Beginning Japanese (Part 1)

Rating:
Summary: A classic for good reason
Review: Drills drills drills! If you work through the ubiquidous "Japanese For Busy People" published by AJALT without having perused this tome of a textbook, then you're doing yourself a huge disservice. Jorden and Chaplin here present one of the most exercize-intensive books you are likely to find, and any beginning or intermediate student of Japanese knows that is a good thing. Every chapter contains hundreds of example sentences and drills, each one just slightly more advanced than the one before, and while there is next to no kana here, consider it a boot-camp workout for anyone who wants to speak this most difficult language. When I recently went through my textbooks to thin them out, this was one book which I did not even consider getting rid of. Even though it's for beginners there is enough practice here to warm up second and third year students as well. This is really a classic text and workbook which deserves enduring status. You want to know about Japanese? This is probably not the best choice - but if you want to speak Japanese, you could do no better than this exhaustive collection.

Rating:
Summary: Best Japanese text book
Review: If you are serious about learning Japanese and want to choose a textbook that will help you do so, at just the right pace, this is your book. In each chapter you learn a great deal, but you are not made to continuously flip back to other chapters to look up words. I am nearly to the end of this text book, and I have never become frustrated by the teaching method. I realize now, browsing through other Japanese grammar books, that if I had chosen one of those books, I might have decided the language was too hard and would have given up. Thanks to this book, I am confident that I will become fluent in Japanese in the next year, when I begin on Book 2 of this series.

Rating:
Summary: Thorough book, but dated and lacking kana and kanji
Review: Well, I can say that this book is extremely thorough. It will teach you how to speak Japanese fairly well, if you can wade through it. However, I personally dislike this book.

This book is quite dated, as are all Jorden books. We're talking 40 years here. What's worst is the lack of kana. You won't be able to read Japanese at all. You can study kana and kanji on your own and in a class, but you'll never be very good at it unless you work yourself to death. Textbooks with kana and kanji in them, such as Nakama or the extremely good Genki are great in that you begin to be able to read Japanese nearly as fast as you can understand it, and kanji recognition is much easier.