[Korean book review] COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE TOPIK-ADVANCED

Hello, everyone. I am the 10th winner of twoChois Book Review Lucky Draw for the book “Complete guide to the Topik-Advanced”. Today I want to share with you my review of this book. ^^

Overview

 Complete guide to the Topik is the series consisting of three books with three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. This series is a perfect preparation guideline for anyone who wants to take Topik (Test of Proficiency in Korean) or those who want to improve Korean ability.

 I use a lot of preparation books for Topik, but “Complete guide to the Topik ” is one of my favorite. This book explains the main types of questions in the Topik test , then provides practice questions and mock tests. Knowing the main types of questions is very important because it will help you familiarize with the test structures and do the test better. The best thing I like about this book is that it provides you with many useful tips to deal with each type of question. When taking the exam, skills also play an important role besides the knowledge. Therefore, practicing the skills to deal with Topik questions is very necessary.

 The book that I review is the Advanced Level. Compared to the books of Beginner and Intermediate Level, this book has many different points. While the Beginner and Intermediate books have the English translation for the explanation, vocabulary and listening scripts, the Advanced book is completely written in Korean. The Beginner one provides the mini box of vocabulary but the Advanced book doesn’t have that part. Instead, the Advance book gives explanation for vocabulary and grammar in Korean. I think with the Upper Intermediate or Advanced level, it is better to study vocabulary and grammar in Korean. English translation does not always reflect the exact meaning, so we should learn them direct in Korean to understand the words and grammar clearly.

 Contents

 Preface

How to Use This Book

Contents

TOPIK Guidelines

 Part1. Review and Analysis of Previous TOPIK Questions

Part2. Practices Questions

Part3. Mock Test1

Mock Test2

 Appendix

 

 

Part1. Review and Analysis of Previous TOPIK Questions

This part will help you have a general view of previous Topik questions. The book analyzes the main types of Topik questions in the order of expression (vocabulary & grammar, writing) and comprehension (listening and reading). For example : 빈칸에 알맞은 단어 찾기(Find the right word in the blank), 비슷한 표현 찾기( Find the synonyms) and so on. Each type of question is provided with a sample question from the previous Topik tests. Then the book blackens the answer, gives explanation and tips to deal with that type of question at the bottom of the book. The explanation is short but covers the most important knowledge that we need to know about the question type. There is plenty of space to write notes in the book.

 

For example, in the writing section, in addition to instructing how to deal with the cloze test, the books give some warnings for the mistakes you may make. It is very necessary to know the mistakes that may lower your score. However, this book should leave the blank in the paragraph and give the answer at the bottom of the page.

For the listening section, there is a grey box of listening script and four choices below. This structure may distract you from listening. You should look at the four choices and listen to the audio first before seeing the script. The book also shouldn’t blacken the answer, but writes the answer at the bottom of the page.

 

For this part, the book gives tips on a tricky type of listening question. All of the four choices are right, but only one answer covers the main idea of the whole dialogue. Therefore, when coming across this type of question, we shouldn’t pay attention to details, but try to get the general idea of the dialogue.

For the writing section, one of the main questions is related to Literature Work. The book gives tips on how to deal with Literature work. It says that there are many words that are not familiar with you, but don’t worry because the Topik never asks questions about those words. Instead, Topik always asks about the main ideas. Hence, we should pay attention to the main idea instead of details to save time.

 

Part2. Practice Questions

You may seem annoyed because in part one, the book blackens the answer, but don’t worry because in part 2, the book gives you a lot of practice questions. The answers are given in the Appendix at the back of the book. With each type of question, the book gives many practice questions, then gives the explanation and tips for answering them. In fact, part 2 is like a full-length mock Topik test but it is divided into main types of questions. We can learn a lot from this part.

For example, in one of the main reading question types, it requires us to choose the right type of paragraph. There are many types such as explanation, description, opinion and experience.

The book gives tip on how to choose the correct type by paying attention to……GRAMMAR.

In the paragraph(no.34), the grammar “-해야 한다” appears many times. This grammar is used to express viewpoint, thought and opinion. Therefore the correct answer is the type of expressing opinion.

 

 

Part3. Mock Tests

In this part, the book provides two mock tests with the same structure with the real topik tests.

 

Appendix

The appendix provides the answers and listening scripts for Part 2:Practice question . It also provides the answers, listening scripts and explanation for Part 3:Mock Tests. The font in the appendix is smaller than other parts.

However, the book only explains some difficult questions in the mock tests of Part 2.

Finally is the OMR card used in the Topik exam.

CD

The book comes with 2 CDs for the listening parts. You can listen to the tracks on the CD according to the instructions on the book. The speed of the audio is like the natural speed of the Koreans in real life.

 

Darakwon is one of my favorite publishers because they publish many useful books and even provide free mp3 to download. You can download the free mp3 files for the book “Complete guide to the Topik -Advanced” from this link.

http://www.darakwon.co.kr/koreanbooks/BookView.aspx?BookID=27

 

*What I like about this book:

-Showing the main types of Topik Questions

-Providing useful explanation and tips on how to deal with each type of Topik question

-Explaining why to choose the correct answer and why other choices are wrong.

-Distinguishing synonyms and similar difficult grammar patterns

-Showing the mistakes that you often make in Topik.

  

*What they could change to improve the book:

-The book should provide more mock tests.

-The book seems to focus too much on explanation for the Vocabulary and Grammar section. It should give more explanation on other sections.

-In part 1, the book should provide the answers and listening scripts at the bottom of the pages.

-In part 1, the book should analyze newer topik questions. In part 1, they focus on 11th, 12th, 13th topik exam, but the newest topik exam now is the 31st.

 

Where to buy the book:

I recommend that you should buy this book from twoChois store. Their customer service is excellent and professional. I also want to send my sincere thanks to twoChois and Darakwon publisher for sponsoring this textbook for me to write a review.

 http://www.twochois.com/complete-guide-to-the-topik_advanced/

 

Book information:

COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE TOPIK-ADVANCED

Author : Seoul Korean Language Academy

Publiser: Darakwon

Book page : 192 pages

Supplement : 2 Audio CDs

Price: 16 000 won