Customer Reviews

Japanese for Busy People II: Third Revised Edition incl. 1 CD (Bk. 2)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am teaching myself Japanese using a variety of textbooks and here is a comparative review from my (learner's) point of view.

-Living Language 'All the way' -- This is very good and complete. Also there is plenty of audio material (8 CDs, the only audio-based course I found affordable) and this is vital during the first stages of learning the language. However, the learning curve of the book is steep. So much is crammed into the book's 450 pages that it is very easy to get discouraged. I found the amount of vocabulary cropping up every ten pages (and new lesson) particularly disheartening at times. Another problem is that Japanese characters are not covered particularly well; dialogues and example sentences are all in Romanji. However, I found this course to be truly excellent used together with others, so I could move to another book (and later return) whenever things got too disheartening. (4 stars)

-Learn Japanese-New College Text (Hawaii University) -- This is (overall) the best text I found: the learning curve is just right, although there is a scary amount of new vocabulary in each lesson, a lot of it is obvious (new forms of verbs already learned etc), and there are tons (perhaps too many?) of exercises. My only gripe is that no solutions to the exercises are provided such that the odd sentence may remain obscure. However, this is a brilliant series, both very good value (cheap!) and very complete, with cultural notes that try to relate understanding of the language to understanding of the culture. (5 stars)

- Japanese for College Students (Christian University) - This text plunges into Japanese the hard way, introducing Kanji from Lesson 1. I don't see too many people learning Japanese purely using this text without some external pressure being applied (e.g. University course). Also, since (as I am now able to judge), the level reached at the end of the first volume is not that impressively superior to the level reached through studying my favourite Hawaii text (bar the Kanji), I am not sure if this is worth it. Maybe this is alright if you take up language learning as a challenge. But then learning Japanese is a challenge anyway. This is the only one of my books which I do not use at all. (2 stars)

- Which leaves the present series, Japanese for busy people. Point one: Get the Kana version - although it is hard to start with, you will find yourself at ease with Kana by the middle of the first volume. One serious hurdle scaled. Getting the Romanji version just means you will constantly be 'cheating' by reading Western characters. Point Two: this is the most user-friendly of all the books, careful to never scare you off with an excessive amount of new vocabulary, and spreading even simple grammar points over several lessons. The downside of this is that the level reached at the end of the first volume is still very basic indeed, but this series is great for giving you confidence again when you've been put off by a harsher textbook. Point Three, however, becomes an issue in the second volume, as it gets clearer and clearer that the series is indeed geared toward 'busy', or business people, learning Japanese for career purposes. Since the vocabulary, as has been said, gets introduced fairly slowly (although the pace does pick up in Volume 2), learning words like 'conference room' or 'extension number' when you have't yet learnt some arguably more fundamental words may seem off-putting depending on your approach. Nevertheless, I see this as an excellent series as long as it is used in conjunction with others. (4 stars)

Recommendations:

- Scared of grammar or business person? Get Japanese for Busy People

- Reasonably confident and not that interested in business-specific language? Get New College Text

- Planning to get into Japanese really seriously? Get Living Language (completeness, CDs) and New College Text, move from the first to the second whenever the first progresses too quickly, and get Japanese for Busy People as well if you need the occasional boost to your self-confidence.

This book has been reviewed constantly, so I'll be brief. I'm a self-study-er. I enjoy this book because it does a good job of defining sentence structure, verb conjugation, and sentence particles. It doesn't get much into the history of Japan, but tries to describe the general culture through its conversations. The learning focuses on reading dialogues and other basic sentence structures and repetition of them.

The weak point of the book is the kanji study. There are two general schools of thought on learning kanji: learn the kanji that go with the vocabulary, or learn the kanji individually with all of their readings. JfBP does the former, but only by listing the kanji at the end of the chapter and saying "learn these." I also own the Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tuttle, you know, the thick grey book). This book gives a historical background and the main readings for each kanji. As I read JfBP, I refer to the kanji that are taught in each chapter by their listings in the big grey book to get a better understanding. Time consuming, but thorough.

Methinks it's hard to get one book that covers the whole Japanese language experience. I think JfBP covers the parts that it wants to very well. Just expect to learn kanji elsewhere.

Perhaps it's history with this set of books, but I kinda preferred the prior edition of this book. They've definitely gone through a major revision here though which is good to see for such a useful series. I purchased this for a quick review reference (my 2nd edition copy is very well worn :-)). It includes the CD which is a plus. The lesson flow is nice as are the vocabulary listings (now at the bottom of each section) but the grammar points seem convoluted compared to the prior edition. Overall, I recommend this and the other books in this series -- stay with the Kana versions though.

As seen in the title, I really liked this book a lot better than the first. Though I'm still not really fond of it. Grammar sections improved a lot, but the vocabulary learned is not always usefull.

Also the way they teach the Kanji isn't great. They start to hard, there is no information about the Kanji supplied and there is no room for practice or reinforcement.

Just started with book II after having studied with book I. So far I have found the book series to be quite good; well organized, useful subjects and a logical introduction to the grammar and vocabulary for the most part. My book I was in romanji and although I found it hard at first to transition to the kana version of book II (the only one available for this book), it is getting easier.

My major complaint to the editor though is that they should allow more spacing in the text. This is a workbook not just a reading book. There is not enough space for notes and hardly any space to write the romanji translation of all the kana texts and exercises. I end up writing many of the exercises on a separate sheet of paper which makes it impractical to refer back to it later.

I started with this book in the series and now I'm on the third book about half way finished. I've noticed my speaking, reading, and comprehension has improved immeasurably. It's the most effective grammar book I've found to date. In response to the complaint about not enough Kanji and the other of no information about Japanese History, one if you want to learn kanji I recommend Tuttle Kanji Cards politely speaking and for the second person It's not a HISTORY BOOK!!!

I personally enoyed learning from this book. It demands a lot more hard work compared to the level I textbook since not only new vocabulary, new grammars but also lots of kanjis come up at the same time. I find it doable because Chinese is my first language but my classmates found it rather difficult. Of course, working harder is always the best way to cope with it. ;P

This is a very good book if you want to learn how to read and write Japanese, and with a little aid of an external source you can easily be able to speak and understand conversations.

The book is written in a romanized form. But to take full advantage of this book, the reader must first be able to read/write HIRAGANA. This is not necessary, but it sure maximizes the learning process.

Okay, I also reviewed the Vol 1 of this series and I gave it a 5 star review, and it really deserve it. Now this book has the same excelent quality, structure of the other. But it is still aimed to bussiness men with a lot of language that you don't use daily as a tourist or a student. I like that finally the teach Kanjis but not enough, from 2000 you only get aprox. 100. Also, it teaches formal japanese that you don't use with friends. If you have access to a teacher this may be fine, but for people trying to teach thereselves is a drawback.

As a linguist for the past 35 years, I have found that the entire series, "Japanese for Busy People", undoubtedly comprises the most outstanding language learning material that has ever been published in any language. It is obvious that a prodigious commitment was made in order to successfully compile such a user friendly, organized and efficient course, which deserves prominant world recognition