Just Listen 'N Learn Japanese

Rating:
Summary: Very Useful!
Review: I'm usually pretty wary of books with titles suggesting an easy mastery of Japanese, but after reading through JLNLJ I was impressed. It's a fairly thin text using basic conversational examples that increase in complexity to introduce grammar, vocabulary, and cultural literacy points, and it certainly is not a comprehensive text. However, JLNLJ is perhaps the one Japanese language reference I've found that genuinely shows how modern Japanese is actually spoken in real-life situations.

The book moves quickly through the presented material, and it would probably work best when used as a supplement to other resources for those who have a working basic knowledge of Japanese pronunciation and grammar. If you want to begin to expand your conversational ability beyond sounding like a textbook, this is an unexpectedly good place to start.

I should mention also that I came across my copy of JLNLJ at a used bookstore, and accordingly , the cassette tapes weren't available with it, which I'm sure would help greatly in building pronunciation skills.