Customer Reviews

Japanese II

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've finished both Pimsleur I and II and have just purchased III. I would recommend these for beginners who have the time to devote. My 30 minute drive commute makes them ideal. I and II took about five months of drivetime listening and review (60 lessons).

One note, Pimsleur suggests not using a textbook but I would highly recommend getting a small textbook such as Berlitz' Essential Japanese for two reasons. First you may not be hearing the work correctly on the Pimsleur CDs/tapes and secondly, it is mush easier to remember a word if you know how its spelled in English (Romanji). Otherwise you may have to resort to creating cumbersome mnemonics to remember a word or phrase.

One final note. You may find that after six months of study you are still utterly lost when watching some Japanese television shows. Take heart, many of those shows use informal language. Rent a movie like "Shall we Dance?" with its more formal politeness and you'll find your Pimsleur time and money investments paying off.

not just string together (sometimes coherent) words into quasi-sentences.

I am currently using this product to learn Japanese while living in Tokyo. I have and continue to study in more traditional language classes, but there emphasis is more on understanding speech, and on writing. You may learn (and remember) a lot of grammar and vocabulary from these classes, but for me, it is not at instant recall. You always have to pause, for just a second or two, to think of this word, or how to conjugate that verb, which ruins the continuity of your speech and your conversation.

Pimsleur's method is highly effective at completely internalizing the basic structure of a language. You learn to say things and understand things at the speed of NORMAL SPEECH. In a traditional academic classroom, this is far from the case. Although I knew almost all the words and grammar presented in the Pimsleur course, I found that listening to the CDs was still immensely helpful just for internalization and "speedifying" purposes.

Pimsleur is an excellent complement to serious study of a language. It would also be excellent for travellers who want to actually interact and converse with Japanese in interesting (albeit extremely limited) ways.

I see several questions and "comments" about the pimsleur Japanese course here, some of which aren't true, and I'm just going to clarify some things right here, and put somethings to sleep.


1. I'm having trouble watching some tv shows and understanding them...

This just takes time. I had the same experience in the beginning and thought it would get better as I learned more, and it did. Very much so. I now watch without subtitles and understand about 80% of what's being said.

One thing to note though, when they are speaking on TV, they are speaking so casually, that they are leaving out a lot of the gramatical functions in their sentences, so the meaning of the sentence may be unclear even if you understand all the words.

Pimsleur doesn't fail you on this though, it gives your brain all the information it needs, its just a matter of time of getting used to hearing the WAY the language is spoken, and your brain begins to make the connections on its own to fill in the blanks.


2. Are the speakers native?

All the speakers pimsleur EVER uses for ANY of their programs are native speakers. It would be absurd and impossible to try to naturally aquire any language speaking ability through a non-native speaker. Period.

In addition, I personally received several comments from several native Japanese speakers saying they were honestly surprised at how native my accent and pronunciation were.

The comment by the person who said that the speakers on the Japanese course were not native, "especially the female", is simply not true. I assume this is just a marketing tactic employed by a competitor posing as a customer.

I do not work for pimsluer, I am just a very satisfied customer and would reccomend this program to anyone over any other.

If you want to study a language get something else. If you want to learn a language, get pimsleur.

This is the best audio method I have been exposed to. It is interactive, very progressive and pedagogical. It requires no book and is perfect for commute. Set II contains 16 CDs that consist of a total of 30 lessons running 1/2 hour each. I covered the entire set II during my commute to work in a six-month period. I am now about to purchase the third and last set of this Japanese Pimsleur language program.

This really is a great course! I highly recommend it.

I find this set of tapes to be an excellent way to learn Japanese, and an even better method of refreshing what you learned some time ago. Of course, if you are just starting out, you should start with Japanese I. Even better...you can buy a short introductory course, to see whether the system works for you. The price of the short court includes a discount in that amount against the price of the full course (or at least it did, when I first bought one years ago). I listen to the tapes in my car, and find the system very effective. I have also used Pimsleur tape courses in Russian and French, and found them to be equally good.

Having finished Japanese I, and just a few hours ago finished Japanese II, I feel that the course was well worth the price. Pimsleur is still the best audio learning technique out there, and the course reinforces that fact. It well serves its purpose. Together you get 900 total minutes, 15 total hours of audio. That's quite a bit of content to listen to, and you do learn quite a bit from it.

All you do is listen to the lessons, concentrate on them, and repeat it if you have trouble with something (Can't remember a word, grammar pattern, etc.). Yup, it's as simple as it sounds.

I (As many others seem to) study other material in addition to Japanese II. I don't know if one could survive in Japan solely on Pimsleur lessons, but the quality of Pimsleur Lessons is still unsurpassed. I would highly recommend that you do other studies in addition to the Pimsleur Lessons, if time allows.

Pimsleur is THE BEST audio language learning course out there, period. And with Pimsleur Japanese II, you get what you pay for, simple as that.

I let my Japanese friend listen to the Pimsleur Japanese CDs and she said that they had native speakers on it. Also, I wrote Pimsleur and they defended their speakers as being native speakers.

Ok. Pimsleur II won't get you very far, is expensive as hell, and is somewhat cumbersome to work with. So the rest of this review will be about how in hell did I get to giving it five stars. There are several ways to go about when wanting to learn a language in an audio-only manner. You can get the "Learn in your car" from Penton Overseas. You can get the audio-only course from Living Language. Or you can take Pimsleur. From the lot, Pimsleur would be the ONLY decent answer for the utter beginner, and Pimsleur II will advance you to an intermediate level in the best way. You'll simply remember everything you learned. With the other options, you will find yourself replaying the tapes a couple of times. Does any language course that is a self learning course worth this kind of money? No. That's why we have the next paragraph.

Money. First of all, by all means get it used. It is an audio course that I recommend going through only once. So if you're lucky enough to find a CD version used, it will be exactly the same (of course - assuming that the seller is decent enough to sell unscratched CD-s). As for used audio cassettes, well, as much as we want to hear the correct pronounciation, we have to remember - this is not Mozart, it is only recorded speech. However even if you don't find it used, you can buy it, and after completing the course, sell it as used. As this is suitable for first time learning, and is too much for review purposes (perhaps the other audio-only courses will be better for review).

One last thing. Usability. I'll talk technology, but it's essential here. When I bought the heavy package, the first thing I've done was to move it to MP3. So then I had the entire audio collection on a single CD. In such a way you take a single disc to your car, play it with a mobile MP3 player, and stock the valuable course in your closet for backup. In that way, when you finish with the course, the originals stay in a good enough state to be sold as used. However, if you won't convert to MP3, the need to each time take another cassette/CD to your car would be a serious drawback, since storing the entire course in your car doesn't sound as a sensible alternative to me.

To wrap it up, buy it, MP3 it, learn it, sell it.

Pimsleur is probably the best audio-based method for language learning. However, there are a couple of imperfections. As a minor problem, the early part of the second series mixes sentences in Japanese and English, which is incredibly confusing. Fortunately, this is only a relatively small section. The largest problem is the inconsistent prompts in English which need to be translated into Japanese. For example, the English guide will sometimes say "Won't you DRINK some tea?" and at other times, "Would you LIKE some tea"? The problem is that the correct translation is "Ocha o nomimasenka" which is literally, "won't you DRINK some tea". When you only have a second to formulate the correct response, this becomes a major problem.

That said, this is the best audio program out there and probably worth buying at a discounted price. If Pimsleur revises the series with improvements, then it would be worth the full price.

This is the best audio method I have been exposed to. It is interactive, very progressive and pedagogical. It requires no book and is perfect for commute. Set II contains 16 CDs that consist of a total of 30 lessons running 1/2 hour each. I covered the entire set II during my commute to work in a six-month period. I am now about to purchase the third and last set of this Japanese Pimsleur language program.

This really is a great course! I highly recommend it.