Customer Reviews

Living Language Japanese Complete Course, Revised & Updated (40 Lessons on 3 Compact Discs * Coursebook * Japanese-English/English-Japanese Dictionary) (English and Japanese Edition)

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

 

 

The living language course provides a book with clear explanations, a dictionary and a CD (or cassette) featuring native Japanese speakers who demonstrate correct phrasing and pronounciation. The book and CD are well integrated. Clear explanations of basic sentence structure and usage are provided. The course only teaches spoken Japanese. The course relies heavily on phrase construction (as opposed to sentence construction) which is acceptable because spoken Japanese makes heavy use of phrases.

The course is high quality, but should be combined with other teaching materials which provide conversational dialog such as the AMR Japanese Module 1 series. The two work together well.

This is by far one of the best ways to learn Japanese that I can think of. Even though it doesn't really teach you much WRITTEN Japanese, it is by far excellent in teaching vocabulary and especially the confusing grammar of Japanese. My only complaint is that unless you can think of ways to make it fun, you could easily get bored with it. The book is very straightforward and doesn't offer the fun that I think other methods of learning the language (subtitled videos, songs, etc.) can offer. But other than that, it is far superior to anything I've run across on the web.

The whole book is using Roman Characters, without a single Japenese characters. If you want to learn how to read and write, consult another book. But it is a great book to learn how to speak Japanese

After sapping the available free resources on the internet and gaining little from the experience (except the ability to count to 10 and ask where the restroom is,) I decided to buy a few coursebooks to aid my studies. This course stood out, and I highly recommend it. The tapes can become dry and somewhat boring, but if you break your study times into short, reasonable blocks, it should not be an issue. It teaches you a vast amount in a very short time, and should effectively aid anyone in their study of Japanese. (NOTE: Its focus is on conversational Japanese, opposed to written. For that purpose I would suggest "Easy Hiragana", "Easy Katakana", and "Easy Kanji" by Fujihiko Kaneda, et al.)

What a helpful little kit this is! Ever since I started teaching myself Japanese about two years ago, I've been looking for a tool that would help me to "get" this language, because Japanese IS a difficult second language to learn. This kit provides great words to build your vocabulary with, explains the gramatical structure, and provides a few more helpful little tips(like how to address a letter in Japanese). Truly a must-read for beginers and veterans alike!

This was a good buy. It has a good coursebook and dictionary. The only drawback is that it is pretty boring. The course is in no way exciting or even that interesting. It just gives a straightforward course of the Japanese language.

The Japanese complete course as exceptionally good value. Well written, great audio and a dictionary to complete the needs of a beginner.
I would recommend this course as a great starter kit for anyone wanting to learn the basics of the Japanese language.