by Matematik on April 12th, 2010, 6:31 am
I haven't actually used the course, but in regard to the formality issue, I wouldn't worry about it too much to be honest. Formal Korean as spoken now isn't much different to formal Korean when the course was written, of course, slang has changed, and amongst strangers, much formality has been dropped so yes, speaking in the way this course teaches may seem stilted, but no one is going to care that a foreigner is speaking in a stilted manner.
It all depends on your intention, if you want to achieve a good grounding in Standard Korean, then your best bet is to definately stay formal, you do not want courses that teach you informal, slangy language, and then struggle listening to and reading formal language.
However, if your intention is to merely become proficient in the spoken, coloquial language, then I would avoid this course and go for a more informal one. But as I said before, if you really want to become good at the language, then I would definately start off with formal, even stilted language, and once you get good at that, then branch out into colloquialism.