 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Genki outlines in 23 structured lessons all the fundamentals of the Japanese language. Abundantly illustrated and containing a wide variety of exercises, Genki is sure to bring vigor to your classroom! Though primarily meant for use in college-level classes, it is also a good guide for independent learners and is a nice resource book for teachers of Japanese. Genki's authors teach at Kansai Gaidai University, which hosts the largest number of North American students spending their junior year in Japan. |
Average Customer Rating:   Shameful This is a horrible book. Why the Genki series gets so many good ratings on Amazon, I don't know. Perhaps it's the fact that for some odd reason more people than usual seem to be rating the sellers in the PRODUCT RATING area.
Anyway, this book is much like the Nakama and the Yookoso series. They don't take the learner seriously and the whole program is extremely childish. While popular on community college (and unfortunately even on University) Campuses, the Genki series is horrible for any learner. Like Nakama, it pushes learners to have the many gaps it leaves filled by Japanese instructors. Why not just forgo the pleasure of dropping $50 on a useless book?
The grammar explanations in Genki, like Nakama, are simplistic and examples are insufficient. Again as in Nakama, useless "cultural" aspects of Japan and the Japanese language, such as how to write letters in the language share as much of the spotlight as anything that would be useful.
The vocabulary and the format of the series are atrocious. The most common complaint of the book from both teachers and students is that the vocabulary is simply an illogical and useless mishmash that often has no correlation to the dialogue at the beginning of the chapter or to anything at all. The most famous example of this would be that the first chapter of the second book, which is supposed to be about restaurant service introduces the Japanese word for "UFO." This is ridiculous. The coverage of vocabulary is also glaringly insufficient. The grammatical explanations also follow such chaotic placement throughout the book with no linearity and complex grammatical structures being presented here or there at the author's whim before or after more simplistic ones. This book is so bad that one can almost just pick up the second book and start off from there with no effect on the learning process (assuming one knows the Japanese writing system, of course).
Like Nakama, this book is also a rip-off. It comes with no audio for the student, so it's useless for self-studying. To get the exercises you need to build ability, you also have to buy an overpriced pencil-thin workbook. This is where it differs from Nakama - although they are the same price, the workbook for Nakama is far superior to the Genki one. Expect to drop some 80 dollars list-price to not learn Japanese.
Ultimately, this ill-conceived series of Japanese textbooks should be considered a shame by the Japan Times. And it's also shameful of teachers to push this kindergarten Japanese text in Universities across the country.
Why does it get good reviews? My guess is as good as anybody else's. This book has very few positive points, but it looks extremely good and the paper is of very high quality. It's all flash and no delivery, just like the Japan Times newspaper. The only good thing about this book is that it covers Kanji to an acceptable level.
So why good reviews? I challenge anyone who has become fluent in Japanese in their adult age and used this book as a first two-year starting point to give me an answer. Any takers? I didn't think so.
Can I give 6 stars? Absolutely fantastic. I was given a personalised, hand-written note with my book thanking me for the purchase. The seller also upgraded my order to expedited shipping for FREE! I ended up getting the book right after my first class that Monday, meaning I wouldn't have to be the awkward guy who had to share with someone for a week.
Thank you! Book review It was pretty fast delivery and in good condition, but there were a few nicks and dings on it, but nothing too big. fantastic. The textbook is just what I was hoping it would be. I've been told that the language itself is very difficult, but I was surprised to find that it was simpler for me to comprehend then my previous instruction in French. The beginning work is very straightforward and smoothly transitions from using romaji. I do suggest spending a fair amount of time practicing and memorizing the hiragana and katakana. It makes everything easier. I'm not sure if that was how the process was intended to be, but overall, I highly recommend Genki's text. Recommendations for Supplemental Material In my study of Japanese, I've used Genki (the standard textbook at my College) as my primary text. I definitely recommend the text but when it comes to learning any foreign language, no textbook on it's own will take you to mastery. Here are a few additional resources that I found particularly helpful in supplementing Genki, in the areas of listening, speaking, Kanji and slang.
- Genki Online "Self-Study Room": Lots of resources here, my favorite of which is "Genki Movies." The textbook dialogues are presented by native speakers in a more natural way (meaning more challenging to comprehend) than the CDs that accompany the text.
- White Rabbit Press Kanji Flashcards: Genki is a little light on Kanji in my opinion. These are truly the best Kanji flashcards available. I started by re-arranging the cards to correspond to each Genki chapter, then expanded my study to incorporate additional Kanji not covered in Genki. They've got way more info on each Kanji character than the text does, and they're organized for JLPT test prep if you're into that.
- Pimsleur Japanese I - 3rd Ed. and Japanese II - 2nd Ed.: These audio courses go much further in terms of building your listening and speaking skills than the text with accompanying CDs alone. They also introduce new vocabulary that's not included in the text. So far I've discovered that Japanese I roughly corresponds to the grammar covered in the first half of the Genki I text. Note there's also a digital version of levels I, II and III available.
Lastly, for those who want to learn Japanese the way it's really spoken on the streets of Japan,
- Making Out in Japanese, Revised Edition: This little book has all the slang, chit-chat, insults and pick-up lines that have been understandably omitted from the Genki text. It also delineates which expressions are used by which genders.
Good luck with your Japanese language studies! |  |
Select button not working? 
