Customer Reviews

Yookoso! Invitation to Contemporary Japanese Student Edition with Online Learning Center Bind-In Card

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

 

 

I took Japanese 1 using the Genki series, which I found to be much more comprehensive and easy to study from, with quick references to the lesson content in each chapter introduction, and the kanji learned in the corresponding sections in the back pages.

I'm now in Japanese 2, and we're using Yookoso. Yookoso isn't nearly as nicely laid out, and does not work well for studying from. The workbook is actually necessary in order to get a good study session out of the series.

Over the past three months, I've taken two summer classes using this textbook. To learn two semesters-worth of a language in such a short time-frame, it is essential to have a good textbook. Unfortunately, I feel cheated.

To begin on a very superficial level, the book is just plain ugly. There are two colors of ink used throughout the entire book: dark olive green and black. Because of the lack of colors, excessive stereotyping seems to have been used to strive for a more politically correct set of example students. For example, the token African-American learner--or as the book calls him, Henry Curtis--is always drawn with lips at least as large as 1/4 of his face. No other example student is drawn this way.

During my summer classes, I would often find myself lost on the exercises. I would repeatedly read the grammar notes (which are nothing more than outlines with little detail), before accepting defeat and asking for help from our teacher. Imagine my surprise to find out that I was one of the better students in the class! Few students understood the book by itself, and it seemed as though nothing was learned unless the teacher explained it separately from the book. In my experience, books should supplement a teacher in the opposite way: provide a student reference in the cases that the teacher is not available.

Having had students in the class with previous editions of the book was also quite interesting. I can almost list the changes in their entirety: both kanji and hiragana on vocabulary lists (as opposed to one or the other in previous editions), and roughly 1 to 2 new exercises for each chapter. All the existing exercises were worded the same, and included the same "misprints."

It is a bit of a misnomer when I say "vocabulary lists." There is no consistent way of finding vocabulary throughout the chapters. The end-of-chapter lists often leave out words introduced in mid-chapter lists.

All-in-all, I'm very dissatisfied with this text. I learned a lot from these past two classes, but I feel as though I may have learned just as much if we used no textbook at all.

I don't know why Amazon does not have all the Yookoso 3rd edition book reviews linked. The online student center for this book is free now. You do not need the card from the book. Feel free to buy used you wont miss out on anything.

I first reviewed this book and gave it one star. After using this book in my Japanese class at my local community college for the past three months I decided to delete my review and rewrite a new one. The Yookoso textbook has a couple flaws but a lot of upsides as well.

The version of romaji used in this textbook is not standard. However, it is only used through chapter one. I personally think the Revised Hepburn of romaji is the best, I am guessing the author did not want to confuse students with how long vowels work so he chose to use "oo" instead of "ou" and "ee" instead of "ei". There are also english spelling mistakes throughout the book. So far I haven't encountered any japanese mistakes. However, I honestly have to say this is the best Japanese textbook I have used.

There are a few points you need to keep in mind when using this textbook.

1. Do not try to learn every thing in the getting started section. I can not stress this enough. The getting started section is there to give you something to do while learning the Japanese kana system. During the getting started section learn the kana system, numbers, and how to conjugate verbs. Try to learn as much vocabulary as you can but if you can't remember everything don't worry about it (70% is good). Most of it shows up again in the later chapters.

2. Yookoso likes to throw in a lot of extra kanji examples. Do not try to learn every kanji this book uses in each chapter. Learn all the kanji that the book has in the "Learn these kanji" sections. If you can learn some more that's fantastic. However, they are only there to give you more exposure to the kanji.

3. This textbook is not something you can blow through in a short amount of time. It is very hard. My community college uses this textbook for JPN 101 and JPN 102. Each class is 5 credit hours and we only cover Getting started and chapters 1 - 3 in JPN 101.

4. Do the activities in the textbook. We do about 70% of them in class and they really help. Find someone who is interested in Japanese if you can and do them together.

5. Buy the accompanying workbook. If you're using this book as a self study tool than a good rule to follow would be to do about 70% of the getting started section and 90% of each chapter section.

6. Get a spaced repetition flashcard program for review.

I really hope this helps. If you're a dedicated student this textbook will be a fantastic tool for you.

This book, along with the workbook, look really good from a conceptual standpoint. Take a look at the table of contents and you'll see a very ambitious syllabus laid out for the course of the book. Execution, however, is another story. To start with, the book is very hard to use for self-study. I would not recommend using the book at all unless you are using it in conjunction with a class or other native material (and for this there are far better alternatives available).

The main problem is the example sentences. What Yookoso does is teach both simple sentence structures (a common fault of primers) and horribly unnatural sentence structures (an obnoxious quality of this book). This is especially true of the workbook, for which a random example is a prompter asking what month and what day are your birthday (as well as a host of other holidays). Setting aside that it's unnatural in English to ask someone what month and what day their birthday is, that's also not how any sane Japanese person would ask the question. Instead, they'd omit the whole "what month what day" baloney (which I'd argue aren't even underlying to the question) and just say "otanjoubi wa?" or, if they need an interrogative for clarity, "otanjoubi wa itsu [when] (desu ka)?" The text and workbook are rife with examples like this and I can't imagine what students new to the language would think after becoming accustomed to this bizarre style when they actually heard a native speaker start talking naturally in their normally abbreviated style.

The other problem is organization. The grammar explanations are skimpy, scattered throughout the middle, and the vocabulary is occasionally, but not always, collected at the end of each chapter. The bulk of this textbook is devoted to in-classroom activities: mostly dialogues intended for teachers to use with their classes. I took a Japanese class and that was the main use of the book. I tried reading each chapter individually, but honestly I gave up on it after about 150 pages. There are far better organized books out there with better explanations, like Jorden's Japanese: The Spoken Language, and even the Japanese for Busy People series. Even Japanese for Everyone, which doesn't have that great of organization has way better explanations and more natural dialogue than Yookoso.

If you are just getting started learning Japanese, you WILL NEED supplementary material to go along with the textbook and workbook! Unless you are taking a class that REQUIRES this particular book, do yourself a favor and find something else. The book has a confusing set-up, and does NOT provide enough background information for a beginner to make sense of the activities. There will be sections instructing you to "learn this Kanji!" that do not give the definitions of what those kanji mean, or how they are pronounced, or any other information. Unless you already know a fair bit of the language and are just refreshing, this book will probably make little to no sense to you.

This workbook, though it may seem expensive, is a great purchase. The pages and print are of amazing quality, and it's a hardcover book. I have been able to successfully take notes in the book in pencil, and not smudge or dull the print when I erase it. This is obviously beneficial to those who keep their books for later revision, and to those who are looking to resell them in the future. Also, this is one of the easiest language learning book I have used. Their are many pictures to show actions, or for relation to time or place. Also, This book very quickly but carefully brings you to fluently read Hiragana and Katakana. My Instructor also mentioned, "This Yookoso! text book is used for Japanese "A" and "B" ( 1st year, 2nd year)." So this book will last you TWO CLASSES, not just one. If you would like an amazing dictionary selection to go along with your text and work book, I recommend "Kudansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary". It will also last you many years and is of great quality.

This is my first time studying Japanese but my second time learning a foreign language in a formal class using an actual textbook. The textbook itself isn't that bad. Admittedly, it's not filled with interesting pictures and severely lacks in color. It's mostly filled with dialogs so you have to figure out (with your teacher, perhaps) what is going on. I think it's a little better to learn it that way instead of blind formulaic memorization. I also really like the fact that the book provides, for no extra charge, mp3s of the dialogs online. They really help you understand the context of the dialog.

On its own, you probably won't learn much with this textbook. However, pair it with their workbook, and you've got Japanese Magic! I feel that the listening exercises work at a speedy, yet reasonable, pace. The written (non-listening activities) really help you practice your Japanese.

This textbook was very easy to understand and quickly moves you from topic to topic as well as quickly saturating you in the writing. The accompaning workbook is also great (Apparently you have to buy them separate here, I bought mine together at a bookstore). The culture notes are insightful and funny. The activites can be fun (although some are just a little lame) and quickly get you used to speaking and hearing the language.

Overall Yookoso is a great introduction to a beautiful language.

Most expensive textbook I had to buy, but worth every penny. This is one of the books I'm going to keep after college...both to review in the future and to share with others. So helpful, and used every day in class.

I wanted this in 3-5 business days upgraded to the Amazon premier and now I cant get it for 18 days!! that doesnt work for a college class that is going on NOW