Nakama 2: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context

Rating:
Summary: Hai, Soo desu.
Review: I recently finished the intensive intermediate course at Harvard--another summer of boot camp--and this was the text for the first 2/3 of the course. I think that it is a very good text, and along with the lab manual and CDs, the Nakama system is extremely effective. There is also a great website, "Friends of Nakama," which should be very helpful to anyone using these texts. There you'll find lots of good quizzes for vocabulary and kanji.

Unfortunately, my instructors seemed to dislike kanji immensely--kanji were never discussed as a topic in their own right, in spite of their evident interest to gringos like me who have been drawn to a study of Japanese BECAUSE of kanji (among other things). One Chinese student in the class hypothesized that the Japanese hate kanji because they are kanji, i.e., Chinese characters. But, I digress.

The important point here is that Nakama DOES discuss kanji in historical and linguistic context, and that, in my opinion, is a very good thing.

Rating:
Summary: After Nakama I, a bit disappointing...
Review: I used both Nakama I and Nakama II for the first four semesters of university Japanese classes, and Nakama I was brilliant--the early introductions to hiragana and katakana, the mnemonic devices, the themed vocabulary lists. I felt that it gave us a great start, but Nakama II went downhill.

I have two main gripes with this book: the bizarre choices for kanji in each chapter and the selective information given about grammatical structures. Nakama II does not teach the most common kanji or kanji with common elements that will be more useful with further study; it takes the idea of "themed" learning and creates situations where, say, you can write all of the kanji in yuubinkyoku (post office) before you can write "migi" (right) and "hidari" (left). This problem extends to the vocabulary lessons as well--light on basic everyday-use verbs, for example, but heavy on less-necessary words.

Frankly, I also didn't get the approach Nakama II takes to grammar--the idea that "here is a grammatical structure, usable only in the narrow context it's presented as a part of, with no further explanation." We learned the "nakereba naranai" construction a good two chapters, I believe, before we learned what the "ba" form was at all. When the more complete explanation is given, it's treated like an entirely new concept.

Nakama II is not all bad, by any means; in fact, it's superior to other textbooks I've purchased, and I'm not quite sure if there is any one Japanese textbook helpful in all areas. But if you attend a school that uses Nakama, keep your fingers crossed that you get as lucky as we were to have a teacher who was intelligent and helpful, or that you can be extremely diligent in filling in the gaps left by this text.

And if you have decided to study Japanese, I wish you the best of luck. ^_^

Rating:
Summary: Nakama is your best friend
Review: Nakama is a great tool for students who are begining their Japanese Languages study. Nakama 2 is the continuation of Nakama 1, and continues the emphasis on situational Japanese. The grammar targets are useful and informative. Learning "nakereba naranai" (have to) form IS a different concept from "-ba" (if) form. Thankfully, the text presents a practical approach to structure and not an overly "rules" based approach.