


Just be aware of that if you decide to pick up a copy for yourself. So I won’t knock the book for only teaching hiragana, and throughout the entirety of the book as well. You don’t want to get hiragana-poisoning, right? I think the reason the book takes it nice and slow is so that the self learner never gets bored or confused by too much hiragana. On the one hand, I felt like it was kind of a slow way to go about it, but you have to understand that (for me) I did nothing but practice hiragana for three days in order to learn them when I started off. This book is only going to teach you the first writing system, and it’s going to do so throughout the whole book.
#JAPANESE FOR BEGINNERS BOOKS HOW TO#
I say directly, because it does include kanji and katakana in the vocabulary lists (in addition to romaji and hiragana) but it doesn’t teach you how to read or write them.Īgain, this goes back to my metaphor with the pool. The first one is the information if provides on learning the writing system of Japanese.įirst off, it only directly teaches hiragana. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of language exercises like this (read: I don’t do them), but I do acknowledge that studies have shown that people who are tested on information right after learning it have a higher retention rate for said information.īetter get your pencil ready! How it Teaches the Writing SystemĪlright, so having talked a little bit about the overall format that the book takes, I’d like to switch over and go into detail on a few topics. There are multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks, translation work, match the hiragana with the romaji, label the picture, and even some more stuff.

What I mean by that, is there are a lot of exercises and practice drills at the end of each chapter. For example, if you tried to learn the seven ways the も particle can be used.įinally, you should be aware that this book is intended for the self-learner. I felt like this method of giving you a little bit of everything was very helpful for the beginner since you never feel like you’re being overloaded with information, which often happens when you try to learn everything there is on a single topic. You learn a little bit about the grammar that gets used in the examples, but it definitely does’t go over all of it. What about vocabulary? It teaches you a fair amount of commonly used words for that chapter’s particular topic, but it certainly doesn’t overwhelm you. You only get introduced to a few of the hiragana characters each lesson so that you can learn them and practice them, while still continuing through the chapter. so that you always feel ready for that next step.

This book basically takes your hand and slowly wades you into that pool, allowing you to gradually get acclimated to the temperature, wetness, etc. Imagine that you are going to start swimming in a pool (Japanese). In order to understand the way that it teaches, I’d like to use a metaphor: 6) Final Thoughts and Where to Get The Overall Format of the BookĪlright, so each chapter in the book is a lesson, and although it does start off with some “pre-lessons” that focus entirely on a single concept like pronunciation or basic numbers, once you get into Lesson 1, it’s off to the races!Įach lesson is centered around a topic such as Creating Simple Sentences, Colors and Adjectives, Asking for Things (and so on) which is a nice way to learn when you’re starting off, and also really helpful when you need to reference something by looking it up.
