Customer Reviews

Vocabulearn Japanese Complete [With 3 Booklets] (Japanese Edition)

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In short, this product offers the following: (a) a listing of common vocabulary (which is useful in itself), and (b) audio recording of each word, for verifying pronounciation.

Once you finish your first textbook and get through the basic level, you need to expand your vocabulary. The various readers, although useful, have one common drawback: they don't teach you how to pronounce words. Looking up pronounciation of the words encountered in the text in a furigana dictionary isn't the most time-efficient technique. Even if you know all the kana and the pronounciation of kanji, it's always good to doublecheck that the way a given word, or phrase, is actually pronounced the way you think it is.

What this product is offering is a list of common words, listed in groups and pronounced by a native speaker. The way I use it, is to listen to a dozen or two of those daily, repeating as necessary to get the idea of how they're written and pronounced and then typing them into a flashcard software for scheduling repetitions.

For one, it gives me a good vocabulary list to focus on: every day I make a small progress memorizing a couple of words, which I can later hear or recognize in other books. It is much faster than having to parse through a long text to fish out the words you don't know, look them up, select the more important ones to memorize. All the words recorded are in common use. If you want to gain proficiency in Japanese you eventually want to memorize them all, and there's no magic that will do it for you.

For two, it helps to verify readings and reinforce whatever you learned about the pronounciation of kanji and kana. Even if you know all the rules, if you want to memorize 5000+ words, you do not want to waste time on pondering whether a given word should be pronounced this or that. You just want to hear it.

Of course, this product alone is not enough to actively learn vocabulary. You actually need to read, or try to read books and magazines to have a chance to encounter these words in context.

I wish these CDs actually came with a flashcard software, this would make the product much easier to use. Such products though are typically much more expensive. For the price, it is a good value, and having to type a dozen or two words a day into any of the many flashcard programs freely available on the web is not such a big deal after all.

Contrary to what the prior poster stated, this is a supplement only, never intended for study in isolation. It's a great way to supplement your Japanese language study because most study programs are lacking in the vocabulary area and without a large vocabulary, you will not be able to hold any meaningful conversations. I have had no trouble using almost all the words I've learned through this program in everyday conversation. If you are simultaneously learning japanese grammer, you should have no problems using a verb, adjective, adverb, etc. learned through this program.

Well, if you decide to buy it please be well aware of what you're buying. Essentially the list of chaotically aligned nouns, verbs and phrases. These words are pronounced in English and Japanese. That's it.

No context, no usage examples, no topics, nothing. How I'm I supposed to remember 300 words in 10 minutes if everything you do is just read them one by one with 5 seconds interval. Moreover you hear annoying music in background. I cannot really grasp the idea of the guys who created that piece of ... media.

Summary: if you want to spend $50 go and rent 10 Japanese DVD's.