Customer Reviews

An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese Revised Edition with CDs (Textbook with 2 CDs Revised July 2008)

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I used this textbook in college after finishing the Genki series and studying for a year in Japan. It's not Genki, but it comes really damn close compared to all the other textbooks on the market.

By far this book's best point is that it covers a HUGE amount of useful grammar, most of which it gives pretty good explanations for, and all of the grammar points appear in the dialogues and readings. Occasionally I would go to my professor or whip out my grammar dictionaries for further clarification, but the book covers at least the very basics on them all quite well.
We only covered chapter one through eight before I graduated, so I studied the remaining chapters on my own over the past few weeks. Most of it is clear enough to learn with out any additional assistance. (Though it's definitely meant for the classroom.)

The vocabulary it covers are pretty good, though you might want to supplement it. They list all words in the readings and dialogs that you may not have seen before and that have not previously been covered in earlier chapters. If you feel like you need more vocab, there are lots of good lists available online.
Similarly, a lot of useful kanji are brought up, but the book doesn't focus on them. As the authors say in the introduction, they didn't set out to make a kanji textbook. So if you're looking to study kanji more intensely, I personally recommend investing in a solid dictionary and just go at it. :)

There aren't a ton of exercises in the book itself, mostly just discussion topics and things. If you want exercises to practice the grammar, invest in the workbook. You will get about 3-8 chances to test your understanding. Sometimes they do seem to be lacking on chances to use the difficult ones, while having too many of the simple ones. So that can be a little frustrating.

The listenings for the text aren't amazing, but I don't think listenings ever are. They're REALLY slow in a lot of the dialog, but that's probably good if you just came from Genki. The listenings for the reading sections are a little more challenging.

One bad point is the level of politeness a lot of the "American" characters have. Susan even uses keigo on her host mother sometimes, but when I lived with a host family they kept begging me to talk more informally. They also seem a little too polite in almost all situations. From what I've observed in Japan, it seems kind of unnatural. Further discussion on WHEN to use keigo would really improve the book, along with more practice using both polite and informal language in the proper situations.

After completing everything, I feel very confident for N3 this year. If all of it were covered in a classroom setting and studied hard (I know I suck at remembering vocab and kanji long-term) I think most students could handle N2.
It's got it's downsides, all textbooks do. But I've looked through a lot of texts at this level and feel it's the highest quality, most comprehensive of them all. And a lot of it's negatives are easily remedied with grammar and kanji dictionaries (which you probably have at this point) and possibly the help of your favorite Japanese professor. :)

I used this book for a university course and I found it just wasn't very comprehensive. While it does offer a large vocabulary and range of kanji, many are rarely touched on again in later chapters after being introduced. The grammar examples also don't offer a lot in the way of explanation, expecting you to glean a lot of the meaning and usage from examples. While, granted, some grammar points are easy to pick up, many aren't and I really don't feel confident using them. I don't believe my Japanese has improved after using this textbook for a year and there must be something better around.

So, the Genki books are amazing. I expected something similar with this book since it is by the same company. This book failed. While it is chock full of amazing grammar, kanji, and vocab, it doesn't really give you a lot to go off of. Anyone familiar with Genki will remember the fun characters, the great amount of exercises in the textbook alone. The workbooks for Genki were equally great. When you walked away from a grammar point you felt confident to use it because you had gotten so much practice from the text and workbooks. I expected the same with this book. But there are no exercises in the textbook. The workbook does not cover all of the grammar points, and to top everything off, there is no answer key. (I am a huge advocate for answer keys). I am using this in my university Japanese level 3 class, (which is 5th semester) and I wish we had chosen a different text. The exercises are boring. There is no Mary, or Takeshi. In fact, there isn't really any characters for you to love. Just generic names. The kanji would be excellent if you didn't have to look them ALL up by stroke order. And I wish that they had organized the vocabulary like they did in Genki. It would be much easier to learn. While I do think that this book as some great grammar points, I wish that there were better explanations of how to use them and more practice included! It feels like the company that produced Genki put all their love into the beginners books and got lazy with the intermediate book. Needless to say I will probably look elsewhere for an advanced book. I find it hard to like anything about this book really. I don't like this book. But I do realize that it is a good resource. I will however be looking for a different book. Preferably one with a workbook because this book didn't live up to Genki. Good luck if you choose to use this! I hope it works better for you!

I've learned from 3 books now (Genki, Youkoso, and Integrated Intermediate), and this book by far is the worst one to study from. There are NO exercises in the book. The grammar that has more variations has the shortest explanations and the least amount of examples, where the simplest constructions get in-depth explanations and several examples. Vocabulary is not grouped together in themes, and in fact seems to be more review than new material. The workbook has some of the most ridiculous exercises. I would spend hours trying to figure out what they wanted, and when I would ask native Japanese speakers for help, even they were stumped by the questions. And if there's a way to know how to read the kanji in each "Kanji to learn" section without looking them up by radicals (or simply already knowing them), I'd love to know it.

Some good points: Vocab is listed with intonation marks, so you know EXACTLY how to pronounce a word. Each chapter talks about a specific radical and what they mean. Each chapter also has a few good culture notes.

I had my complaints with Youkoso, but it was most certainly the better series to learn from.

Didn't use it extensively in class, but it was very useful when we did implement it into our culture studies.