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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great, but how exactly are those words pronounced?, July 12, 2001
This review is from: Speak Japanese today: A Self-Study Program for Learning Everyday Japanese (Tuttle Language Library) (Paperback)
This book is very well organized, and gradually takes the student up the learning curve. It introduces a fairly diverse vocabulary for a beginner level student, and also explains the grammer behind the usage of words and sentences. Nonetheless, the book poses some key challenges and limitations. Foremost, without an accompanying CD or tape, the pronounciations of the words are simply not conveyed correctly through English language phonetics. As a result, beginners are highly likely to cultivate incorrect pronounciation habits early on in their learning experience. Second, in the latter half of the book, practice sentences are rote...different words are used in the same sentence structures. While this system promotes practice, the student gains very little from all of the example sentences. Finally, several words are listed in the lessons. Most of them, however, are never used. Perhaps dropping some of the rote sentences and creating new sentences with these additional words would enhance value to the student. Overall, this book is an essential addition to the library of every serious student of Japanese. It makes an excellent supplement to classroom learning or to an audio learning system. Domo Arigato!
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful for a really quick entry into basic Japanese, July 21, 2000
This review is from: Speak Japanese today: A Self-Study Program for Learning Everyday Japanese (Tuttle Language Library) (Paperback)
For a little book, this one packs a lot in. And thankfully, unlike foreign language textbooks I have suffered under, this one explains in a non-technical methodology how the language (basically) works. It is not very in-depth, mind you, but the basics are put right up front in an understandable and workable way, so the reader can make use of it. Will you be parsing sentences and conjugating verbs after reading this one? No, but you'll be able to speak Japanese to get by, and even a little beyond getting by. This is one of the best foreign language books I have come across in terms of organizing material, explaining, and making sense out of it all, and getting one to be speaking the language in a minimal amount of time without a maximal amount of theory to wade through.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It works, February 9, 2003
This review is from: Speak Japanese today: A Self-Study Program for Learning Everyday Japanese (Tuttle Language Library) (Paperback)
The Way lies in practice, and this book provides both the material and the method of practice to allow maximum speed in learning everyday Japanese speech. The book gets right to the point, without lengthy grammar lessons, linguistic theory, or other complicated nonsense. As the title says, this book will help you "Speak Japanese Today." You will not be able to teach Japanese, write in Japanese, or be able to communicate in an eloquent fashion, but you will know enough material well enough to handle everyday situations. Thus, this book's optimal audience is anyone who needs a crash-course in Japanese: a student, tourist, or businessman. To those who want an in-depth study of Japanese, this book can only serve as a somewhat inadequate introduction - but then, in-depth study is not this book's purpose at all.
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