Learn Japanese: Lesson 1-15

Rating:
Summary: Please read
Review: I am taking a Japanese class in college and we are using this book as our textbook. There are no answers for the exercises. The conclusions and explanations are ambigous at best. This is not a hard language, but this book can turn that around. I am on amazon.com looking for another book right now, because this one is so lacking. Also there are a great deal of misinformation that is given. Possibly because of when this was published.

Rating:
Summary: Please read
Review: I am taking a Japanese class in college and we are using this book as our textbook. There are no answers for the exercises. The conclusions and explanations are ambigous at best. This is not a hard language, but this book can turn that around. I am on amazon.com looking for another book right now, because this one is so lacking. Also there are a great deal of misinformation that is given. Possibly because of when this was published.

Rating:
Summary: Learn Japanese Series is the best text for Japanese
Review: I have been the editor for three years, where we teach Japanese online, and I have used all 4 of the Learn Japanese series personally. These books are perfectly tuned toward the adult native english speaker, and very steadfastly increase ones knowledge and ability with the language. I've use the text with 3 different tutors as well, and at the Boston Language Institute, where it is the only text used for Japanese. It does start with romaji, but only to teach hiragana, and then uses hiragana until you know the kanji. Its a perfect procession geared to the unique learning disability of english speaking adults who do may not have the luxury of living in Japan, and by the 2nd volume you are really impressing native speakers.

Rating:
Summary: A good book, if you have a good instructor
Review: I really like this book. But then again I have a really good instructor that explains the grammar really well, and converts it into simple terms that anyone can understand. The exercises don't have answer to them, however, if you have a good instructor he/she should be able to go over the exercises with you. What I did like the about the book was that there was English translations of the conversations in the back. Personally, from experience, it's better to learn a language from a good instructor. It's really difficult to learn it on your own, especially Japanese.

Rating:
Summary: Review from a student
Review: Personaly, I think this is one of the best books for learning Japanese out there. The different texts are translated both into English and Romanji (at the end of the book)and the grammar sections are understandable and well done in general. I'd recommend this book to anybody who has used Volume I of this series as it perfectly connects to anything you have learned before. HOWEVER: The vocabulary lists within the book are terribly complex and I always had the problem that new words were simply left out, making this book perfect for language classes or courses, but a pain for anybody who buys this book to "polish up" or learn Japanese on one's own (Then again, who wants to do that :P)

Rating:
Summary: Excuse me while I gouge my eyes out
Review: The price of this book is excellent for college students since it's not even more than $20, but I don't recommend it to those who really have a passion to learn Japanese in an efficient way. Its romanized Japanese text is the worst thing of this book, now in my 2nd level class I found out that the majority of my classmates either still use romanized words rather than hiragana/katakana, or have difficulty reading kana, or both. The other bad things of this book are that it's not up-to-date and the vocabularies are not in dictionary form. Fortunately I have been learning Japanese on my own with some other materials, otherwise I could have learned not much.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but compliment it with a good instructor.
Review: Volumes I and II feel like linguists wrote them. With the right teacher, they are quite good. With the wrong teacher, I could see them being disastrous. The strength of this series lies in the presentation of the grammar in a very abstract and clear format. The amount of Kanji per chapter (once you get to Volume II) is sufficient and easily digestible. The drills and exercises are fine. I wish the authors had included all the Japanese words from Volume I in Volume II. I haven't had experience with Volumes III and IV yet, but I would be satisfied to continue with this series if they are chosen as the textbooks for the second-year Japanese classes that I intend to take. For those interested in studying Japanese, I'd also suggest Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary (ISBN: 4770024800) and NTC's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary (ISBN: 0844284343).