What are the best Korean textbooks for learning basic conversation, grammar, hanja, and pronunciation? Get a headstart learning Korean with these books.
Table of Contents
- Best Korean Textbook: Ewha Korean
- Best Korean grammar study book: Korean Grammar in Use
- Best Korean grammar handbook: Korean Grammar for International Learners
- Good Korean phonetics and phonology book: The Sounds of Korean
- Best Hanja resource: Hanja Bible for Teachers
- Best Korean dictionary: Naver
- Best Korean reading material: Ridibooks
- Best (free) online course for learning Korean: Coursera’s First step Korean
1. Best Korean Textbook: Ewha Korean
The Ewha Korean textbooks are my favorite textbooks for learning Korean. The most important reason for that is that they’re great for self-study. There are some classroom dialogue exercises in the textbooks, but those are not frequent enough to frustrate someone studying Korean outside a classroom setting.
Another big plus is that almost everything, including the exercises, is in Korean from the start. Only the grammar point explanations and translation of new words are in English in volumes 1-1 to 2-2. From volume 3-1 onwards, there is no English in the book at all. And that is fine because you don’t need English explanations anymore by then.
The first time you have to work with an all-Korean new words list will triple the time you spend reading texts, but eventually, you’ll start to guess the meaning of new words from the context.
With every chapter the difficulty increase is just right: there is always a challenge with the listening and reading parts because you won’t understand 100% yet, but when you return to this chapter after finishing the book, these parts suddenly look easy to you, and you don’t understand why you struggled in the first place.
Buying tip
There are both textbooks and workbooks in the Ewha Korean series. If you know the basics, then I recommend buying the 1-2 workbook for spelling practice; you don’t need the textbook yet at this stage.
For volumes 2 to 3, both the textbooks and the workbooks are very useful because you need the repetition to learn how to spell Korean without making mistakes.
Frankly, the workbooks are only useful until volume 4 because the textbooks provide enough exercise by then. Even though I bought volumes 5 and 6 as well, by then, textbooks started to lose my interest, and I moved on to practicing with real Korean novels and a grammar book.
2. Best Korean grammar study book: Korean Grammar in Use
You can learn many grammar points from textbooks like Ewha Korean, but sometimes it can help to have the grammar points organized by usage. That way, you can easily compare which form you should use in which situation.
In the Korean Grammar in Use series (Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced), you get example sentences, do’s and don’ts, comparison with similar grammar forms, and information about more advanced use.
The most fundamental grammar points can be found in the beginner book, but you will often find the grammar points you want to know more about are in the next book (the level you are studying towards), so you won’t last long with just one volume. This is especially the case when you start to read original Korean novels.
3. Best Korean grammar handbook: Korean Grammar for International Learners
Korean Grammar for International Learners is an excellent resource for studying Korean. Sometimes you’ll find yourself reading a whole chapter so that you know what is out there. At other times, you’ll go directly to a grammar point for in-depth explanations. This book can look overwhelming when you’re a beginner, but the explanations are really clear, and you can just ignore the more complicated details as you’ll study these in time.
4. Good Korean phonetics and phonology book: The Sounds of Korean
I’m not saying this one is the best book, but it was the in-depth phonetics and phonology book I needed at some point. The Sounds of Korean provides an academic analysis and explanation of Korean phonetics. What’s so great about it? The way it shows that even though there is a ‘right’ textbook pronunciation, in real life, there is this bandwidth of acceptable pronunciations depending on the speaker. The pronunciation also changes over time and is different in every region.
Some parts are a bit hard to get through (statistics), but there are really handy chapters about prosody, phonological rules of Korean, and loanword phonology. I keep going back to the rules for lateralisation (nl > ll) and nasalisation (nl>nn) in Sino-Korean words and rules for tensification.
As you can deduct from what I like about the book, this book is perfect for people with a background or interest in linguistics. If you want a more exercise focused book, then you might be better off with Korean Pronunciation Guide – How to Sound Like a Korean. The Korean Pronunciation Guide has a more textbook type of layout with colors, example texts and exercises, and is more accessible.
5. Best Hanja resource: Hanja Bible for Teachers
Why learn Hanja (Korean characters)? It is not about the Hanja itself, but about creating understanding. By learning which characters a Korean word of Chinese origin consists of, you’ll learn new words quicker. Let’s take 정 (正) as an example. This part means ‘correct’ and you can find it in words like 정확하다, 정각, and 부정. When you know correct is a possible meaning of 정 (not the only one), you can sometimes guess the meaning of words you encounter for the first time.
Alternative: 이 단어 뜻이 뭘까?
There is no need to buy this book if you learn Korean to speak with locals when you visit South Korea. If you do want to study Hanja for the fun of it, then buy What is the meaning of the Hanja word in the textbook? (이 단어 뜻이 뭘까?) instead. This is a Hanja textbook for South Korean elementary school kids. It is fun to read, and it feels real because it was not made for foreigners, plus the illustrations are lovely.
6. Best Korean dictionary: Naver
The Naver dictionary is not a book, but a website and an app. If you are learning Korean you are probably using it already. The Korean-English dictionary is great for looking up words. There are plenty of example sentences for every word. It works well for jargon as well: just put in the whole phrase and see what Naver shows you. You might not get the translation, but the examples from VLive broadcasts and tv shows can often give you a hint of the meaning.
You can also use Naver to learn Korean. Today’s Korean Conversation exercises are great if you want to increase your vocabulary one subject at a time.
Naver’s dictionary is integrated into many other online Korean offerings, like the best source for Korean reading material: Ridibooks.
7. Best Korean reading material: Ridibooks
Via Ridibooks, you can buy Korean ebooks and also read many of them for free online (legally!). The offer of both well-known writers and unknown writers (with many followers) is large. Often the first parts of a book series (of authors unknown to me) and manga are free to read, and it is not expensive to buy the sequels. If you mainly use the books to learn Korean, then the free books will last you a long time.
8. Best online course for learning Korean: Coursera’s First step Korean
You might learn easier with video material. In that case, try out Coursera’s First Step Korean and its sequel Learn to Spreak Korean 1. The course instructors will teach you the basics of Korean with examples from everyday situations. The dialogue videos are especially handy as you can practice your listening comprehension (and tell yourself: if they can learn it, then so can I!).
That’s it: a book for every category to help you learn Korean. What is your favorite Korean textbook?
I have retired from TTMIK. They’re nice but they don’t give that setting and gradual ‘Hey, it’s all in Korean now’ that I really would benefit from. I’ve almost graduated level 3 and I’m not seeing it going anywhere, really.
For the Ehwa workbooks… You say ‘if you know the basics, go to 1-2’ These books are PRICY so I would hate to purchase the wrong one. So I was curious to what you identified as ‘the basics.’
Please let me know!
Hi,
With the very basics I mean knowing how to read Hangul, how to form sentences, and simple tenses and particles. 1-1 covers grammar points like 입니다/입니까, 은/는, 이/가, 을.를, 에(서), 이/그/저, 에, 하고, 과/와, ~세요, (으)로, 부터~까지, 아/어요, 안, 았/었, 도.
I´d advise you to take a look at the table of contents of all Ewha books to check out the grammar points they´re teaching in each book. You can find screenshots of the table of contents and sometimes dialogues on the website of Twochois (works better on my laptop than mobile). A TTMIK level doesn’t cover the same points as one Ewha book, but I’d say you can probably start with 2-1 (see screenshots) or 2-2 (see screenshots).
By the way, the 이야기 series of TTMIK is 100% in Korean. So when you reach upper beginner or intermediate level, you might find it interesting again.
Kind regards,
Kim