a bit more "work" in order to drive home concepts that were taught during a chapter.Even with these minor flaws, I still find this to be a helpful book, and I recommend it to anyone learning Korean. It's a valuable source of information and the narration style is comfortable, easy to read (not like a dry textbook).Edit after finishing the book:Of all the resources that I've been using for learning the language, this one is definitely my favorite. It explains things pretty well and gives you a bit of cultural insight. Right now I'm just going through again to review each chapter. There are a few things that I'd already forgotten, but the rest of it is really sticking with me. I already purchased the second book, and I'll definitely get the third later on. I'm updating my review from 4 stars to 5 stars. Thanks!

이 책을 좋아합니다I like this book. The way the content is presented really works well for me. Do not expect to become fluent or even conversational from this book. But it’s a great start to the learning journey and teaches enough for you to go from absolutely zero to being able to communicate basic ideas.I tried George Tromboley’s “Korean from zero” and found it to be a bit overwhelming compared to this book. I really think Billy’s decision to use the 다 form was the way to go. Drastically simplifies conjugations for beginners. Thank you Billy!

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.

So far. I like how this is starting out. I watch Billy Go on You Tube and other social media.