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Beginner's Kana Workbook

Beginner's Kana Workbook

List Price: $9.95
Your Price: $8.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Save your money, there are better books out there
Review: This book was one of the first books i bought on Japanese script, and regretfully one of my worst purchases. The book doesn't go into much detail and the material just seemed to be geared towards kindergarteners.
1. The first half of the book: tracing all the kana.
For the writting practices all you have to do is trace the dotted (well, grayed-in) lines; it may seem nice, but it's not very helpful for learning and remembering them. Think about it, when you're learning to draw, what's more helpful? tracing things over and over, or looking at an image and trying to recreate it on your own? the first method is merely mindless repetition while the second uses active learning which involves more of your brain to learn the characters.
2.The second half of the book: words and pictures.
Another thing makes you feel like a two year practicing with this book is the pitures used. After introducing the characters, there's a section that uses large childish pictures next to large squares to copy the characters. It's not very economical, though, there may be 40 some pages here, but each page only has 2 to 4 words on it (all nouns and verbs in random order). It's not really worth learning though since if you continue learning Japanese, you'll replace the kana used for the words for the kanji.
---Overall, I think the book would be good to use for a first grade classroom (although not all of it, i don't think six year olds need to learn the japanese words for "cocktail", "ashtray", or "cigarette lighter" Which are scattered randomly in the book), but if you're over the age of 10, look for a better book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great and easy book to use.
Review: We used this book to learn hiragana and katakana after moving to Japan six months ago. We have two adults and two kids (ages 6 & 9) and all of us can now read and write both syllabaries. We're not fast, but we can do it!

We copied the pages to use like worksheets and that worked out well, since just writing something once in a workbook is not adequate. The syllables are not taught in Japanese order, but in order of easier to harder, and that worked out well, since you built up confidence and skill as you went. You can easily relearn them in the proper order once you have the forms down. Our kids now do calligraphy in their school as well as the Japanese kids.

Japanese adults use kanji in their writing, but also use hiragana and katakana, so you can express yourself in writing easily without knowing any kanji if you know these two sylabaries. They can't always understand words written in with "romanzi" or our alphabet as easily. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the basic writing of Japan.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great and easy book to use.
Review: We used this book to learn hiragana and katakana after moving to Japan six months ago. We have two adults and two kids (ages 6 & 9) and all of us can now read and write both syllabaries. We're not fast, but we can do it!

We copied the pages to use like worksheets and that worked out well, since just writing something once in a workbook is not adequate. The syllables are not taught in Japanese order, but in order of easier to harder, and that worked out well, since you built up confidence and skill as you went. You can easily relearn them in the proper order once you have the forms down. Our kids now do calligraphy in their school as well as the Japanese kids.

Japanese adults use kanji in their writing, but also use hiragana and katakana, so you can express yourself in writing easily without knowing any kanji if you know these two sylabaries. They can't always understand words written in with "romanzi" or our alphabet as easily. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the basic writing of Japan.


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