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A review by ashleylm
GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese [With CDROM] by Yoko Ikeda, Yutaka Ohno, Eri Banno
4.0
It's okay, and given the alternatives, might even be the best. I didn't find myself drawn to it, I wish Kanji were more integrated (e.g. start us out really slow, teach us "I eat," "I ate," etc., using proper Kanji, and move forward with reading and grammar at the same rate. That would appeal to me, at least. As a 55 year old man, I'm not drawn to the dialogue examples (I want to learn how to say things like "what's a really good restaurant that's not so famous I can't get into it? Money's no object" rather than "what will you do on summer vacation?" Plus, Mary seemed really bitchy.
On the plus side it mostly works, it's integrated with a lot of other systems (e.g. you can set BunPro to match its chapters, there's a zillion Anki study sets for it, etc.) ... it's fine. But as for "a book to read and inspire," no, it didn't really do that for me. I won't be returning to it fondly (as I do, say, to "7 Types of Ambiguity", one of my favourite English grammar books).
*Returning to bump it up a star to 4 stars because to be fair it's only intended to be a textbook, and I did learn a lot. Plus it has so much ancillary support, and the dialogue videos online are really cute. Yes, it's not a literary masterpiece, but a literary masterpiece wouldn't effectively teach Japanese.
(5* = amazing, terrific book, one of my all-time favourites, 4* = very good book, 3* = good book, but nothing to particularly rave about, 2* = disappointing book, and 1* = awful, just awful. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)
On the plus side it mostly works, it's integrated with a lot of other systems (e.g. you can set BunPro to match its chapters, there's a zillion Anki study sets for it, etc.) ... it's fine. But as for "a book to read and inspire," no, it didn't really do that for me. I won't be returning to it fondly (as I do, say, to "7 Types of Ambiguity", one of my favourite English grammar books).
*Returning to bump it up a star to 4 stars because to be fair it's only intended to be a textbook, and I did learn a lot. Plus it has so much ancillary support, and the dialogue videos online are really cute. Yes, it's not a literary masterpiece, but a literary masterpiece wouldn't effectively teach Japanese.
(5* = amazing, terrific book, one of my all-time favourites, 4* = very good book, 3* = good book, but nothing to particularly rave about, 2* = disappointing book, and 1* = awful, just awful. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)