Korean in a Flash Volume 2

Korean in a Flash is a cute little flashcard kit that I purchased at a bookstore but never used back in 2010 when I was studying Korean. Now that I am writing this review three years later, I finally figured out one reason I had such a problem with it: I bought Volume 2.

Presumably I would have bought Volume 1 (which costs slightly less at $24.95) if it had been on the shelf, so I think it wasn’t. 

As I look at the Korean in a Flash kit now, the cards are very pretty, but they defy the notion of a flashcard, which is—at least as I have always understood it—that you flash the card and test your reflexive ability to predict what is on the other side of it. But check this out, from the included booklet:

The front of each card contains an entry Korean word and four semantically related words. On the back of the card are listed the main word and its four related words with transliteration and translation. An example sentence is also provided both in Hangeul and romanization preceding its English translation.

Alas, the cards get turned into mini-essays. There will be no flashing of anything with these. Talk about overwhelming the poor hapless language learner and destroying the fun of flashing!

This is my beef with a number of Korean products I have encountered. They don’t seem to understand how people learn, and they don’t create sufficient pleasure in the learning process.