A review

The Learn Japanese: New College Text is 4 volumes from Hawaii University. This was the series I began using for Japanese, but I wish I hadn't. The reason for that is the excessive use of romaji. By the time I finished Volume 1, I was ready for kanji and actual Japanese script. But I was disappointed by Volume 2...then Volume 3...and finally Volume 4. The entire series uses romaji as if that's what it is trying to teach you instead of actual Japanese. Sadly, it does a great job getting vocabulary in your head but it's totally useless for reading and writing unless you have an instructor who gives you the kanji or you spend time transcribing the books (something my sensei made me do). Romaji is a crutch for the baby steps in Japanese. By the time you learn the kana, Volume 1, Chapter 2, the book should have switched to that. Luckily, the end-of-chapter exercises and drills are in japanese. Again, though, the Japanese is dumbed down. Where kanji should be used hiragana is used. A random example to illustrate-
印象的な　means interesting or impressive. It's three kanji and the particle な. In the book, it is rendered as いんしょう的な with only one kanji and the rest as hiragana. This never happens in real life! Then in explanations, it's written as romaji "inshouteki na." It has made me want to tear my hair out several times.

Another big complaint I have against Learn Japanese are the analytical diagrams the author gives for explaining social interactions in a live conversation. The pie charts and such are supposed to help you understand the contextual aspect of Japanese, but it will only confuse you. I especially love the chapters on explaining the verb "to give." The explanations are usually too confusing.

I've tried to like this book. I really have. But after four volumes, I wish I had started somewhere else. If you decide to use this series (which you probably won't since your teacher will look at all the ローマ字 and just laugh) then you'll probably need some great companion books. Japanese Sentence Patterns is one I used.

5/10