I see a lot of conflicting info about these things. Some people say that they are perfect for starting out and others say they are overrated and a waste of money. Does anyone who has used these before have any advice on weather or not as a new learner it would be worth buying them or if there is a better way to spend my money?
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It depends. Genki is pretty much meant to be a structured CLASSROOM textbook series. Take a good look at the activities, and you’ll notice it’s not just review for the one who owns the book, as a lot of it has this expectation that you do have a partner to work with and a teacher to correct you and give you more explanation as needed.
Some people can live with that and just do more research by themselves. On the flip side, a lot of said research can be done online entirely for free, taking away any monetary worth any textbook might have if you were just going to study by yourself anyway.
Ultimately, it’ll come down to your learning preferences. (And perhaps on whether you’re in a situation where you MUST use it).
In my case, I wanted academic credit for studying Japanese and the only course available at my college was one that used Genki. This at least meant I had structure from the start rather than spending months trying to devise some “perfect” strategy the way some people online seem tempted to do. Then after I was done with the book, I had a good idea of what did and didn’t work for me.
Maybe check out the online program BunPro. I have the Genki books from college, but didn’t focus much on Japanese back then due time spent with my Finance work.
But I am now using the books alongside BunPro, and while they support one another, BunPro in isolation may work for you. BunPro has many “paths,” one of which progresses in the same order as Genki, but BunPro is more digestible and has tons of example sentences for each module.
I like having the option of not looking at a computer at times as I stare at one for work all day.
In my experience, most people who resort to terms like “overrated” and “waste of money” for <insert well-respected textbook series here> are either (a) trying to sell their own thing, (b) flailing at strawmen, or (c) both. There are criticisms that you can make, but those terms are not the epitome of informed commentary for generally well-regarded textbooks that have been around for decades.
I think the distinction as a classroom textbook tends to be a bit overstated. _Most printed textbooks are for the classroom_. Genki is perfectly fine for self-study, too, and many have used it successfully that way. There are some idiosyncrasies, but every resource has some. (One of the big recurring ones that tends to trip people up, IMO, is that Genki requires you to read closely, often relegating to footnotes very important information that it expects you to remember and internalize.)
You will have to be a little diligent and provide some study structure for yourself, but you can make good use of Genki as a self-learner. Do both halves of the pair conversations. Get the answer key and check your answers against it. Shadow the dialogues; this will take some time if you’re being honest with yourself.
I do recommend that you pick up _A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar_ regardless of what you use as a textbook or grammar guide. This goes into far more detail than most textbooks do and answers a lot of questions like “What’s the difference between <expression A> and <expression B>?” It’s not a textbook in its own right, though, and can’t be used for sequencing topics to learn.
No, you don’t have to use Genki, but my advice would be to pick one respected textbook series and work through it consistently at least until N4. Jumping around tends to waste time and money. Not having some sort of structured study early on tends to leave gaps in knowledge that have to be filled later anyway.