Simple as that. The choice of vocabulary is horrendous, the arrangement of material is all over the place, the manner in which the information is delivered is overly convoluted and, in many cases, lacks information completely; requiring students to refer to older chapters in order to transpose the previously learned material onto the new set of rules, or missing proper examples entirely.
The reason people are stuck with this is due to the simple fact that there is an effective monopoly on complete material set for introductory Japanese.
The authors are all native speakers, which makes me think that they have no idea how, simply, dumb their methodology is from the perspective of someone who doesn’t learn as a child being raised in japan.
I’ve been learning Japanese for the past two years and I feel that my biggest detriment has been this ridiculous series of books.
I’m not someone who is foreign to language acquisition, having learned English, Spanish and French – but this… This is ridiculous.
Can I hear opinions of those who actually mastered any other language?
I don’t think that the language is that complex in itself, but the book makes it ten times worse than it has to be.
Why are people on online forums are able to explain the ideas in the book simply and comprehensively in a matter of few sentences; where this turns it into a total mind f***?
11 comments
What monopoly? I use Minna no Nihongo and for youths or very casual learners JFZ exists too. I took one look at a genki sample and passed on it.
It’s a poor artist who blames his tools.
The lore kinda goes crazy though
I don’t think that Genki is perfect, far from it, but I don’t really agree with your assessment. That said, you don’t really go into any details, so it’s hard for me to understand what your issue exactly is.
The grammar explanations are IMHO the weakest part of Genki, but I don’t think that’s a huge issue when you’re starting out. You don’t want to read a 20-page essay on は vs. が before you can even say アイスクリームが好きです (I have a book that has three chapters devoted to these two particles alone). The *selection* of grammar topics, though, is IMHO very good and makes for a nice progression as you go through the two books.
The vocabulary is IMHO not useless, although yes, you might not necessarily need to learn 人類学 at the very beginning (but remember, the book is written for students). But in general, many important words, especially verbs, are taught.
As for the “other resources make it seem easier”. Yes, there’s some truth to it. Genki doesn’t necessarily teach you a very structurally accurate understanding of the inner workings of the language, and that’s something you’ll want to eventually discover somewhere else (or intuit on your own). But the problem is that all these nice and simple explanations about は/が or Japanese sentence structure that you find online, while structurally important, can’t explain away all the myriad weird and seemingly inconsistent corner cases (e.g. why です is sometimes a copula and sometimes just a politeness marker, or why ある/いる goes with に instead of で, or what the difference between なくて and ないで is, or the weird mess that is keigo, …). And that’s not because Japanese is uniquely weird, all languages are historically grown inconsistent messes to some extent, you’re just more used to some of them.
Genki doesn’t give you deep structural insights, it gives you recipes for building sentences, but – in my opinion – especially for a language that’s as radically different from your native one, you actually do need both the recipes and the deeper understanding.
Also IMHO the best part of Genki are the reading sections which are always tailored to your level and still engaging.
Do any of the many languages you have mastered use paragraphs?
I’ve always told people that genki best used in a classroom with a teacher and that’s where you get extra information, examples, etc.
It took me a few months to go through both Genki books as a mostly monolingual native English speaker, and I had no issues. That was two years ago and now I can understand nearly everything I read or watch. Maybe the issue is you.
I know you are fairly new to reddit so I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but can you start using paragraphs?
It’s hard for us to read a brick of text.
Hit return twice and it will make a paragraph.
I sorta agree… in that it doesn’t go hard enough. That I talked to kids in Japanese 4 and 5 at the college who just got to passive/causative. Like, in my mind, you should be at N3 by J6 but they’re just barely cresting N4.
The best textbook is the dictionary followed by the one you write yourself.
他のコメントで何の日本語資格を持ってると皆に問ったのに、自分の資格なしを気づかなかった事はちょっと皮肉でしょう？だって、資格が持たれたら、こんな苦情を訴えないと思う。
元気教科書が好きじゃないのは普通だ。だって皆はそれぞれの勉強方法の好みがあって皆満足できる方法がない。でも、君は好きじゃないなら、必ずしも悪い教科書ではない。日本語教科書多くて、なんで二年間別の教科書を探さなくて分からない。
それにしても、多くのくれた苦情と理由は少なくとも変だと思う。例えば、元気の著者は母語話者だった関連性があるか？なぜ大学教職歴が持つ事が全く省略してた？そして、前に言った通り、日本語教科書が多い。なぜ教科書の市場独り占めだと思うんだ？
Perhaps Japanese isn’t for you. Simple as that.