i FINALLY got JAP 4busyPEOPLE

[ben]

"Japanese For Busy People"

I just want to know some good methods on how to study with it. What should i already know.

[Spaztick]

Just hiragana and katakana are good enough to start learning grammar and kanji. After we tell you to learn both of those, you're on your own as to how you want to study!

I'd say learn the grammar first, and then pick up kanji, but you should be learning both at the same time (so don't deny either one for the other).

[jinksys]

Did you save the receipt?:D

[Daisuke]

jinksys wrote:
Did you save the receipt?:D

lol !

[ben]

Thanks Spaztick.

Daisuke, Jinksys, why, is it a bad book?

[Daisuke]

What?.. I don't even own it, so i have no idea, if it's good or bad.

[Diggity]

Well I looked it over at a bookstore and read a ton of reviews on it... and decided to wait until my Genki book would arrive from internet land... Japanese is fairly easy to learn from it and it gives you some useful "spoken" japanese grammar as well as all the formal. It has an audio CD so you can hear spoken native japanese and listen to the vocab (as I do in my car going to work and home.)

I didn't like the way the Busy People book looked at all. I know that it's popular, but I think in the long run I will learn more faster with the Genki...

[toryn]

Hmm, I haven't got Genki, but I've got JFBP (and other books) and I have trouble with JFBP, though that might be due to the fact that I understand Japanese better in kana better than romaji. It just seems a little light? I dunno, I've been building my knowledge of Japanese from the ground up, so the idea of trying to learn it from sentences straight off weirds me out, though it apparently works for some.

What are the tapes like? I got mine from an op shop without the tapes, and it seems to refer to them a fair bit.

[Vengeance]

Yeah, every university over here uses that book to teach people but it's not the best book...it's just for cramming so much Japanese which isn't always the best way to do it. If you cram it all in at once then you will have gaps in your Japanese knowledge from the simplest of the basics...

[ben]

Well, i got the "new", "revised", "Kana" version. It didn't have tapes. I have never seen the Genki books, but now i will look harder for them.

[Schattenjedi]

ben wrote:
Well, i got the "new", "revised", "Kana" version. It didn't have tapes. I have never seen the Genki books, but now i will look harder for them.

I've got both of the Genki books and can say that they are excellent for serious learners of Japanese. After the first book you should be able to read and understand "classroom japanese" and then in the second book they go much deeper and give you lots of very useful tips on common colloquial Japanese sentence forms and word usage. All grammar structures of any importance are coverered by the end of the second book. They really put a lot of effort into these books, having a trial version be used at a Swedish university and adjusting the books based on many suggestions of students and teachers of the Japanese language. Highly recommended.

[Spaztick]

Would you reccomend the Genji for me? I know basic and some advanced basic Japanese and about 270 kanji (265 actually, give or take if I remember each one on a given day).

[Diggity]

Not if you are that far along... or maybe the 2nd book only. After both books you will know about 315 or so kanji. The nice thing for you might be the grammar and the vocabulary. They are great books and getting both might help you reenforce what you already know very quickly and what you don't know learn quickly as well.

[ben]

Well, i will look into Genki. XD at Spaztick's sig.

[Spaztick]

I will most definetly be getting the genki books then; if I don't use all of it then I'll use it for my little sister.