Genki to nihongo wo manabu!

It’s been about a week since my copy of Genki Volume One arrived in the post. After receipt I spared no time in ripping open the brown corrugated cardboard pouch from Amazon, excitedly uncovering what I deemed to be my first proper Japanese language textbook. Yes folks, it’s finally come down to this.

Genki was the fruit born of a good few weeks worth of textbook research. It proved difficult, to say the least, finding information of any detail about the various books on offer, but after a good few hundred Google web searches I became cemented in my resolution to take the plunge and slap down £30.99 ($61.74). That horrendous price tag was the source of much anxiousness. “Would it really be worth it?”, I wondered whilst feeling slightly queasy after parting with so much cash on a single book. Now, all that was left to do was to sit and wait on Amazon to do their thing.

Luckily after having worked through Genki’s first four lessons and becoming thoroughly acquainted with its style and structure, I can safely put my worries to rest. Genki is an awesome book. For those people who are considering buying Genki, I’ll do a quick run-down of its various sections. The text is divided into two “sets” of lessons, if you will. At the front of the book, you’ll find twelve fairly chunky chapters focusing around reading dialogue and then verbally reproducing it. Each of these lessons starts off with a medium sized conversation transcript between a few characters, usually based around fairly everyday topics, like going out on a date (Lesson Four). These are interesting enough and fairly easy to read, introducing the majority of the lesson’s content with skilful ease.

For the first couple of lessons, this dialogue is scripted in both Japanese kana and the equivalent romaji (Latin alphabet) text, making it easy for beginners to get to grips with at first. However, by around lesson three, the romaji is removed in favour of pure hiragana and katakana. Select kanji are even used from lesson four onwards, at first with furigana (hiragana annotations indicating pronunciation), and then later without. Over all I’m a big fan of this phasing out technique, which removes your dependence on romaji approximations in favour of real Japanese. However, as I’m already pretty comfortable with kana and a few kanji, I might be a touch biased. For a beginner of Japanese, Genki’s pacing may be just that little be too quick, especially if you’re planning on self-studying.

After the dialogue, there are grammar, expression and vocabulary sections. These are very neatly divided and well explained, particularly the grammar sections. One of the most interesting and difficult to grasp elements of the Japanese language are its various “set patterns” which give a huge diversity of meaning. As they’re encountered in the dialogue sections, these are well documented under the grammar and expression headers; something sorely missing from most of the textbooks and phrase books I’ve used before.

Each of these twelve lessons conclude with a whole host of exercises which practise everything learned in the previous few pages. What I like about these exercises particularly is that they seem to build on and incorporate previous lessons, rather than just focus on the newest material. This means that you’re not as likely to forget what you’ve covered in the past as you progress through Genki. The exercises themselves seem rather geared towards classroom work, with instructions like “Find five other people who live in these places…”, encouraging the learner to speak the language actively rather than just passively absorbing it. But, I don’t think that this should be deterrent to self-learners looking to use this book. As one myself, I found that simply speaking the exercises out loud worked well too, even if it did garner a few strange looks.

Towards the back of the book, there are twelve more accompanying lessons which mirror the first twelve in terms of content. These form the writing element of the Genki course. Lessons one and two ask the learner to memorise hiragana and katakana respectively, and then kanji are taught from lesson three onwards. These lessons are probably the most demanding element of the course, but learning kanji is rather unavoidable when studying Japanese regardless of which method you use. I suppose, because of the way the lessons are separated, a learner could potentially choose to simply focus on speaking and reading Japanese alone. Whilst this approach is generally frowned upon, it may end up suiting some people better.

As a textbook, Genki doesn’t include a listening element, though there is a CD available at extra charge which has recordings of all the book’s dialogues. I didn’t plump for this, though. As an anime fan and general Japan-nut, I feel that my exposure to the spoken language is already quite good. If you find yourself in the same boat, you too may not want to bother with the accompanying CD. Then again, for absolute beginners, it’s very important to have a sound source to mimic for pronunciation. I guess that the choice is down to the individual, really. For the price, it would have been nice for a CD to be included with the Genki textbook - but that doesn’t really bother me too much. Also available separately is an additional workbook which provides extra practice for each of Genki’s lessons. However, after using Genki for a while, I reckon that the exercises included in the textbook are already enough.

So in conclusion, I’m really pleased with Genki. Whilst it may be rather fast paced at times, I’m struggling to find too many other criticisms of it as I work my way through the lessons. I would urge self-learners not to be put off by Genki’s classroom orientation; personal experience has shown me that it’s a more than capable text even if you’re studying hitori de. Very highly recommended.