Japanese for Busy People' is, as the title suggests, a concise course for 'busy' students who want to learn natural spoken Japanese as effectively as possible in a limited amount of time. This helpful practice book is intended as a companion to Elementary Korean but can be used with any other Korean textbook or as a stand-alone self-study guide to learn Korean. With over 20 components including texts, workbooks, CDs, videos and teacher's manuals, it is also one of the most comprehensive. By that I mean the beginning of very chapter introduces a few new words and concepts, and the rest of the chapter showcases sentences that use those words/concepts, presenting you with basic patterns and structures for you to plug the new words into.

I've flipped through some of the later chapters and found that I can understand everything (after mentally putting the kanji back in), even if I wouldn't be able to say those things myself yet. As long as you get the Kana Version of this textbook (there is an all-romaji version), you'll learn some valuable things. Since it was first published in 1984, the focus of the Japanese for Busy People series has always been to teach Japanese for effective communi cation.Would have preferred fewer romanized sentences throughout the lessons, but that's understandable for a first volume. I have Japanese for Dummies and it seems to cover a lot of material but it feels very scattered and therefore hard for me to maintain focus when reading it. Studying the language is relatively easy when compared with other languages, in particular for the students. In this book, Julian Moore brings together the ideas from the past and brings them right up to date with a fun, easy to remember system using an ancient divination technique.

However, the exercises are mainly rote copying of the example given rather than making you think about what words/grammar structures you're choosing and why. Now, a decade after its first revision, the entire series is being redesigned, updated and consolidated to meet the needs of 21st-century students and businesspeople who want to learn natural, spoken Japanese as effectively as possible in a limited amount of time. Biography: The Association for Japanese-Language Teaching (AJALT) was recognized as a nonprofit organization by the Japanese Ministry of Education in 1977. Sections for practising individual kana come with reference lines to help learners get a feel for the proper size and shape of each character. This isn't a huge problem if you're learning your kanji with WaniKani, but it can become irritating to read all kana paragraphs when you're used to kanji.Put another way, this means that by successfully completing the materials covered in Volume II and in the workbook, you will be able to proceed from “survival level” all the way to intermediate and even advanced fluency. The grammar explanations only teach you enough to be functional, there are no deep digressions into the socio-psychological meaning of 'wa', the path it takes is clear and simple. Volume I teaches the absolute minimum amount of Japanese to live in Japan and handle everyday situations.

I’ve been on a Japanese study journey for a while now but since I’ve taken up extra work at my job, I’ve been slacking.I give it 4 stars for a good beginner book, but if you've been studying Japanese longer than a year, this is probably not a good book for you. This series is prepared by a working group of experienced Japanese language instructors who reviewed and tested the material in a classroom environment. All of these are issues are solved when this book is used in a classroom environment (as is the case with me), but as stated I think this would be a difficult book to use on its own. Moreover, it now comes with a CD containing audio for the dialogues and listening exercises from the text.

The sentence structure is always "(somewhere) ni ikimasu/kimasu/kaerimasu", but it's always "(somewhere) DE aimasu/mimasu/tabemase/etc". By the end of the book, learners will have acquired through a series of concise grammatical explanations and extensive speaking and listening exercises a command of Japanese that will enable them to carry on a variety of daily conversations.

If you only have 15-30 minutes to spend studying this book and it's sequels are ideal for you: short lessons, just enough grammar in each lesson, 100% aimed at self-study, practical vocabulary.