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Japanese Textbook Review: Genki I

Posted on 28. Feb, 2008 by koichi.

Over the next month, I will be reviewing some of the mainstream Japanese text books that are currently being used by Japanese language learners; from there I will move on to reviewing programs that use technology to teach Japanese (such as Japanesepod and Rosetta). Why am I doing this, you ask? Well, it’s pretty big chunk of my senior thesis (which is on Japanese pedagogy). I’ll fill you in on the details later, but for now, let’s get started with this review.

I spent a couple of hours going through Genki I. I would summarize the book for you, but I think they do a much better job: “Aim and Purpose: Genki, An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese is a textbook for beginners in the study of the Japanese language. Students can complete the elementary-level study of Japanese in the 23 lessons of this text, which is divided into two volumes. The book is designed maily for use in university and college courses, but it is also effective for high school students and adults who are beginning to learn Japanese either at school or on their own.”

Overall, I was very impressed with this textbook. I don’t remember what text I used when I first started learning Japanese, but it certainly wasn’t as swanky as this one (swanky is a good thing). I can see why so many Japanese classrooms use this as their only textbook. It has good flow, it does well building lessons on top of each other, and it always gives you just enough information to get you thinking a little bit (good for weeding out the people who only think they want to learn Japanese, but are actually just lazy).

Still, there were a few pitfalls. To find out what they are, and to find out if this Japanese textbook is right for you, click on, my friend, click on. (more…)

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