| |
Shop
| |  |
|
Best Sellers
| | Home Japanese I - 3rd Ed.: Learn to Speak and Understand Japanese with Pimsleur Language Programs (Comprehensive) | |
|  | |  | | | Japanese I - 3rd Ed.: Learn to Speak and Understand Japanese with Pimsleur Language Programs (Comprehensive) | | SKU:
| | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | | Comprehensive Japanese I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus a Culture Booklet.Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will be able to: * initiate and maintain face-to-face conversations, * deal with every day situations -- ask for information, directions, and give basic information about yourself and family, * communicate basic information on informal topics and participate in casual conversations, * avoid basic cultural errors and handle minimum courtesy and travel requirements, * satisfy personal needs and limited social demands, * establish rapport with strangers in foreign countries, | | | |
List Price:
| | |
Our Price:
| $345.00
& this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
| |
You Save:
| |
| | |
|
| | Product Details | | Author: | Pimsleur | | Publisher: | Pimsleur | | Publication Date: | October 01, 2002 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0743523539 | | Package Length: | 12.7 inches | | Package Width: | 11.2 inches | | Package Height: | 1.5 inches | | Package Weight: | 2.25 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 60 reviews |
| |
| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Less Successful Than for European Languages Jul 19, 2008
I have gone through the complete Pimsleur series for several European languages --- Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Greek (only Level 1 available). I have supplemented these with the Ultimate Italian, Portuguese, etc. material (book only, not the CD) from Living Language because I want a more systematic presentation of the grammar than Pimsleur gives. Also Just Listen 'N Learn from Passport Books (now McGraw Hill) and the Take Off In series from Oxford University Press, in order to expand my vocabulary. I go through each Pimsleur lesson at least twice the first time through, with lots of use of the pause button and backspace button on my player. And when when I've finished one level, I go back to the beginning and listen to it all over again. With this preparation, I was able to travel in Greece and Italy and briefly in Portugal (which of course required a readjustment from the Brazilian form of the language) and even have friendly conversations with some people who spoke little or no English.
But the Pimsleur method doesn't work as well for Japanese as it does for European languages. You will certainly learn a lot of Japanese, but you won't speak Japanese.
This is a review for all three levels of the Pimsleur Japanese. The Pimsleur materials provide a good starting point. I would never try to learn any language without starting with Pimsleur. (I haven't tried Rosetta Stone. I did eventually get the Linguaphone series for Japanese, which is forty years old and completely dreadful.)
There are two big problems with the Pimsleur approach to Japanese: vocabulary and grammar. Five hundred words just doesn't take you as far in Japanese as it does in European languages. For instance, in European languages you learn the words for family members down to nieces, nephews, and cousins. In Japanese, you learn only husband, wife, son, and daughter. (No, not even father and mother.) The difficulty is that there are separate words for older brother/sister and younger brother/sister. Furthermore, the words you use for talking about your own family (to outsiders) are different from the ones you use for talking about someone else's family. In some cases this difference is minor, but in other cases totally different words are used.
As far as grammar goes, at first it seems like Japanese grammar is very simple. Unlike Russian or German, nouns are not declined. For most nouns, the plural form is identical to the singular. First and second person pronouns (I, you) are most often omitted. Verbs have no conjugation by person: whether the subject is I, you, we, he, she, they, the verb form doesn't change at all. All verbs apparently end in "mas" (usually "imas," sometimes "emas"). To make a verb negative, you just add "sen" at the end. And there are in principle only two tenses, often called the past and the non-past (present and future). (Actually, there is a sort of separate future sense used when one is not absolutely certain about the statement one makes about the future. This is the "desho" form of the verb. It's a little like the distinction in English between "Tomorrow I go to New York" and "Tomorrow it will rain.") The verb system is extremely systematic. Most textbooks say that there are only three irregular verbs (to come, to do, and to be), although a handful of other verbs have slight irregularities in certain forms. You can buy a book called 501 Japanese Verbs, but I don't know quite why anyone would feel the need for it, except to learn the vocabulary.
But in fact the verb system is quite difficult, because there are an incredible number of endings. For instance, there is no word for "if" in Japanese; instead, there's a conditional form of the verb. And when you say, "I want to eat," there's no verb for "I want"; instead, you use the "desirative" form of "eat." And when you say, "Harry wants to eat," it's a completely different verb form. Consequently, the Pimsleur Japanese doesn't cover nearly as many grammar points in Japanese as it does with European languages. For instance, the passive voice isn't taught at all. Relative clauses ("the man who was here yesterday") are not covered at all. They are very simple in Japanese, but very confusing for someone who speaks English.
Pimsleur is based on two principles that just don't work as well for Japanese as for European languages. First, there is no systematic presentation of the grammar. One learns grammar by learning model sentences. And second, one learns only sentences that one would actually use in a business or touristic context, rather than contrived sentences such as "The pen of my aunt is on the table."
One consequence is that everything one learns is in the mode of formal speech (in contrast to "plain" speech). Formal speech is in fact the only way you will ever speak in Japan, unless you acquire a Japanese lover or very good friend. The problem is though that in the first place, the whole Japanese verb system is based on the plain (informal) mode, so it's hard to learn if you start with the formal form of verbs. (This is the form that ends in "mas.") Secondly, even in completely formal speech you need to very frequently use the informal form of verbs whenever a sentence contains more than one clause. In fact, these Pimsleur sentences contain lots of verbs in the informal mode. And this is very confusing since it's much easier to derive the formal form from the informal than vice-versa, so you frequently wind up thinking, "Where the hell did that verb come from?" Second, when used in a sentence, the informal form of the verb is usually wrapped up in a package of little particles and other words, all of which sounds like one very long word. So it's very difficult to learn the verb itself. To a large extent these extra little additions are softeners, to make sure that what one says doesn't come out as overly confrontational. It's as if one says in English, "The thing is, you know, I would sort of, like, prefer to go another day." As I say, this mostly comes out as one long word.
So start with Pimsleur, yes. But you're going to need to follow up with lots more books and tape sets (the iPod Japanese series, JapanesePod101.com, is very good, and a lot of fun) and probably some real live courses before you have any useful knowledge of Japanese. (I'm still in the beginning stages myself, and not sure to what extent I really want to continue with Japanese.)
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Copy Protected Apr 27, 2008
The course is great in essence, but there are two major trade-offs:
1. I was unable to rip the whole set into iTunes - and put it on my iPod. That was very annoying! (But, maybe, that was just me being unable.)
2. Some syllables are difficult to distinguish (is it ending with n or with m?) when you have nothing in written.
Besides that, I really enjoyed the course, and I'd recommend it when you can overcome said two issues.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Good, but expect to use more materials. Mar 31, 2008
When learning Japanese, or any language really, people are probably most inclined to use these audiobook type of programs. Especially for students, workers, Moms...anybody who tends to be short on free time. You can easily pop these in the car, or in the stereo while you cook and clean, or on your MP3 player while studying for your test.
Pimsleur's Japanese I comes with thirty audio lessons, each about a half an hour long. The lessons consist of an announcer, who tells you what things mean or tells you what to say in response to something, and two Japanese speakers, who will be the ones saying most of the Japanese material.
Each lesson usually starts out with a short conversation between the two Japanese speakers. The announcer then goes about picking apart pieces of the conversation bit by bit until the full conversation will be understandable to the listener. Often, they will skip the conversation and just go straight into learning phrases and vocabulary.
The announcer will also seemingly randomly quiz you on material learned in past lessons. For example, you may be in the middle of learning how to say "Would you like to eat dinner with me?" and the announcer will suddenly say "Tell me 'Good morning' in Japanese". This helps pound that material into your head, and also keeps you on your feet.
When the announcer tells you to say something in Japanese, you are given a few moments of silence (It varies depending on the length of the sentence you are asked to speak) and then one of the Japanese speakers says the correct answer. For example:
Announcer: "Say 'Good Morning' in Japanese"
...
...
...
Japanese speaker: "Ohayou Gozaimasu"
I like this method, because it encourages the listener to speak the phrase aloud, rather than just thinking it, or having it constantly repeated for them without asking any feedback from them. I believe it helps reinforce the grammar and vocabulary, at least it does for me. The Japanese speakers also tend to talk at a normal pace for native speakers, so it helps the listener get used to the flow of Japanese.
As said before, this unit comes with Thirty lessons each being around 30 minutes in length. That's about 15 hours total. To put this in perspective, the Japan Foundation estimates that the average student needs to study 150 hours to pass it's lowest level test, which is "Basic" knowledge of Japanese.
You aren't going to come close to being fluent by just using this unit, or even by using the other units of Pimsleur's Japanese. One would be foolish to ONLY use this material, especially with all the great free learning material on the web.
So,
Will using this make you fluent? Obviously not.
Will you be able to take a vacation to Japan and get around without a guide or translator? Probably not.
Will you learn basic components of Japanese that will serve as a foundation to build upon using other learning materials? Absolutely.
Positives:
-Great for those who are too busy to take time to crack open a book.
-Doing one lesson a day will have you finished with this in a month, and lessons are easy enough that you should have no problem at this pace.
-Teaches basic Japanese that can be easily built on with other material.
Negatives:
-The price is INSANE. Go see if you can find it cheaper, as $200+ is not even CLOSE to what this is worth. I personally would not sell it for more than $30.
-You aren't directly taught about grammar, rather you hear particles used in different situations and are supposed to infer why and how they are used. Not good.
-Will not teach you the kana writing systems which are SO essential to anyone learning Japanese. I learned the kana about two months into my Japanese study, and I wish I had learned them sooner.
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
not the most interesting method for oral learning Feb 19, 2008
Despite heavy advertising to the contrary, the Pimsleur language program isn't a panacea for learning Japanese quickly and easily. I made it through the first 20 lessons before it became simply too tedious to continue. Briefly, the positive and negative aspects of Pimsleur Japanese include:
Positive
1) The spaced repetition of words and phrases (which is Pimsleur's big selling point) really does seem to work, and is unique to the system.
2) Words and phrases are generally pronounced slowly enough so as to be easily understood
3) The lessons do a good job of building upon themselves and continue to reinforce older lessons
Negative
1) As many others have pointed out, Pimsleur is extremely overpriced. For your 200 odd dollars you get 30 half hour lessons. There are a number of online webcasts that offer as much, if not more lessons at a much lower cost (some are even free).
2) The use of written materials is discouraged by the system; thus, written explanations for the lessons are sparse. A more integrated approach would seem to be more appropriate for adult learners.
3) Pimsleur scrupulously avoids even mentioning grammar. Thus, while you learn to parrot the presented phrases, you're on your own in trying to make up any phrase or sentence of your own (e.g. the particles ga and wa are thrown around freely in the lesson, yet there is little mention of when they're inclusion is appropriate).
4) While the lessons start out on an easy learning curve, the learning curve doesn't seem to increase consistently. Some lessons contain too much new material and others not enough.
5) The lessons are a bit long and the conversations are generally pretty stale. A 15 minute session is about the limit of my ability to concentrate deeply and the presentation is so lifeless and dry that its sometimes tough to remember them (again, the various webcasts available have shorter lessons with more entertaining conversations).
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 A tip on how to use the program Dec 27, 2007
I'm using Japanese 2 right now, but I want to give a little advice to those just considering starting out with Japanese 1, especially those who may have read some of the complaints that others make and who may be uncertain whether they want to use Pimsleur.
First, if the price is daunting, try to price how much a personal tutor or a Berlitz-type course would cost. Pimsleur's program is much easier to use than the Rosetta Stone, which also costs a lot. A university language professor I spoke with said that all of these learn-it-yourself methods are far inferior to learning from a face-to-face teacher/tutor. But Pimsleur is more like a tutor than Rosetta Stone.
Second, if you can't or don't want to spend hundreds of dollars, but still want to learn, there is an easy way to get the Pimsleur programs: Rent them from Recorded Books (http://www.recordedbooks.com). Japanese 1 comes in two parts - A & B - and together the rental for all the CDs for one month is $31.95. If you do one lesson a day, you can finish them in a month. Or you can rent part A first for a month, return it and get part B. Then you can go on to Japanese 2 and 3 - all for a total of about $96 plus shipping.
Third, I suggest you do each lesson twice (or even three times) to get the pronunciation and vocabulary correct before going on.
Fourth, because Pimsleur doesn't provide much written material and no vocabulary lists, it's helpful to write down the words you learn - with the help of a Japanese-English dictionary. I have the Langenscheidt Pocket Dictionary, which I bought from Amazon. As some folks have pointed out, it's easy to forget words and phrases that were heavily emphasized in an earlier lesson but that don't get repeated in later ones. So keep a list.
| |
| |
| |  | |  |
|
| You may also like ...
|
