Would you buy an English textbook from this man?

Over the years of my teaching in Korea, I've often been approached by textbook salesmen wanting me to use their company's books for teaching English to my students. They're only doing their job, so I'm always polite. I'll even accept a sample copy to peruse. (I now have a shelf of these mostly unperused samples.) But I wouldn't use any of the materials that they sell.

Why not? Here's why:

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Author's Words

This book was created for the benefit of Korean-English learners.

. . . If I am not familiar with Korean culture, food, language, and customs,

. . . If I am not a polyglot English teacher (fluent in several languages),

I could never, ever publish a well organized, easy to use and useful English conversation book only for Koreans.
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Try "If I were," buddy. Unless you're really not these things.

Sadly, carelessness (if not incompetence) of this sort is rife in the English-teaching business in Korea. Now, I admit that I've cherry-picked to make a point, and the author did get the subjunctive right in five of his eight "Ifs." Here's a good one:

"If I didn't know what Korean speakers need exactly to improve their four skills in writing, reading, listening and speaking . . ."

That's subjunctive, but the mood is spoiled by a misfiring "exactly." It's not exactly in the right place. Let's give this sentence a tune-up:

"If I didn't know exactly what Korean speakers need to improve their four skills in writing, reading, listening and speaking . . ."

That's better, but the sentence is still clunky. Does our author mean the "four skills in writing, reading, listening and speaking" or the "four skills of writing, reading, listenting and speaking"? Probably the latter. But if so, why not just say:

"If I didn't know exactly what Korean speakers need to improve their writing, reading, listening and speaking . . ."

But "speakers"? Who needs "speakers"? Keep paring down that language:

"If I didn't know exactly what Koreans need to improve their writing, reading, listening and speaking . . ."

Now, that's a lot better. Still banal, but not clunky.

The disquieting thing is that the author is a native speaker of English, for the subtitle on the cover announces:

"Native English Teacher's Perspective"

But I wonder . . . . The author studied in Montreal and has one of his majors in "Translation: English <--> French." He also claims fluency in Spanish and Arabic, plus a good understanding of Italian, Greek, and Portuguese. I admire his ability to learn languages, but is he really a native speaker of English?

Oh -- and I'd suggest getting rid of that hyphen in "Korean-English learners." If, however, he really wants to use it, he could insert it here: "well-organized."