Customer Reviews

Learn Japanese: New College Text (Japanese Edition)

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

 

 

Learn Japanese is not as bad as some other texts I've had to use, both as a teacher and as a student of the language. Having taught Japanese for 27 years (and studied it for over 30), and having written quite a bit of language-learning material myself, I have not been favorably impressed with this book during the three-plus years I have taught from it in college-level courses. The vocabulary is odd and sometimes culturally passe ("record store," for example). Vocab progression is uneven and does not seem to be well thought out. Dialogues are too long for memorization, too odd to be particularly useful, and not always well-geared to the grammar principles presented. The grammar presentations are shallow, disorganized, and not well supported with exercises. The authors seem to be too intent on presenting "authentic" material and not concerned enough with how students actually learn language and build on basic foundations. Cumbersome "authentic" forms like "n desu" get in the way of learning for the beginning student. And why in the world would anyone wait until Lesson 7 to present desu? I also don't care for the terms used to explain the grammar, but there is, unfortunately, not much uniformity of nomenclature among the Japanese teaching community as a whole. The long initial section on pronunciation seems to be designed for the linguistics student, rather than the language student. The entire text is not user-friendly for either teacher or student. All this sounds pretty negative, but I am not saying the text cannot be used successfully. Obviously it can, if some of the other reviews are considered. (The reviewer who said he had to retake Japanese 1 after having taken it with a different textbook probably had an instructor whose teaching skills and enthusiasm overcame the problems of this book.) Plus--show me a truly five-star Japanese textbook, and I will show you one that hasn't been written yet. The better lesson materials are geared toward younger students or are only available to specialized groups (foreign service, Mormon missionaries, etc.) No textbook is perfect, none is going to please everybody, but some are more universally helpful than others. I don't think this one of them.

Or would that be Nihongo wa totemo muzukashii desu.

I tried to learn Japanese with Japanese For Busy People to no avail. I then enrolled in my local community college and used Learn Japanese. While I had the benefit of an instructor, I still consider this a vastly superior book.

Learn Japanese does not overwhelm you with vocabulary, but rather teaches the fundamentals of grammer very well. I feel this allows a student to construct their own sentences sooner. After all, the core of a language is not vocabulary, but grammer. Get the grammer down, then use a dictionary to gradually learn vocabulary. Once I picked up the grammer in any particular chapter, I was able to use it in a variety of settings by substituting different vocabulary words. For me, this works far better then conversational texts, or those that dump huge amounts of vocabulary down your throat.

I think it's shortfalls are not presenting enough kana earlier in the book, and not presenting at all dictionary forms of verbs. It's nearly impossible to use a Japanese-English dictionary after finishing Volume 1. I was informed that Vol 2 jumps into dictionary forms, and it uses kana almost exclusively for presenting the language.

The language unfolds with each succesive chapter and before I knew it, I could speak more of the language then I thought I could. Despite the two problems outlined above, I heartily recommend this book. But be forwarned, Japanese is not a language that can be learned in 4 weeknight sessions prior to a trip to Tokyo.

These are notorious as the worst textbooks ever constructed for learning Japanese. They are, however, cheap, which is why they remain popular. However, there seems to have been little thought put into them. Words are given to us because they fit the tedious, unnatural little dialogue given at the start of each chapter; rather than in any logical pattern of usefulness. This results in us learning 'shoeshine' before 'chair.' The books also persist in the use of romanji for everything, even long after the point where the student should be reading kana as well as his own language. After learning words in kana, its nearly impossible to identify the romanized versions, which makes reading the lesson difficult. The vocabulary sections fail to give verbs in the dictionary form; preferring to use the form in which they are found, making last minute review from the book itself impossible. Lastly, the excersize section is utterly useless; the 4 good problems each chapter are buried under a deluge of useless drills. They may be easy; but we learn nothing, for we are not forced to use our minds.

The price of this book is excellent for college students since it's not even more than $20, but I don't recommend it to those who really have a passion to learn Japanese in an efficient way. Its romanized Japanese text is the worst thing of this book, now in my 2nd level class I found out that the majority of my classmates either still use romanized words rather than hiragana/katakana, or have difficulty reading kana, or both. The other bad things of this book are that it's not up-to-date and the vocabularies are not in dictionary form. Fortunately I have been learning Japanese on my own with some other materials, otherwise I could have learned not much.

Volumes I and II feel like linguists wrote them. With the right teacher, they are quite good. With the wrong teacher, I could see them being disastrous. The strength of this series lies in the presentation of the grammar in a very abstract and clear format. The amount of Kanji per chapter (once you get to Volume II) is sufficient and easily digestible. The drills and exercises are fine. I wish the authors had included all the Japanese words from Volume I in Volume II. I haven't had experience with Volumes III and IV yet, but I would be satisfied to continue with this series if they are chosen as the textbooks for the second-year Japanese classes that I intend to take. For those interested in studying Japanese, I'd also suggest Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary (ISBN: 4770024800) and NTC's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary (ISBN: 0844284343).

This book makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a blunt instrument. AND cry at the same time.
I've used Genki and Minna no Nihongo and they are infinitely better. My Japanese 2 class utilized both #1 and #2 of this series.

After one day of reading all the romanized letters (barely any Hiragana- and this continues for a good chunk of book 3 and 4! I checked) I just could not take it anymore.

I'm out of $40 now (almost $20 for ea)...but decided to cut my losses and run....FAR away from this book. (I have even quit the class to look for another Japanese class that uses another book. That may sound weak, but it was not worth my time and money to continue taking a Japanese course that uses this book. It's THAT TERRIBLE. Therefore in my mind I had NO other alternative.) As another user has stated, the content is really, honestly, confusing, there is NO GLOSSARY (no explanation for vocab) no explanation of sentence structure, and it does not encourage the reader to read in Hiragana.
In comparison, Minna no Nihongo doesn't have any English in it- it's written entirely in Japanese, and includes Kanji right from the get go. But they explain everything in a very simple, easy-to-understand way. 95% of this text is Romaji. I'm serious.

I daresay I would burn it if I wasn't a book lover and something like that would be sacrilegious. : (
Not only is it extremely unhelpful, it is detrimental to whatever Japanese you do know. It has outdated vocabulary...anyone who tried to speak the Japanese used in this book WILL get ridiculed in Japan. Old fashioned phrasing...awful layout.(Banging head against the wall in sheer frustration). The list goes on....I cannot say how bad this book is.


I positively LOATHE this book. It is completely unreadable.
Save your money. Please. Do not buy this book.

I am taking a Japanese class in college and we are using this book as our textbook. There are no answers for the exercises. The conclusions and explanations are ambigous at best. This is not a hard language, but this book can turn that around. I am on amazon.com looking for another book right now, because this one is so lacking. Also there are a great deal of misinformation that is given. Possibly because of when this was published.

The customer reviews consistently return to the same themes with this book: confusing organization, strange progression, some very out-of-date vocabulary, weirdly fetishistic cultural explanations, exercises which aren't tied well to the grammar points.

I'll add some more: once you've finished the books, it's very difficult to use the index to find explanations you want to review. Why on earth are they *still* using romaji in book 4! And after finishing four volumes, you'll have difficulty picking up a Japanese language reference since you're had no experience looking up words in Japanese. (The glossary and index are alphabetically organized and largely romaji!)

That said, now that I've been through all four volumes, I find the series very useful for practice and review. You really really need to do the dialogs to make this book work. They present a lot of good phrases and help teach more natural spoken Japanese. The sentence structure diagrams at the beginning of each chapter are useful, and the exercises at the end of each chapter emphasize sentence patterns. That's good for review and practice.

I think the authors use so much romaji because the emphasis is on getting students to use as many complex sentences as soon as possible. A good idea, and it does work, eventually.

There are better textbooks than this, but if you're stuck using it, you can make it work for you. And, oddly, I find myself using it more for review than the minna no nihongo series, which was much easier to learn from.

This is absolutely the worst language textbook I have ever used-and I cannot overstate that. It is poorly written and the choice of language is outdated and sometimes inappropriate for the purpose given.
This book relies upon sentence structuring to teach language. A typical student is not trying to learn linguistics, but rather how to communicate. This book does not do that. On top of that, the book fails to cite what the abbreviations used in the book mean. I'm not a linguist. I can only guess at what they are try to say by "PM,"E" etc.
The book has dialogue that uses words such as "watakushi" rather than "watashi." I have been told by native Japanese speakers that the use is incorrect in the context.
The book inexplicably switches between using english instructions and Japanese instructions. There is no dictionary in the back of the book, nor instructions on how to use the book itself.
As a support to my Japanese language class, I do not feel like I can rely upon this text to reinforce what I learn in class. If anything, it confuses what I have learned. I simply don't understand why otherwise credible Japanese classes use this book. It is difficult to use, especially in contrast to the Japanese for Busy People series. Learn Japanese New College Text II should be taken out of print. Sensei, please don't choose this book.

This is an excellent text. I used Volumes I & II for the Japanese classes I took at Mesa Community College in San Diego. I was able to speak Japanese to my wife, her family, and other Japanese I met here in the states and Japan with confidence. What floors me is the price! I used a hardback text book at another college that was useless. I had to take Japanese I all over again because I wasn't up to par with the other students in Japanese II, at Mesa; and I spent $56 on that text. This publisher and author should be commended on the quality and content of this book, not to mention the price! Good Job!! This book is my number one choice, and it will be yours too.