Practical Korean Usage Intermediate 2

PKU Intermediate 2 — Nuance & Connection
Your AI-Powered Guide to Korean Grammar

Grammar that carries what's BETWEEN the lines.

If Intermediate 1 was the machinery of Korean, this is its heart. Here you learn the grammar of feeling — how to look back on a memory, admit something grudgingly, see through the mask a person is wearing, leave something ready out of quiet care, and worry that something might go wrong. These are the endings that make you sound human rather than textbook. Volume 6 of the Practical Korean Usage (PKU) series, and the second of three intermediate books.

📘 WHAT YOU'LL MASTER
- Retrospection — recalling what you witnessed (-더라 / -던 / -더니)
- Process & discovery — through doing, you find out (-다 보면 / -다 보니까)
- Worth & degree — "worth doing," "to the point of" (-(으)ㄹ 만하다 / -(으)ㄹ 정도로)
- Concession & the mask — "yes, but…" and pretending (-기는 하다 / -는 척하다)
- Preparation as care — leaving things ready (-아/어 놓다 / 두다)
- Worry, plans, and promises (-(으)ㄹ까 봐, -는 대로 / -기로 하다)
- Conversational endings — new info vs shared info (-거든요 / -잖아요)
- PLUS The Dictionary of Feeling — a 100+ word appendix of emotion vocabulary to fill every sentence with real feeling.

✨ WHAT MAKES PKU DIFFERENT
🤖 AI Companion — every chapter ends with guided exercises you do WITH an AI tutor: quizzes, writing coaching, even making your own card-news image. Learning becomes a conversation, not a worksheet.
🎬 K-Drama scenes — each grammar point lives inside a short dramatic scene, so you feel WHEN a Korean speaker would actually reach for it.
✍️ The running sonnet — one 12-line poem threads through all twelve chapters, gaining a line each time. By the end, you complete the final line yourself.
📚 Contrastive pairs — the tricky look-alikes (-(으)ㄹ 만하다 vs -(으)ㄹ 만큼, -는 척하다 vs -듯하다) are placed side by side, so the difference finally clicks.
🎙️ Pronunciation spotlights, 🌍 K-Culture notes, and 📝 mini-quizzes with full answer keys round out every chapter.

🎯 WHO IT'S FOR
Intermediate learners (중급) ready to move past survival Korean — self-studiers, TOPIK II candidates, and teachers looking for classroom-ready material.

📚 THE PKU SERIES
Written by Korean-language educator Sungtaek Lee (이성택), PKU teaches grammar the way it is actually used in real life, through the "Snowball Method" — small pieces that build, chapter by chapter, into confident fluency. Created in collaboration with Claude (Anthropic). New to the series? Start anywhere; the four earlier volumes carry you from the basics.

🆓 Completely free. Thank you for learning with us — and may your Korean grow as fluent as your heart desires.