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Japanese for Busy People I: Text Editorial Review:
In the ten years since its publication, Japanese for Busy People has won acceptance worldwide as an effective, easy-to-understand textbook, either for classroom use or for independent study. In this new edition, numerous revisions and additions have been made, taking into account the comments and responses of both students and teachers who have been using the course.
In Book I, the revisions are directed at making the grammatical explanations easier to understand, while adding further explanations of points that students have difficulty with. Changes have also been made in favor of more natural practice sentences and dialogues. In addition, new appendices list the particles, interrogatives, and sentence patterns in the book, as well as the kanji introduced.
More fundamental revisions have been made to Book II, which has been expanded and divided into two volumes, Book II and Book Ill. The changes result in a smoother transition from Book I, make new grammatical elements clearer, and present more natural practice dialogues and exercise sentences.
This concise course in natural Japanese is ideal for such students as businessmen whose aim is a working knowledge of the spoken language in everyday life. "Survival Japanese for Adults," as it might be called, gets to the heart of the language without recourse to childish or classroom-only Japanese.
Vocabulary and grammar have been limited to about one-third that usually encountered in beginner courses, and words and patterns that students will find immediately useful are emphasized.
The thirty lessons are composed of dialogues, notes on grammar, and vocabulary, exercises and quizzes. In addition to developing verbal fluency, by the time the student is one-third the way through Book I he will have mastered the two phonetic syllabaries of Japanese.
Customer Reviews:
An OK textbook
This book is just OK. If you've never studied Japanese before, I'd skip this book. True, in each section you do learn many different words, but nothing reinforces it. Most of the activities are fill in the blank, and it becomes really easy to forget some of the words you may have learned. Also, you will learn no kanji with this book. I thought this was really disappointing, learn how to speak, but not how to read Japanese? Honestly, I would skip over this book and try to find something better.
Excellent ...except.....
I really learned a lot from this book in the early stages of my Japanese studies. In fact, I feel like this Romaji version contains muuuuch more info than the Kana version. I hate how the two are sooo different. I just feel like any Japanese student can learn soooo much more if they begin with Kana and ignore Romaji all together. Romaji is sooo useless except for the very early phases of learning sounds, so try as much as you can to use Hiragana and Katakana if you want to learn Kanji someday.
Teaches formal, business Japanese, but I don't even recommend it for that purpose...
When I first studied Japanese in a university, this book was used. However, much of what I learned I found to be practically useless when I hit the streets in Japan. It seems like these guys tried to hide the different politeness levels. I've used the first two texts, skimmed the third, and have found little outside of formal Japanese. My father, after having learned the first book, had his Japanese friends tell him one day, "You really don't have to keep using formal Japanese. We are friends now." Until that point, he HAD NO IDEA that he knew only formal Japanese. (Not to mention his Japanese was still beginner.)
Also, these books are VERY slow to introduce kanji. The first book is even in Romanji, for God's sake! You really have to start learning both kanas AND kanji from the get-go.
I highly recommend the "Situational, Functional Japanese" series. This is the textbook used by the University of Hawaii, the university and state that has the highest Japanese influence and interaction in America. I picked them up as refreshers before going back to Japan and was amazed at how good they were compared to my Japanese for Busy People books. I threw my JBP books out. Eagerly. SFJ doesn't hide anything - it starts teaching you kana and kanji from the very beginning, exposes you to the formal levels from the beginning, teaches you more pertinent grammar than JBP, presents common situations and the lingual nuances you need to be familiar with, and manages to do all this without being overwhelming. Get the Notes and Drills books, supplement with a good kanji exercise paperback, and you're good to go.
Drop Japanese for Busy People. If you're not going to be spending every Japanese-speaking moment inside a meeting/conference room, it's a waste of your time.
Reconsider before buying
Not for the casual tourist who will vacation in Japan. Using this book, you will not learn the necessary phrases for a short trip to Japan. If you want to learn common phrases, do not buy this book. It was designed for serious students of the language.
On that note, it is unbelievable that a text book of this caliber would be Romanized. If you are a serious student, then take this review seriously: learn hiragana immediately. Do not buy this book; buy the kana version of this book, and begin studying hiragana while you are waiting for it to arrive in the mail. If your college forces you to buy the Romanized version (like mine did), do future students a favor by requesting that they switch over to the kana version.
Although my review of this book sounds harsh, do not be mislead. I like the Japanese for Busy People text book series, and, like all serious students of the Japanese language, despise Romanized books. Many of my friends complain that this book focuses on grammar and vocabulary that would best be used for business. I can't argue, but it lays the foundation for Japanese for Busy People II, which is a great text book. The coinciding workbook is not necessary, and not very useful.
Buy the kana version of this book.
excellent and stress free learning video but too $$$
Ive watched all 3 tapes (older version) at the library and they were extremely useful for clarifying grammar points. However some of the animation was cheesy and the acting was awful. I hope this new version is less cheesy.
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