2024 the best in japanese review

Price: $24.99
(as of Dec 18, 2024 06:45:09 UTC - Details)

The design of this Japanese Reader is based on our belief that the most enjoyable and efficient way to learn to read in Japanese is to dive in and start reading sentences almost immediately, learning new kanji as you go. In order to make this approach workable, we introduce about ten new kanji at the beginning of each chapter and then ask you to take a quick pre-test on their pronunciations before starting to read. We include in each chapter only kanji characters that you know or are in the process of learning, and we provide immediate feedback about your reading accuracy in the form of same-page romaji equivalents and translations.

Although it might seem impractical to start reading practice before you have learned Japanese characters very well, this approach is firmly grounded in a study technique known as Active Recall, which can be defined as “learning by answering questions.” Active Recall is the basis of flashcard learning generally, and it is highly effective for building strong memories, compared to more passive study methods.

When you try to read one of the Japanese sentences in this book, you are essentially asking yourself two questions: “How is this sentence pronounced, and what does it mean?” This self-interrogation forces your brain to work in order to recognize the characters in the sentence and recall their pronunciations. When you need to look at the answers to the implied questions, they are available on the same page. This means that you can significantly reduce the amount of time that you spend memorizing kanji. You can also minimize the number of times that you need to look up information in other books or dictionaries as you read.

The book includes 4,200 Japanese sentences which employ only hiragana, katakana and 608 "target" kanji. Romaji equivalents and translations are always available, printed in very small text in a column adjacent to the Japanese text, but they are easy to ignore when you don’t need them. By simply reading and taking advantage of the feedback and the references in the book, you will soon be able to read with confidence.

The target kanji that are used in the sentences are taught by means of an innovative Core Kanji catalogue. This catalogue includes pronunciations, meanings, descriptions of the kanji as images, and examples of words that use the kanji.

When you encounter a kanji in the Japanese text that you do not know well, you can easily look it up with the help of the Pronunciation Index which contains 1,634 kanji pronunciations linked to kanji reference numbers in the kanji catalogue. After you locate a particular kanji in the catalogue, we suggest that you focus on the memory aides provided. These memory aides are both visual (descriptions of kanji as images) and verbal (homophones for each of the kanji's pronunciations).

If you want to progress further with your Japanese reading, please be aware that Learn to Read in Japanese, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4 are now available for purchase. These three books introduce 1480 additional kanji, for a total of 2088 in the four books.

Please visit us at JapaneseAudioLessons.com, where we also provide 30 hours of free high-quality Japanese audio lessons.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Roger Lake (December 30, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0998378704
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0998378701
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.61 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.27 x 9 inches
Reviewer: Jared Hodgkins
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A great book from a great family
Review: This book is absolutely wonderful for learning to read Japanese from an English learner's perspective. Everything is conveniently laid out and easy to work through without forcing you to jump back and forth between various other tools and also at the same time keeping the crutches nearby to use but out of sight so that you better advance your skills in Japanese by not using crutches when you don't absolutely need them. I am a huge fan of this family and their work that they have provided to the learner's community on their website is enough to support their book, but this book on its own right even had they not provided such a great website is wonderful and I can't recommend it enough especially at this price point it really is a truly essential book to have in your collection.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Best language supplement I have purchased to date.
Review: Using this book has reinforced what I know and really helped me to gain a better understanding of kanji. It has been very helpful for my studies.

Reviewer: Michael F. Nartker
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Little by little and one will succeed!
Review: This book definitely will improve one's reading abilities in Japanese, little by little, that is, sentence by sentence. (I bought vol. 2 right away.)

Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Kanji help is here.
Review: Kanji are'nt easy to learn but this Reader makes it as simple as possible. Having many phrases from the spoken Japanese lessons repeated also makes remembering easier.

Reviewer: Amanda T
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This book is very useful for my style of self study and pairs very ...
Review: This book is very useful for my style of self study and pairs very nicely with the audio tracks. Would recommend for anyone wanting to learn better Japanese reading skills.

Reviewer: Luis A. Lugo
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Want to read kanji?
Review: Very simple and helpful to read kanji

Reviewer: James A. Cameron
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not a "reader" in my definition
Review: This is a standard kanji definition and lookup/cross reference book of which there are many. I define a reader as a book with actual dialog and prose in chapter form, not just individual one or two one-off sentences utilizing the associated kanji. Just not a "reader", not in my opinion or definition.

Reviewer: Ski Bum
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: best book I found for learning Kanji
Review: This is by far the absolute best book I found for learning Kanji. Highly recommend it!!!

Reviewer: Amz customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Quick reference book for speeding up ur reading

Reviewer: Anderson Santos Silva
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Sample sentences are good but sometimes they don’t make much sense and the translation is literal so it makes harder to understand. Every chapter has a table of new kanjis which is good, but sometimes you have to look over many sample sentences to find the meaning and how to read it. So the book could be a bit better organized but the content is certainly worth it

Reviewer: K J M
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This book is an excellent tool for learning to read Japanese. It contains thousands of practice sentences, which are divided into chapters which allow you to learn a few kanji at a time. Should you complete the book, you will have learned 600 of the most common kanji and a wide variety of grammatical forms.Sentences are translated into English using a Japanese sentence structure as much as possible while still allowing the meaning to be understood. This is a very clever aid to learning - it allows your mind to get used to Japanese grammar more easily.The author has collated these Japanese sentences over many years of teaching and learning Japanese (he runs a website hosting many hours of free Japanese audio lessons, which I have been studying for two years). A lot of thought and care has been taken into the selection of these sentences - the coverage of different words, grammar and conversation topics is excellent. They've also got the thumbs-up from my wife (a Japanese national) for grammatical correctness and usefulness.I have used the author's free audio lessons to become an intermediate Japanese speaker, and I am using this book to build my reading skills. The audio lessons are outstanding, better than any paid-for audio course in my opinion, and this book is also excellent. The author clearly has a great talent for language teaching, which is reflected in this book.

Reviewer: Peace Freak
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I've been using Roger and Noriko's audio lessons (available on their website: japaneseaudiolessons.com ) to improve my spoken Japanese for quite some time now, with good results, so after hearing that they had released a book for learning to read Japanese, I decided to buy it and give it a try.I've lived in Japan for more than 20 years, but never made a serious effort to learn to read Japanese. Through the process of osmosis I've managed to pick up a fair number of Japanese characters or kanji but I never really was able to put in the time and effort needed to study them thoroughly and learn their different readings and pronunciations. Since purchasing their book a little more than a week ago, I have completed eight chapters and am very happy with what I've learnt and with the confidence it has imbued in me.The format of the book is excellent. The layout of each page and the size of the font for the Japanese makes studying a pleasure, as it is easy to distinguish even the tiny strokes of each character. On the right side of each page, the romaji version of each sentence is written, along with an English translation. About ten new kanji are introduced in each chapter. I find this to be a manageable number from a study perspective, not too many and not too few. For kanji that are new to me, it's easy to find their meanings in the well organised catalog at the back of the book. In the catalog, each kanji is listed along with pronunciations and meanings, examples of common compounds they are used in, as well as mnemonic descriptions and cues to help memorise them. If there are kanji that look similar to the one being studied, they are listed as well, which makes it easy to compare them and learn them. Wonderful!Having the romaji readings and English translations on the same page as the Japanese sentences really makes this a user-friendly book. I don't need to spend time looking elsewhere to confirm if I have decided upon the right reading or not. I've also noticed that the kanji get "recycled" through the text from time to time so I can quickly know the ones I need to review and study again. The author suggests using a piece of paper or a thumb to cover the romaji and English translations in the right column, while reading the Japanese in the left. I found a bookmark that is just the right width that serves the purpose beautifully.The book also includes an overview of hiragana and katakana (handy as I sometimes forget the not so common ones!), and an index of kanji by pronunciation. Kanji are also listed by groups, alphabetically, and by order of appearance. To use this book, you must be able to read hiragana and katakana.All in all, the book is well thought out and easy to use. I highly recommend it if you are wanting to improve your Japanese reading ability.

Reviewer: Chris D.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: One of the most useful Japanese books that I own. Most other Japanese reading study books focus more on telling stories, which makes them difficult to use for methodical kanji study (although still useful in other ways). This book solves this problem by introducing kanji in each chapter and then having lots of stand alone sentences that use these kanji. Each sentence has the Japanese as well as the romaji and English translation.Probably not the best place to start if you are learning kanji, but for people who have learned a few and want to start practising reading them in context, this is perfect.I note that the book says that it is "Volume 1", but I haven't been able to locate any further volumes. If these become available, covering more kanji, that will be even better.