Get ready for the latest GENKI!初級テキストのベストセラー、改訂第3版!GENKI, one of the world's favorite elementary Japanese textbook series, has become even better with the arrival of its third edition!シリーズ累計200万超の初級テキストがさらに進化Enhancements include...●Dialogues and Updated to reflect today's world●Grammar Now even easier to follow● Reorganized to further clarify their relationship with grammar points●Can-do Added to the start of each lesson●“Let's Find Out": Investigative tasks have been added●New Learners can use their smartphone to download and listen to audio materials【主な改訂点】●会話・単語:社会の変化に合わせて見直し●文法:説明をさらに読みやすく改訂●練習:文法との対応をわかりやすく整理●各課の冒頭に目標(できるようになること)を明記●「Let's Find Out」で調べるタスクを導入●音声をアプリで配信、スマホですぐ聞ける※この商品は固定レイアウトで作成されており、タブレットなど大きいディスプレイを備えた端末で読むことに適しています。また、文字列のハイライトや検索、辞書の参照、引用などの機能が使用できません。
Textbook or not I’m counting this as read, I read all of it. I think the practice portions could be a little confusing when doing it on your own, and it could spend more time on each grammar point but I think it’s a very good textbook for the language, although I haven’t tried any others.
It is a book recommended for classroom but I used it for self-study. Tried self-study Japanese a couple times before this but they all fall apart due to lack of structure so this book does help with that. The main complaint for this book is its explanations are weirdly wordy, you start reading a grammar and a couple sentences in you have no idea what the author want to say. Probably shouldn't include too many trivial or contractions may help.
So it is a helpful book, but I wouldn't say I enjoy it.
I used to use the 2nd edition of this Book in my course. I find that the 3rd edition of Genki is much better organized than the earlier editions. It is much easier to teach the language using this edition. My compliments to the authors.
This book doesn't cover everything for the N5 exam. But it builds up a solid base for Grammar. Most importantly it teaches verb conjugation in the correct way. The other popular book - Min Na Nihongo's approach is completely counter intuitive, which ruins the fun for most beginners.
If you spent two minutes in your Japanese language learning journey, then you’ve already come across Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese. But I couldn’t tell you why it’s so popular. It’s expensive and you can get the same level of education for free with Duolingo.
I guess Genki has the monopoly on beginner Japanese textbooks. It’s used in English-speaking universities, has dozens of anki decks, reddit posts, and youtube videos made, a wiki page, and a cult following online. Yet somehow, even with all of that, Genki is still a terrible and poorly written textbook. And I’m going to tell you exactly why.
Full disclosure: I didn’t finish this textbook. I stopped at around chapter 10. But since this book has 12 chapters, I was basically done. However, I did use this book for one semester in university (chapters 1-7), so I know the first 7 chapters incredibly well.
The most crippling aspect of this book is that the authors (bless them) are too afraid to challenge you. The feels like the authors do not want to give you context that’s too difficult so that you don’t close the book in a huff and a puff! I get it. Why struggle when the authors can hold your hand and make you think you’re learning a language to any real depth?
The dialogue is what broke me though. And not in a “Japanese is so hard I’ll never do it again!” way, but in a “wow…this book sucks” way. The dialogue is easy to read and unnatural. It’s terrible. I feel like I made no progress in my Japanese when I compared the dialogue from chapter 1 to the dialogue in chapter 7. It doesn’t implement previously taught grammar points. It doesn’t expand on anything in the previous chapters. It’s just….terrible.
The vocabulary choices for each chapter is horrendous, not to mention the book is using only about 35% of the vocabulary introduced per chapter. You have a stack of vocabulary without context and previously mentioned vocabulary is never brought up again. Each chapter has a theme but the vocabulary doesn’t match it. A small example, the word “textbook” doesn’t show up until chapter 6. Chapter 2 has tasks that talk about items present in a classroom (such as a textbook) but it was introduced in chapter 6 instead of chapter 2? Chapter 6 is talking about some character’s day. And no, his day didn’t involve looking at a textbook.
New chapters don’t try to implement previously taught grammar points either. The teacher had to supplement a lot of material because the book itself was lacking in instruction. Grammar points are vague and short, with hardly any example sentences, if at all. The grammar is presented in a similar manner to vocabulary: without any logical structure. You constantly have to flip back to previous chapters to try to make sense of anything that is introduced later.
The exercises are all class-based. Good if you’re in a classroom but kind of mundane otherwise. They’re not particularly interesting though.
There are reading and kanji practices strangely placed at the end of the book itself. However, the said practices are so simple and ineffective that it feels like it was an afterthought. The reading prompts are…laughable. Genuinely, if you ignore them (which you probably will because most people don’t know there is reading/kanji materials at the end of the book) then nothing in your learning process will change.
“But Noel! Tokini Andy told me that Genki is superior to (name any other textbook on the market right now)!” Well, my friend, Andy is being paid to shill a product. None of the arguments he makes even reflect the actual pros/cons of the textbooks he’s comparing. If Genki was so great, why are tens of thousands of students flocking to his videos to make sense of this god forsaken textbook while he collects the ad revenue from your views?
I’m glad there are better textbooks on the market now. It’s no surprise that there seems to be a consensus (at least online) with people who finish Genki II struggling to get into Intermediate Tobira. Genki lacks the ability to prepare the student for actual intermediate Japanese.
یه جاهایی واقع خوب توضیح نمی داد و به ویدیوهای یوتیوب برای واضح شدن بحث نیاز پیدا می کردم. برای خوندنش هم تا یه درس رو مسلط نشدی، نباید بری درس بعد چون مدام دانسته های قبلی مورد نیاز میشه. شنیدی می گن ریاضی اگه پایه ات خوب نباشه نمی تونی یاد بگیری؟ گرامر ژاپنی هم این شکلیه چون خیلی از فرم های جدیدی که تدریس می شه برای مبنای فرم های قدیمی که درس داده ساخته می شن. به طور کلی به نظرم خوب درس نمیده. البته من کتاب گرامر دیگه ای نخوندم و این اولیمه، ولی چت جی پی تی و یوتیوب روان تر و ساده تر آموزش می دن. هرچند باید کتاب دومش رو هم بخونم، چون حداقل یه ساختاری داره. راستی، پلنم این بود یک ساله تمومش کنم چون می خواستم ژاپنی رو آهسته و پیوسته بخونم، ولی چهار ماهه تموم شد و من خوشحالم که علی رغم اینکه فول تایم نخوندم، زودتر از موعد پیشبینی شده تموم شد چه جالب و غم انگیز برای من! تنها ریویو به فارسی رو من نوشتم!