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Better than Pimsleur for Japanese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4844 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 9 of 13 26 December 2011 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
While I have never used it myself, I have seen lots of positive on this forum for Aasimil (or Asimil?). It is an audio program that is from a French company and very well respected. I have not seen much for Japanese, though. I looked, but it's equally possible I missed it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fivesquare Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4821 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: French, Japanese | Message 10 of 13 26 December 2011 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the recommendation. I noticed that they certainly have a book in English for Japanese, I wasn't sure if each book is also an audio course. I'll look into it more. They also seem to have a more extensive library for Japanese in French. I'm a bit hesitant to learn Japanese in French, but it might be worth a try when Pimsleur runs out. Might be weird to learn a language in a language that's not your native language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5792 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 11 of 13 26 December 2011 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You could always give JapanesePod101 a go. The format of the lessons is generally one target dialogue, plus an explanation about the dialogue and some of the grammar and vocab used. There are no drills as such, but it does fit your requirements for an audio course and there are literally hundreds of past lessons you can dip into if you pay the subscription fee. Some of the lessons also provide some kind of "bonus track" with an alternative register used, for example in the main lesson the dialogue is in polite desu/masu form (which is actually really important to know), but the bonus track is in casual form.
I pretty much kicked off my own Japanese studies with Pimsleur although I used it in conjunction with a more traditional textbook (Genki). I think Pimsleur really helped me to develop a half decent pronunciation but I can't honestly remember any of the phrases that it taught, they did not seem immediately useful to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 12 of 13 27 December 2011 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You definitely need to learn all the registers taught by Pimsleur. Why not just supplement it with
Tae Kim's Grammar Guide ? He starts out with informal, which is (arguably) a more efficient way to teach grammar. It's well known that Pimsleur is weak on grammar, so you should supplement it either way. Michel Thomas will give you a good start in grammar, but it's also polite register. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4511 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 13 of 13 12 January 2012 at 9:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Pimsleur teaches you "casual polite" forms. Also some more polite ways to express what you already learned to say in the normal, standard way.
It's true that Pimsleur doesn't teach plain colloquial Japanese. The dictionary forms of verbs are also not (really) included (they are, but the program doesn't point it out) and other conjunctive forms are presented by example, with only limited vocab, which makes it hard to learn how it works for other verbs you'd acquire outside the program. I think that finishing Pimsleur 1-3 is a very good start. Just follow it through. You'll build a base of some structures you'll come across again later in your studies, after you finished it, and then you'll have an Eureka moment where you recognize the Pimsleur-taught structures in new context, with new vocab. Helps tremendously. After Pimsleur, I went the Michael Thomas route, also finished this one,and found it very nice. I learned a good deal doing these 2 courses in exactly this order. After you finished this, JapanesePOD101 comes into play. You'll want to skip the Newbie series completely, and a lot of the Beginner seasons will be review, but it'll reinforce what you learned and build some vocab along the way, plus it'll teach you new "tricks". Somewhere around season 2 or 3 you'll encounter new structures on a regular basis. Audio courses, however, have one thing in common: They're not very good at mass vocab acquisition. Atleast not the 3 I mentioned above. Pimsleur is said to teach around 600 words, which is a start. Michael Thomas focuses on beginner level grammar (the "Advanced" course, mind you), with probably 100-200 new words by the time you finished it - generous guess. JapanesePOD101 delivers. Tons a vocab, but you'll want the review tracks and play them over and over, unless you'll find a better way to ingrain words. JPOD is also very good to acquire vocab that's actually in use. (Pimsleur and Thomas are so basic, everything they teach is essential - grammar and words) You may want to incorporate other learning material along the way, like "Tae Kim's grammar guide" or japanese.about.com or "imabilanguagelearningcenter" (no, that name's not a joke). I also utilize Lang-8.com ... but I wouldn't advise youto do that from the start. It only starts to become effective at Lower Intermediate level, when you can actually understand the explanations and corrections given in Japanese (because many J English learners can't provide explanations in English, they do it in J, if they assume you can understand it). Now these aren't an audio courses... but I don't know of anything else really. Vocabulearn or Learn In Your Car do exist, but I have no experience with them. Edited by atama warui on 12 January 2012 at 9:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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