Customer Reviews

Drive Time: Japanese (CD): Learn Japanese While You Drive (All-Audio Courses)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I had taught myself reasonable gaijin Japanese years ago, to the point of being able to carry on a reasonable conversation. I used Drive Time Japanese to refresh my memory and language skills before a recent trip to Japan. The 4 CDs are easy to listen to and provided a useful review. I also learned some expressions and vocabulary that came in handy.

The course could be better organized for typical daily activities. I'm also not sure how much someone completely new to Japanese would really learn. OTOH for the price how wrong can you go?

Some other reviewers have criticized the lack of instruction in reading and writing. Hello, guys, this is, like, "Drive Time Japanese"? It's to listen to while you, uh, drive? You don't want to be reviewing your katakana while changing lanes!!

Coming from the Pimsleur method of learning Japanese, this audio course felt rushed, and I felt I couldn't absorb as much information.

The vocabulary words are shot at you 10-15 at a time, and there is little review before the next set of vocab, causing me to have to listen to each 1-minute-long "mile marker" over and over again.

This is to Pimsleur as trying to memorize a dictionary is to learning from a textbook.

It just doesn't seem prudent to listen to in the car because I find myself either listening to the 1-minute tracks on repeat until they sink in, or listen to a bunch at a time, and retaining nothing because the quizzing and recall flies by so quickly.

Also, the response time is extremely short. I can barely answer the question in English in that amount of time.

ALL THAT SAID, a strong vocabulary is necessary obviously, and I am eager to get to a level where this tape will be useful for me. For right now, I'm going to settle for the Pimsleur method of simple vocabulary, and focusing on grammar and sentence structure.

This tape course is great for people who really want/need in-depth Japanese lessons or review. You get a good idea of sentence structure and pronunciation. However, if you are trying to learn some basic Japanese for a short-term trip, this is not the tape for you. You need to know how to ask for basic items (food, beverages, train tickets, the bathroom). I've travelled to Japan once, and plan to go again, and I don't think I'll need to know how to say "It's a big new car" or "Let's go to a concert" to a total stranger on the street. Buy this tape if you need some support for reglar Japanese lessons, or just want to generally improve your understanding of the language for business or regular travel. Nice set-up, but not practical for day-to-day needs.

This is an excellent beginners course for Japanese language. The title does not represent the real value of this package. Although it can stand alone as an independent course you need to combine it with another course with more in depth coverage of the Japanese grammar (Living Language courses are very good). The concept is excellent and I wish the authors could consider expanding this approach. The conversational part of this course is the real value to the student. You are not going to learn how to read or write Japanese using this course. That is a much more complex undertaking. Strongly recommend it to the business people trying to quickly build the basic communication skills in Japanese.

I have tried many many programs and classes to learn a language and this has been amazing! I listen to a track or two when running errands. I only procede when I fully understand the previous tracks. It's great because I can work at my own pace and not someone elses. I know there have been complaints that you can't learn how to read/write with this products, but that's not what this product is for. besides- toddlers learn speech before they learn how to spell and write.

At the moment I've almost finished with the 2nd disc of lessons, and already I can communicate with some of my friends with the phrases I've learned. Of course, it's designed for the absolute beginner, but that's what I am so it's working well.

I've heard these are difficult if you don't have much of a commute. My commute is about half an hour long each way, and that's more than enough time to get through a lesson.

this is a perfect japanese learning tool for when you are in a car and a beginners. one of things that i like about it is, it repeats words all the time, it just make you memorize it even if you are in the next chapter. highly recommended!

Basically hear and repeat. Best if you have had at least some intro to Japanese pronounciation. Occasionally reference to the book also helps, but you don't have to be looking at anything to do the drills.

Disc one is a very basic intro to Japanese sounds. The other three discs are more technical, covering a lot of grammar and a handful of vocabulary. If you want to learn Japanese and don't know anything about it yet, this is a great set to start with.

In general I found this program very useful. You do not need to read any book, just listen. You can listen it as many time as you can, and I feel you should. It is different from the Pimsleur language program in that you needs to control which part you want to repeat. Drive Time program cuts the lessons into many very small sections so it is very easy for you to jump to a specific section. Pimsleur program is good for people who are more passive learners and accept the repeating frequency and arrangement from the program itself.

The speed is well controlled. Not too fast or slow.

The entire CD is recorded with a single woman's voice on both English and Japanese.
It can be more animative. The content is a little bit dry though.