First I want to apologize to twochois for such a late review. I am supposed to do this review 2 weeks back itself but I got stuck with lot of things as I started working since 4 weeks and have been quite busy.
If you are not aware, I won this book in a lucky draw conducted by twochois in August. I am really grateful to them for conducting such lucky draws.
Let me be honest, I haven’t used this book much as I was busy and also the level of Korean in the book is beyond my present level but I did get an idea of how is it.
Now, let’s jump to the review of this book.
When I first saw the book, I felt it was quite thin with less number of pages. Yea, I know that we should never judge a textbook by the number of pages it has, of course. But, I couldn’t stop that feeling that it had less pages. However, as I glanced through the book, it had more content than I expected. So, “never judge a text book by number of pages it has” still holds true.
Basically, as you can see in the above picture, Sogang 3A has 8 lessons in it and each lesson has 7 sections in it!!
1. 문법 (Grammar)
2. 대화 (Dialogue)
3. 과제 (Task)
4. 듣고 말하기 (Listening & Speaking)
5. 일고 말하기 (Reading & Speaking)
6. 단어 | 표현 정리 (Vocabulary used in the lesson)
7. 발음 (pronunciation)
In the 문법 section, a sample sentence representing the grammar point is given and we are expected to do 4 other sentences as an exercise. [The ones I tried, I did them wrong T_T] There are few more sub-sections for some more practice of the grammar point, followed by 대화 (dialogue).
I was told by twochois and other sources that Sogang is actually a book for classroom learning rather then self-learning. So, I assume this dialogue section will be made to enact by the students just like in our Japanese class I have every other day lately. May be, you can try these dialogues with your language exchange partner or a fellow Korean learner. I’ll try to do it when I can. [I haven’t done it yet]
Next comes the 과제 (task) section. This definitely is a classroom activity but for sure (imo) self-learners can do it themselves too.
For example, first lesson has the task as: (you can actually see in the above picture, click it and zoom it may be!):
“직장 동료에게 자기소개를 해 보세요” (I’m guessing, this must mean something like giving a self-introduction to your colleagues). Also, a sample dialogue is also given for reference.
듣고 말하기 (Listening & Speaking)
I like the audio quality in this one. Speakers’ voice is pretty good and conversations also sound quite natural, especially compared with typical audio files of language learning text books. (or may be it’s just be who feels so)
일고 말하기 (Reading & Speaking)
This section seems to be different in each lesson. First lesson has descriptions of 3 people and there are few exercises based on these descriptions. (‘한국어를 배우는 학생’) Second lesson has something related to an exchange student interview.
단어 | 표현 정리 (Vocabulary used in the lesson) and 발음 (pronunciation)
These sections are pretty straight forward. Just the vocabulary used in the lesson is listed here and also pronunciations of some words. (Audio files are also provided for these pronunciations, good!)
Pros:
– Content, there’s just so much of it. [7 sections in each lesson and 8 lessons in total]
– Audio is pretty good. As I mentioned above, voice and conversations are natural.
– Lots of pictures. Pictures do take lot of space but in language learning I believe textbooks should have lot of graphic content than just being a plan colourless bland textbook.
What can be improved (hangukdrama style :p):
– Actually, I don’t find anything that I can say that should be improved. Everything seems to be perfect for the book it is, although it’s entirely in Korean and not in English.
Disclaimer: I apologize for the bad quality scanned pictures and also if you find my review not useful and pretty long. This is my first review and please bare with me. If you have any specific questions, you can always ask me in the comments.
I also hope that there won’t be any copyright issues because I scanned few pages from the book and posted them. I put them only as a reference and I would be glad to remove them anytime if I am asked to remove them and that I am not allowed to do that.
Once again, I would like to thank twochois for their kindness in sending me this book. They also added Sogang Korean 3A workbook (which I would review later) along with this book as they said it would complement with the main book as I am a self-learner.
Thank you for reading my review! Good luck everyone!