Genki 1 Textbook: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese Paperback – 1 February 2011

Wonderful book

Helpful!

This is a great book for classroom environment , as most of the practice questions are based on interactions between students, like ask each other questions, make a list of each other likes and dislikes , present a project work in english in class and translate it to japanese, so most of questions are like based on that approach , so this is something you need to keep in mind, you can see i have posted some images of exercise that show pair work questions, many questions are based on group work etc, so all in all a great choice if you are in any university or learning school with mates .....

Genki is a great textbook to start learning Japanese.Pros:1. Lots of exercises2. Clear grammar explanations3. Many example sentences4. Dropping the use of Romaji after Chapter 2 (really helpful)5. Contains summary points and cultural references6. Native recorded audio7. Beginner-friendlyCons:1. Available only in English (unlike Minna no Nihongo)2. Exercises are suited to classroom environments3. Not good for learning KanjiOverall, it's a great book to start learning Japanese (either self-study or school). And, there are lots of extremely useful resources that you can find on the internet for this book.I suggest you start with this book and supplement it with other materials for Kanji and vocabulary.Happy learning!

Japanese is a very difficult language for English speakers to learn. If you've learned some French or Spanish (as I have), forget about it! Japanese is many times more difficult. That being said, Japanese is also more interesting, in that it has a completely different structure and forces you to think differently.Genki does a good job of presenting Japanese is an orderly fashion. The authors are all native Japanese speakers, and there are a few places where they make mistakes in English, but those small errors do not take away from the text.Genki could use a few more sample Japanese sentences, though. For example, when they present a new pattern, they often provide just a couple of examples when ten or twelve would be better. I suppose they assume (correctly) that this book will mostly be used in a classroom setting, and that the teacher will provide additional material.In the end, Genki is a good textbook, but you will need more help if you are going to learn to speak Japanese. That is not the fault of the authors, it is just the way it is.