Colloquial Japanese: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

Rating:
Summary: Very good
Review: As opposed to another reveiw I'm past the 5th chapter and I've yet to find more than one instance where the vocabluary wasn't comprehensive. Then the word was still available in the glossery in back. In the forward the author does say that in later chapters they will deliberatly not include a comprehensive vocabulary because part of learning the language is learning to utilize the appropriate reference materials. But I haven't reached that point yet. Though, even then, the glossary in the back is comprehensive.

There are however a number of typos throughout. Most are rather obvious because they are nearly all in the vocabulary sections where romaji and kana are in parallel text. Thus, the romaji will nearly always be correct and kana characters will either be missing or misplaced. I'm sticking with a 5 though because I find these typos obvious and they didn't confuse me.

The rest of the book is great. I've found each chapter leads into the next very well with comprhensibile explanations and each section just the right size. Kana and Kanji are introduced from the beginning slowly and reinforced each chapter.

Unfortunatly, it makes everything so comprehensible that many will press on before fully learning each chapter. So I recomend going back to the beginning and reviewing everything at least once every other day until the book is complete. I'm doing this and every time I see some detail I missed all the other times. So it may feel tedious but it does pay off. Also, It's a good idea to keep each study period under 30 minutes so you don't burn out. Review, review, review.

My favorite feature about this book is it is not a "japanese for business" book. If your interest in learning japanese is more for leisure purposes then this is a really good self study course. It is also one of the very few courses that teaches Kanji from day one. So it is at least in the top 3 courses for those who feel learning to read japanese is a high priority.

My only real gripe is the CD is sold separatly. It isn't in any of the bookstores I go to, so I must order it.

Rating:
Summary: It's lacking.
Review: I am only up to the 5th unit in this book (of 15), and I have several complaints to make about it.

The book includes many conversations (which are included on the CD as spoken by native Japanese speakers). Each unit introduces at least one new conversation and with that a new vocabulary list. The vocabulary list follows the conversation transcription in the book for you to practice. I have begun to found that many vocabulary lists do not include the full set of words required to understand the preceding conversation - true for not only the initial conversation for each unit, but other activities within the book. This leaves me somewhat frustrated and confused and second guessing my learning ability.

In contrast, the book introduces a fairly efficient way of introducing new characters and kanji in a way that helps you to recognise, remember, and utilize them easily. Initially very few words are written with kana nor kanji. Slowly, romaji is subsituted for kana, and kana for kanji, and their use is sparodic. One same syllable may be in the same text romanized and written using kana or kanji, which I found personally to be a clever way of introducing new characters.

I don't think that the book provides enough activities and thorough explanations for you to fully grasp the concepts introduced.

I do think that the CD included is very useful. I believe that listening to them and repeating these tracks is crucial in understanding spoken Japanese. You may know structure, grammar, and have an extensive vocabulary, but without hearing native Japanese speakers converse, it's quite useless.

Rating:
Summary: Very well designed course
Review: This book is fantastic, I love the way it eases you into the different scripts and the realistic dialogs in each chapter. Unlike some other books it's also easy to follow and learn from. It teaches you some very usefull sentence structures right off the bat and then eases you into different grammatical concepts.

Of course Anyone using this book would find having a japanese dictionary, grammer reference and kanji dictionary very helpfull to fill in any gaps that pop up. (I really like the Oxford starter japanese dictionary, Oxford Japanese grammer & verbs and Kodansha Kanji learner's dictionary). This book does a way better job than my $100 university text and 2 other self study guides I have had the misfortune of wasting my money on but there are still a few topics that could use more in depth explainations.

I've had a year of formal Japanese instruction in university so I didn't have any problems grasping the early dialogs. Allthough It doesn't look like the author intends complete beginners to understand every word since there are some fairly advanced grammer in them. I guess some people will find this an interesting prelude and others will find it annoying. I personally liked it because it kept things interesting.

The only real complaint I have is there are quite a few obvious spelling errors throughout the book, hopefully they get corrected in a future edition.