Customer Reviews

Instant Immersion Japanese Deluxe

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I ordered this product in hope of a good program that would help me learn Japanese. I instead was found with a program that, instead of teaching, sent me more on my own to learn. Its a lot like going to a book shop and buying a Japanese dictionary.
Though the program has a lot of information, it doesn't give a good guide to show you where to start. There wasn't even an instruction manual packaged with the software. I would recommend another product because I am very displeased with how this one is performing.

It's as clear as the title. When I got this I had no idea what to do and was confused about whether or not I bought a bad product. Once you give it some time though, you realize there is a lot to it (not the language, of course there's a lot to that, but the software). It's lacking direction almost entirely though, so that means you'll need to put in a good amount of effort. Doesn't that make sense though? You couldn't seriously think you could learn a language with a new set of characters without putting in effort did you? It just takes some figuring out. It's good to start off with the blackbelt disc and learn the kanji and then after you've spent some time on that try the other set of discs. Switching back and forth seems the best way to do it. Since you don't have a tutor (but you can get a 2 week online tutor for free) it might be good to make up your own excercises or something. I just used a method from learning spanish. Write the word in english, then write the kanji version of it twice, then write the romanji form of it so that you know how to pronounce it. Writing and studying will help you learn. I'm unsure exactly about whether or not I'm writing correctly. I haven't gotten that far in the program yet though.

This product is garbage... My mother is a native Japanese speaker, and I've taken two years of Japanese, so trust me and stay away from this product, as it does not address very important aspects of Japanese grammar which should be learned immediately upon an introduction to the language. Also, take note of all of JP26's (the aforementioned reviewer's) reviews...all of them are for Topics Entertainment products. I think that it would be safe to assume that JP26 is somewhat biased. :)

If you buy this product expecting it to teach you Japanese, you'll be extremely disappointed. It is a bunch of drills and exercises, but with no curriculum. Without a curriculum, it's impossible for a beginner to go through the drills with a clue as to what's going on. It's like taking a Japanese test without being taught any Japanese beforehand. Some of the drills, like voice recognition to test your pronunciation, are worthless gimmicks.

The software itself is also poorly documented and when you load it up, you'll be wondering what it is you're supposed to do. I'm not sure who the target audience for this software product is. If you don't know much Japanese, you won't be able to use it. If you already know what the software requires you to know before you use it, you probably will be advanced enough to not need it.

I have tried many different language programs and this is by far the worst. I couldn't even figure out how to use the thing. I really that learning a new language isn't easy, but this is by no means the proper way to go about it. The software is confusing, there is no reference book, and it is definately not for beginners. Stay away from this program.

Many people I've noticed complain of not knowing where to start. True, I already knew some Japanese when I got the program so hopping right into some of it didn't kill me, but I didn't find it a daunting task to figure it out where others would be good to start. For those who don't know any of the particle words, word order, numbers, etc., when it loads the main set of links, click on the lower left corner where there's a pile of books. It should say something like "reference"-it should help you out.

I've really enjoyed this program thus far. True the menu style is rather simplistic, but I can't imagine how you could get too lost when if you roll over a link it'll tell you where it goes. My favorite of its features is the "dialouge" section where you hear a voice say something to you in Japanese and you have to respond. (You need a microphone for this!) If you roll over key words, it will tell you the definition. If you aren't sure how to pronounce the responce, double-click the sentence and it'll tell you. Which you can then replay as you need and even try prounouncing it yourself, which it will then rate how well you said it and even allow to see which part of the sentence you're having trouble with. (You can also replay past times you've tried pronouncing it, but I've never really found that necessary)

The audio CDs aren't bad, but I'm honestly not sure I'll ever use them. The JquickTrans looks confusing-especially compared to the simplicity of the actual program-but after looking up words to see what's doing what, it wasn't so bad. When you double click the kanji it will tell you the strokes that make it up, which helped me remember them. You can add to a "study list"; another thing I've liked. When you click to show flashcards, you can go through all on your list and: practice drawing the character/word, guess the word, and guess its meaning. When guessing the word and meaning, it'll give you red if you aren't close, yellow if you are, and green if you got it.

Don't know if this helped anyone or not, but...personally, I'd recommend it. Once you figure out how everything works, it really is a great program. I give it a four out of five: they could have been more straightforward in how to get started, but it's still a good program to help you learn Japanese. (Sorry if this was a little long!)

(EDIT:) Looking at past reviews, some people seemed to have trouble with it running. Not sure about that; it works fine on mine. I also noticed people complaining it didn't teach you and you had to look up words on your own, which made me laugh a little. Though true, it's also how you learn things-by looking it up. It's self-teaching that's helping you out, not a class with easy answers. Perhaps it doesn't work for some, but I personally remember things better when I have to look it up. Even if it didn't teach you as much as you may have liked, it really should have made much easier for you to learn more. I'm sure this will annoy someone, but think of it this way: it took you a nice long while to learn your native tongue, and it takes the Japanese a nice long while to learn theirs as well. Do you really expect a program to teach you EVERYTHING?

I get the impression this was created to give you the hang of the language so learning new words is much easier. I'm honestly not sure what more you expect, but I still think its a good program.

Probably one of the worst pieces of boxed software I've seen. I've been learning Japanese on my own for 6 months and would really like some software to help me drill and provide some structure. This is not it. No manual, the microphone works on one computer but not on another, you need to have the CD in the drive (no way to install completely to disk), voice recognition is terrible, etc. Spend money on something else.

The only thing good about this software is that it can be held up as an example of how not to design user interfaces and how not to teach a language.

The user interfaces is slow, frustrating to use, non-intuitive, and looks like something you'd expect to see on an Apple II.

The software itself consists mainly of drills with no teaching.... which is essentially useless if you have no prior experience with the language. Forget learning grammar or anything with this crap.

I've gone with the Pimseleur Level 1 & 2 courses...much more expensive but worth it.

I bought this title just last night in the hopes of finding good software to help me learn japanese. Within about 5 minutes of installing it, I was ready to return it. It comes with no book, so I had to guess what all the CDs were first of all. After I figured that out, the program itself was confusing to navigate. What I discovered were a lot of weak looking drills that were basically for testing what I already knew about the japanese language. Unfortunately, what I know is NOTHING--that's why I bought the software in the first place!! I'm assuming that the "lesson" portion of the program was to teach me, but seeing how nothing happened when I clicked it, that didn't really help... (XP issue?). Hopefully BestBuy will let me return it even though I opened it... I really want my money back. If you want to learn japanese, you're probably better off getting a book instead. It may be harder, but at least you'll learn more from that than this software.

After owning this program for two days, I can confidently tell any prospective buyer that this is a SUPPLEMENT program. As mentioned before, it has no clear beginning or process to it. You are brought to a menu with links to such things as "Dialogue" "Exercises" "Pronounciation"...and no guide on where to start, how it works, etc. It took me ten minutes of playing with it to realize that I should probably use the Blackbelt disc first...it is the only place that you will find the alphabet and basic grammar. Even then, it is shown in one way and one way only, and it gets repetitive.

As for being "out of order" like a previous comment mentioned, of course it is! You think you can learn something effectively when it is sequential? By putting Wednesday after Friday and Sunday before Thursday you actually are forced to LEARN the word and how to recognize it, instead of knowing that kayoobi follows getsuyoobi which follows nichiyoobi, etc etc. That way when someone says "Hey how do you say 'Thursday'", you don't have to start at Sunday and go through the days in your head.

Back to my main point though: supplement. My boyfriend is half Japanese and finally sat down with me to guide me along. It was a great help. Together, we're working through it and even he is learning things he didn't know.

I would say to get this if, and only if, you are either taking a class and want extra practice, or have a friend who speaks and is willing to sit down with you as a tutor. The main bulk of the lessons require a grasp of the language that the CD does not directly give you. As a first experience with Japanese, it is quite overwhelming. As an aid in addition to a formal class, it is quite helpful.