Japanese for naive people (Japanese for Busy People Vol 1: Kana Version - Association for Japanese-Language Teaching)

Member Name: shuttlex

Product:	Japanese for Busy People Vol 1: Kana Version - Association for Japanese-Language Teaching
Date:	23/08/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ok if used in conjunction with other materials

Disadvantages: Fundamentally flawed, attempts to strip out too much

The Japanese for busy people series, published by the association for Japanese-Language learning has been around for some years now. As the title suggests, this is for busy people who want to learn Japanese in as short a time as possible. This is where the book fails, while it introduces all the basics grammar, sentence structures and minimum vocabulary, the authors of this book promise too much. In reality it takes a life time to master the language, not only studying text books but reading books in Japanese, living amongst Japanese and generally immerse oneself in the language.

Unfortunately this book presents itself as a simple easy all in one solution, Finish the first series, study the second and final the third and one should theoretically be able to hold a conversation according to the authors. Everyone who I have met who rely on this book to learn the language have extremely basic abilities. Unless one is visiting a town in the middle of no where of Japan, most Japanese people will be able to speak at least a very basic level of English.

One benefit of this particular book is that it uses kana, the Japanese phonetic writing system rather than romaji.

As a book to be used in conjunction with other materials, this book has some use, however relying on the book itself as the book's introduction page suggest will result in little aquisition of the Japanese langauge.

Summary: See review