Customer Reviews

Ultimate Japanese Beginner-Intermediate (Book and CD Set): Includes Comprehensive Coursebook and 8 Audio CDs (Ultimate Beginner-Intermediate)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am admittedly new to learning Japanese (but not, however, new to foreign language study), and these may be caveats to readers of this review.
I have found this book to be very enlightening, and see that a lot of thought and effort have been put into making it. Its forty lessons, eight reviews, and 5 readings provide a wealth of material in considerable breadth and depth, and it presents the student with plenty of Japanese in a methodical, progressive teaching method. Both kana syllabaries are taught, as well as 174 kanji. There is even an interesting article near the end of each article presenting a little bit about Japanese culture.
This is not a college freshman Japanese textbook, and so it goes less into language theory and so forth than that to which college or university students may be accustomed. If there were more I would wish for, it would be more drill. A workbook may have been a good companion for this book.
I mistakenly ordered the text only (and had to order cassettes separately), and would recommend that more serious students considering purchasing this that they get the book and cassettes as a package.
It's a quality book. For as much as it has to offer, considering the reasonableness of its price, I think few who are interested in Japanese language and culture would be disappointed with it.
(From this onward is an amendment of my previous comments):
I still stand by what I wrote above. I may have neglected to note that I am studying Japanese independently, i.e., through self-study. With that qualification having been made, I point out that I have become marginally more aware of Japanese and its usage, nuances, etc., and thus would point out that the author seems to focus on colloquial spoken Japanese, as opposed to written form. I have no vested interest in selling this book, but I still have zero regrets for having purchased it. I hope those interested in Japanese find this review helpful.

While the course book is well organized and comprehensive (although you will need your own dictionary. The Living Language books have terrible glossaries which do not even contain all of the words from the vocabulary lists), it is very difficult to get past the ridiculously childish, affected way in which the narrators--particularly the women--speak. You will not hear and adult woman's voice except in lesson 30. All the others sound as if they are breathing helium and talking to you as if you were in a nursery.

Japan is notorious for the infantile "women's speech," but not all Japanese women behave this way. I have lived there and speak from experience.

The narration on courses produced in Japan, such as Kodansha's "Japanese For Busy People" or Gakken's "Japanese For Today" are far more natural and actually sound like mature adults.

Well, I am just about to finish Lesson 27(of 40), good set but could have been better. Firstly, this book requires dictionary look-ups on your own. Secondly, it does not give all hints. Guesses are sometimes needed. Thirdly, should have put accents on whole lesson, including grammar. Should have printed with double spaces, so I can insert notes.
Overall, good set. This book is pretty extensive on grammar, but should have shown the bigger picture before things getting complicated. I need other books to help me, but I like the pace this book is setting.
Total 40 lessons, each with conversation text, grammar, notes, vocabulary, exercises, Hiragana and Kanji text for lessons 21-40. Mostly in Romaji, but should not be a problem. Since in the end, Kanji is the target, not just Hiragana. CDs are good, two sets, one set for home, one for places without a textbook.
Well, this set is cheap and ........

`Ultimate Japanese' is for beginners to this language, but not for beginners to language-learning. I don't know what high school curricula are like in other states, but armed only with an Indiana public education, this text would be difficult to navigate. The grammatical terms are consistent and not watered-down, which is great for a universal understanding of grammar, but may be challenging for the average person.

The layout of the lessons is practical - conversation first, then pronunciation, grammar, symbols, vocab/expressions, and finally exercises. I like this order because it forces you to consider the grammar before you worry yourself about exact definitions. Grammar notes are concise, 'shown' and not 'told'. Instead of relying on complex prose explanations, grammar is taught through examples (though not too many of them that they are repetitive or confusing).

Kana in this book are introduced in groups over a few chapters, then as the book progresses there is further work with symbols, including dialogues and exercises. In later chapters, kanji are introduced a handful at a time. I also like this volume's syllable tables compared to others. The biggest downside is that the main dialogues are romanized, so when it comes time to write - or even read - it will be a bit more of a challenge, but do-able, given the work with Japanese script later in the text. In contrast, 'Japanese for Busy People' presents every conversation first in kana, then romaji, then the English translation, but its exercises are all in romaji; `Ultimate' includes exercises with both kana and kanji.

There are two sets of discs - one (set A) for use with the book, and one (B) that follows the lessons of the book but can be used `on the go' without the text. Readings in set A are performed by native speakers at a relatively natural pace. I haven't heard any English on set A, and there is little on set B. I think the native-English narrator speaks some of the Japanese on set B, but it sounds fluent. Others have noted 'baby-talk' on this program's discs. I'm not far into it, but I haven't found this speech overpoweringly horrendous. I'm taking any `baby-talk' I do register as a generalized cultural affectation. It doesn't bother me.

As an American, I like that the narrator on the audio discs is also American. The audio with Gilhooly's 'Teach Yourself Japanese' is narrated with an English accent - I personally find this very distracting, but that may just be my own linguistics training kicking in to analyze her speech at every turn. Still, having an American narrator in a way involves less 'translating' for me.

Overall this set is highly informative, with little crap to sift through to get to the real meat of the lesson. I'm borrowing it from the library now, but I plan on buying it for myself.

I just received this today and I can tell you I am very impressed. It is a lot more than I thought it would be. The book is about the size of a standard book, and 500 pages long. From the first lesson there are very good grammar lessons, vocabulary words, and dialog. This is my fifth foreign language, and I can tell you this course will be very useful for learning Japanese up to an intermediate to advanced level, depending on your level of effort. I have become fairly fluent before with much less to go by. I am very impressed, amazed really, at what I got for fifty dollars. Some have said the female voices are infantile, and not spoken by Japanese natives. I listened to part of the first disc so far and the male and female speakers sounded just like the natives I have heard in countless movies and on the streets of Seattle. Both sexes had normal sounding voices also. I don't know if all of the discs are the same, but it sounds perfectly normal so far. This is an amazing set for fifty dollars. It looks much better than the other sets I have seen. If you want interactive computer programs go with Rosetta Stone for a small fortune. If you want a book with CD's, this is the best one I have found.

This was the first thing I bought when I was looking to teach myself Japanese. In short, it seems like a nice book for those who are just looking to speak the language and have little concern for reading/writing. The language it presents seems geared more toward tourists/business people. I really wanted to learn the language in every way, which includes reading and writing. So, after the first 2 lessons, I decided to look elsewhere since kana is only mentioned as a side note in this series (everything is given in romanji.)

I found that for the money, the following books were most helpful in my studies:

Beginner's Japanese with 2 Audio CDs (Hippocrene Beginner's Series)
Let's Learn Hiragana: First Book of Basic Japanese Writing (Kodansha's Children's Classics)
Let's Learn Katakana: Second Book of Basic Japanese Writing

The book is nice because it presents all the dialogs in kana (as well as romanji and in English,) and is organized in an easy-to-use fashion. Since writing hiragana and katakana are almost a subject of their own, I found the two workbooks listed above to be essential. They're cheap, and very effective.

excelent for setting up lot's of questions to review in whatever Spaced Repetition system you use. contains extremely little kana, almost everything is romanji-sized. that turned me down a lot.
im not sure it's structured for beginners at first.

This CD/Book was a Christmas present for my son. He really loves the CDs and the book. He says the book is very helpful and especially likes the chapter reveiws that are in the book. The CDs help perfect your accent and also help to get your ear used to hearing the language. Was well woth the price.

The format of the book teaches not only words, but sentence structure, formal/informal word usage and the culture behind the Japanese language. The CD's and exercise allow you apply the knowledge you just learned.

I borrowed this book from the library and found it useful enough that I wanted to have my own copy! It is quite dense, so there is a lot of information in the book, which is useful for someone who intends to learn Japanese for quite a while.