A Brief Word on Bells and Whistles (And a Great Find)

While compiling a resource bank for the Korean section of the TOLL project, I admit that I depended mostly on Google searches. (Only this morning did it occur to me to check social bookmarking services, like Delicious, but that is for a later post.) The resource bank includes brief annotations to help users, and myself, decide on the most appropriate sites for their purposes.

Looking over my resource bank as the sun rose today, I saw the final entry, for the Introduction to Korean course, which I had merely described as a "no-frills introduction to the writing and phonetic system". On a whim, I went to explore the site, and found that I learnt more about the Korean writing and phonetic system in ten minutes on this no-frills site, than I had in many hours. Not only that, but there was also a practice session of a manageable dose of vowels and consonants. For the first time, I felt that I had some mastery at the end of a study session. But wait! There's more! The course is downloadable, meaning it can be used offline exactly as it would be online, in both text and audio versions - an answer to the limitations of the sites I mentioned in yesterday's post.

This is a great find, and an earnest reminder that books should not be judged by their covers. many thanks to the polymath author of the langintro site, J. David Eisenberg, for this gem. No bells or whistles required.