I started self-studying Japanese (again) two weeks ago because my school offers a Japanese course. I found Genki I and II textbook pdf online as well as their workbook and did two lessons.
Yesterday I had my first Japanese class at school and my teacher told us to buy みんなの日本語. She brought the main textbook. I flipped through it and was quite skeptical… I showed her Genki and asked her if it was okay to use this. But then I did some research about both books and how people use them and came to this conclusion :
To be honest, I don’t even like Genki that much. Too many English explanations, too many peer exercises (I have no one to practice with), and almost no immersion. It is still a great book I learned so much from it. I watched tons of videos about みんなの日本語 and chose to go for it for this one and only reason, it has no English (and I don’t need the English translation book because I have a teacher). Also found great resources online like にほんごハウス (makes great みんなの日本語 videos in Japanese) and NihonGoal (who has a great free course on the book as well as kanji and vocabs) on youtube.
I also started learning みんなの日本語 vocabs and kanji and made memrise courses with audio.
(I bought the main textbook yesterday and will be buying the workbook in a week)
2 comments
There are a ton of beginner resources and pretty much all of them get the job done, from what I have seen. IMO, just pick one you like and see it through, then move on. There is A LOT more to learn afterwards.
You might say “too many English explanations”, but I’d argue those are the most important part, at least when starting out. So hopefully, your teacher gives English explanations for the vocab and grammar, because I’m pretty sure beginners (I’m assuming that’s your level) won’t be able to understand Japanese grammar explanations in Japanese. And on that note… again, I’m assuming all explanation will be done by your teacher in English, because otherwise you WILL need the translation notes. Of course, I’m sure there’s plenty of help on Youtube too.
That said, one of the biggest points to MnN is all the exercises you can do solo, and they’re built right into the main textbook itself. I don’t actually think there’s any extra workbook, unless you’re talking about the kanji workbook.