I've been disappointed with most Japanese textbooks (or teach it yourselfs) because most of them write everything in romaji (English phonetics) instead of using hiragana or katakana, the Japanese alphabets.
This book starts out using Japanese characters from lesson one and ceases to use romaji very quickly. It makes the learner have to learn the Japanese alphabets.
Kanji is also treated very non-painfully. Each lesson introduces a few new kanji and shows the correct order of writing them. Each lesson thereafter uses these new kanji so that the learner gets a chance to use them as in Japan.
Each lesson starts out with a dialogue that has pictures and then a translation afterwards. New grammatical concepts or cultural connotations of grammar are explained with lots of examples. There are plenty of exercises to use for practice.
AND...the textbook comes with a CD-ROM that contains all the dialogues read in Japanese. It also reads out the entire vocabulary list for each chapter. The PDF on the CD-ROM is printable. It does contain some listening exercises not found in the textbook, which I thought was neat because most CDs with language learning software just read out the dialogues.
For maximum learning (and especially if you're teaching yourself), purchase the teacher's edition answer key that comes with this series. It has all the answers to both the textbooks and the listening exercises on the CD-ROM. In addition, it has the dialogues from the listening exercises written out so that you can check exactly why you missed questions.
This is the best textbook I've seen so far for Japanese.
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From the Publisher
An All-in-One Textbook for Beginners: College-level prep for reading, writing, and speaking in Japanese!
A Japanese language textbook for self-study, college-prep, or classroom use! Elementary Japanese Volume One offers a highly structured approach to the fundamentals of learning Japanese, based on identifying the foundational patterns and constructions of the language as well as the writing system, including the primary systems: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.
Volume One covers the first semester of college-level Japanese. Paired with Volume Two students have a full year college course at their fingertips! The two volumes together introduce 313 Kanji.
This first textbook contains 14 lessons--each represents a week of instructional materials--and includes:
- A Dialog: the core of each lesson as it contains all of the grammatical constructions to be
- studied in that lesson.
- Usage notes: elaborate on the dialog expressions and include social and/or pragmatic explanations
- Grammar notes: They attempt to explain the rationale behind grammatical constructions and their usage, rather than introducing them as mere facts. Whenever appropriate, Japanese and equivalent English expressions are compared and contrasted, enabling students to utilize their already acquired knowledge of language use.
- Exercises: Virtually all exercises emulate actual uses of the language rather than imposing mechanical drills. They are designed primarily for use in classroom activities, emphasizing interaction among students. They can also be used for self-testing at the end of each lesson
- New kanji (Chinese characters) and explanation: While introducing a total of 313 basic kanji, Elementary Japanese explains the fundamental differences between ideographic (primarily representing ideas) and phonographic (representing sounds, e.g. English) writing systems.
- Kanji review exercises
- New Vocabulary: In addition to a vocabulary list for each lesson, comprehensive vocabulary lists (both Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese) are provided as appendices
Key Features Include:
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Extensive CoverageThe full semester of coursework included in this book offers a complete foundation for basic reading, writing, and speaking skills. Upon completing the activities, students can expect to be able to:
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14 Detailed LessonsThere are 14 total lessons each including a week's worth of content and exercises, and all together serving as a full semester of course work! Each lesson is structured similarly, beginning with a dialog, and includes extensive notes on usage, grammar, new kanji, new vocabulary, review exercises for speaking, and writing, and short reading passages. The book is highly illustrated and makes use of a variety of proven exercises to enforce your learning. |
Variety of ExercisesVirtually all exercises emulate actual uses of the language rather than imposing mechanical drills. They are designed primarily for use in classroom activities, emphasizing interaction among students. They can also be used for self-testing at the end of each lesson. The exercises throughout each lesson include:
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Illustrated LessonsBlack & white illustrations throughout the lessons help students make visual connections and reinforce the new vocabulary. Illustrations allow for creative and dynamic exercises, and foster a visual learning style in tandem with the extensive written lessons. |
FREE Companion Audio & PDFFree companion audio with native speaker recordings and printable PDFs are included with each volume, available for free download online, making this a great way to learn Japanese on your own while ensuring that you learn the correct pronunciation. The recordings also help you build up your listening comprehension skills. |
10 Appendices!The back of the book includes 10 Appendices offering a wealth of reference and quick-check information.
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Top reviews from other countries
Graeme Adamson
Excellent resource for learning the language
Reviewed in Australia on September 3, 2019