that are used in Korean can be constructed using the grammar-vocabulary method ...
They can only be "constructed" through repetition/copying. You really need to know the WHOLE expression. That is how people learn languages. Any other method doesn't work.
So you have to memorize whole sentences/phrases. That's the quick way to becoming fluent. It takes an hour to think of the correct sentence using the grammar-vocabulary method. If you use the other method, it takes a blink of an eye to come up with the right sentence.
So it's a matter of memorizing thousands of chunks. That's how one becomes fluent in a foreign language. Just learning thousands of chunks.
The ideal book would be one that has many phrases such as in the phrase books. It would have colloquial phrases as well. There would be MANY dialogs as well. Each Korean sentence would have the romanization and the exact meaning underneath as well as the natural colloquial-sounding translation underneath it as well PLUS a definition key in the side margin. And of course the mp3 supplied. Then you wouldn't really need anything else. You wouldn't even have to look up the dictionary much. After you spend 6 months learning the 5000 odd expressions in the book, you could then move onto reading. THEN you would have to look up the dictionary a lot, and perhaps study grammar. That would be it. After six months of reading study, you would be both good at reading, writing and speaking as well as listening.
Every day you would shadow a chapter maybe - about sixty sentences. After 3 months, you would have shadowed, 5,400 sentences. After six months, 10,800 sentences. I think that would be the limit of the shadowing. I would imagine you would be SICK of shadowing by then. That's how they learn in the US army - simply by shadowing.
Modern technology helps me in this endeavor as I can shadow making my own tracks for listening. I can repeat the stuff as many times as I want. iTunes is great for this. Really works well.
I really enjoy studying this way. Makes me feel like I am making a lot of progress.
Doing this - shadowing - is really a brute memorization process. Because you hear the reading multiple times, the process is easier. Without listening to the reading, memorizing these sentences will be a lot harder, not to mention you might be memorizing everything wrong.
It takes me about 3 hours to shadow a chapter (about 90 sentences). That's about 30 sentences an hour. That's about 2 minutes per sentence, I think. That's not a lot of time.
If I study full-time, that will be 14 hours a day. That will be about 14x30=420 sentences a day. That will be about 12,000 sentences a month. In 3 months, that would be 36,000 sentences. In about six months, that would be 72,000 sentences.
I think if you study full-time everyday for about six months, you will be fluent in that language. You might not be able to read newspapers but you will be fluent.
A lot of the time realistically will be getting access to the shadowing material. The above is theoretical, that is, assuming that all the shadowing material is available to one. In the actual case, a lot of the time will be spent securing the shadowing material and preparing it for shadowing, so I think you would be learning in reality half the number of sentences - around 220 sentences a day - still not a paltry amount.
After 3 months, that will be 220 times 3 times 30 =~ 18,000 sentences. That should be plenty to become fluent. Then you spend six months brushing up on reading and writing skills. You will be able to pronounce everything you read. And you will already know many words, maybe about 10,000. What's left is to increase your vocabulary.
Things are going well. May have to do revision though. HATE revision.
