Japanese, The Spoken Language: Part 2 (Yale Language Series)

This textbook series shows its age. Made in the 1980s, most situations presented focus around business situations, which was a major reason for deciding to learn Japanese at that time. Vocabulary lists are similarly a little dated (e.g. the word for typewriter is presented, but not the word for cell phone), but that can be remedied with supplemental vocab lists from a teacher or tutor.What makes this textbook truly outstanding is the vast amount of audio material available, either from the Cornell University website or from the OSU website, and the meticulous presentation of accent. Practice audio files are available for hundreds of conversations and drills, and practice with these is critical to good pronunciation and fluent use of grammar. Also, every word and every sentence has marks for pitch accent, and nearly every grammatical explanation includes a note about how pitch accent behaves in the grammatical pattern at hand.The JSL textbook series provides the tools you need to get a solid foundation in spoken Japanese, except for the teacher. Heavy practice with the audio, and application with a teacher using this textbook series will give a great start for advanced fluency.

Been searching for these books for years! YAY! These were my texts for Japanese class back as an undergrad and the best foreign language lessons, EVER. I only wish they'd update the sound files so I can get those, too!

I hate this book so much. If I wasn't a Japanese major, I would've dropped the class. Everything is written in romaji, which is inexcusable at this point, and to make it worse, it's outdated romaji. For example, し is translated as 'si' rather than 'shi'. This makes it harder to read than if everything were in kana and kanji. If you have to buy this for school, you're SOL because this book sucks. If you're just self studying, just go buy Genki (although there are plenty of free pdfs of it floating around the internet).

The book is really nice and new. No any comment on it. Purchase worthy.

I've found this book to be extremely helpful to learn the spoken part of the Japanese language, but only because I've been using it as a textbook in college. The book provides good explanations and everything in the book is taught in a very logical order, but you do need to use it with the supplemental audio tapes in order to really learn. Another important thing is that you should be trying to learn the written part of Japanese using other resources (such as the "Japanese, The Written Language" book) since this book is all printed in romanization and doesn't use any Japanese characters.The layout of each unit is the same. Each book of the series has 12 Lessons, and each lesson is divided in two parts that include core conversations, vocabulary breakdowns, and practice drills. To really master each lesson you need to memorize the 'core conversations', which are short conversations that can easily occur between two people in Japan. After the core conversations in each part there is a breakdown of all the new vocabulary used (assuming you've learned all the vocabulary from all the previous lessons, including book 1) and the translations to English. The books then includes drills for you to practice answering and speaking Japanese out loud. The audio tapes are very important for this part. At the end of each lesson, there's an eavesdropping section, a utilization section, and a check-up section. These are the three sections you'll use to determine if you really mastered the lesson.In eavesdropping you'll listen to conversations in Japanese and answer a few questions about what was said. In the utilization section you'll be asked to say certain things in Japanese given a specific circumstance. The check-up section is the one that helps you see if you've really learned the material in-depth and can talk about the Japanese language in general, and not just do the drills.This book series is the one being used as textbooks for the Japanese classes at MIT, and usually lessons are taught at a rate of one part per week (i.e. one full lesson in two weeks) and, to ensure students are learning, the classes are very interactive and students speak only Japanese in three out of 4 weekly classes.If you're studying Japanese on you're own I suggest you only use this book in a similar way, making yourself practice constantly and memorize the core conversations and vocabulary. It's the only way you'll really learn things the right way. And definitely buy a kana/kanji book so you can also learn the Japanese writing system while learning to speak it.

Good condition.