"Modern Korean: An Intermediate Reader" published: 2000, 327 pages + glossaries
Because the teaching of Korean to foreign speakers is still in its infancy, most of the available books and audio materials are designed for beginners. Beyond this stage, it can be difficult to find materials for intermediate students. Fortunately, "Modern Korean: an intermediate reader" bridges the gap in this area of Korean language pedagogy. Personally, having studied Korean for about 2 years, including a semester in Korea, I find this book to be at the level I needed. The readings include topics such as culture, customs, history, folk tales, and personal letters. They are followed by vocabulary lists and highlight new patterns in grammar. Additionally, the latter half of the book introduces "han-ja" (Chinese characters), which are helpful as they are still occassionally used in written Korean, particularly in newspaper headlines when the native Korean word would be longer, and also when abbreviating calendar dates. * * I would recommend this book to students who have had anywhere between a year and a half to two and a half years of Korean study. Although this book is comprehensive, study could also be supplemented by listening to Korean internet radio or other audio tapes, and reading light modern literature such as poems or short stories (although these can be hard to find). In sum, I find "Modern Korean" to be the ideal book for intermediate students of the Korean language.
