Japanese from Zero! 1: Proven Methods to Learn Japanese with Integrated Workbook and Online Support: Proven Techniques to Learn Japanese for Students and Professionals Paperback – 22 Aug. 2014

I have studied Japanese on and off for many years, but when I decided to 'get serious' with studying this wonderful language, this is the book I chose to study from. The accompanying videos on YouTube were a huge consideration for me.This is extremely clear to work from and the explanations make it easy to grasp the concepts of forming sentences and using the language you learn. It even manages to explain quite complex ideas in a clear way and for the first time I fully understand how to conjugate verbs and can now do so with Japanese verbs. This felt like a HUGE win for me. This starts off with simple concepts and builds upon them to give you confidence and useful knowledge.This book has a workbook built into it, with reading and writing exercises (with an answer guide in the back) and these exercises really help you grasp and solidify what you have learnt in that chapter.This books also teaches you Hiragana and I love the way that as you progress through the book the words are gradually built up with each Hiragana you learn, until by the end everything is written in Hiragana and you can read and understand written Japanese. Of course there is Katakana (which is covered in book 2) and Kanji which comes in book 3 onwards. The author has also written a book called Kanji from zero, which covers Kanji a little more. But learning Hiragana so quickly and effortlessly is a huge win and will impress native Japanese and will also enrich your experience when you travel in Japan.This isn't necessarily a book that'll teach you lots of phrases you can use on your holidays, right off the bat, but instead builds a solid language framework and introduces vocab, so you can build your own sentences and actually understand the language. This is much better than simply learning by rote.I also like how the author teaches a style of Japanese that is actually used and which is useful when in the country. Some courses will teach very formal and stilted Japanese, and whilst the author does teach you polite forms, he also teaches langauage that sounds more natural. A simple example of this is 'ja arimasen', compared to 'junai'. They both mean 'not' but one is more stuffy and the other will make you sound more natural (I'll let you read the book to find out which!). As someone who wishes to use Japanese when I am in the country, this is essential for me and will hopefully open up another side of Japan that I may not have seen.My personal way to use this book was to read through each chapter to familiarise myself with the material, then watch the accompanying YouTube video for that lesson to get a clearer idea of pronounciation and any tough parts. Then I'd go back and work though the chapter in a slower, more methodical way, answering the exercies and making notes.I used the Ankidroid app to make up flashcards for all the words and phrases from each chapter, so I could study and test myself when out and about. And I also used a notebook to write up mind maps and mneumonic techniques for the more 'non-sticky' words.In conjunction with this course I also listened to Michel Thomas cd's in the car and used an excellent Particles dictionary (which I have also reviewed on Amazon). Using all these techniques together has really helped the info in this course sink in and start to build a decent framework to build upon.This course is great to work from. You quickly grasp difficult concepts, feel as if you actually understand the way the language is formed and the accompanying videos are light hearted and a wonderful additional media to aid your study.I can't recommend this book enough and if you wish to seriously learn Japanese and unlock your full potential, then give this a try and see what it can do for you.

I've been learning the Japanese language on and off for 7 years around my college and university studies and have been to classes, watched subbed anime and Japanese TV, and bought many many resources to try and grasp even the basics of the language. By this point, I had so much information about grammar and vocab and there was just no way I could streamline it and make sense of it. With the Covid lockdown, I saw an opportunity and decided to grab yet another study book to try and learn the basics - from zero. I was very VERY pessimistic, cause as you can imagine I'm swimming in pages of other books that haven't worked for me already but this book was definitely worth the buy ESPECIALLY WHEN COMBINED WITH THE JAPANESE FROM ZERO YOUTUBE LESSONS!The book begins by introducing pre-lessons to give a strong foundation for the proper lessons that follow. It then slowly introduces one or two new concepts in its lessons at any time and gives you a general list of vocabulary to familiarise yourself with and guides you through the use of the concepts with vocabulary that you already know. I've already completed 6 lessons and am taking some time to review everything I've already learned because my past mistake with this language has been trying to rush through to be speaking as soon as possible. Even as someone who has quite a lot of time experiencing Japanese, this book combined with the youtube lessons to review is proving to be an invaluable part of learning the language.I can't really comment too much on learning the hiragana from scratch from this book because I've known them for a very long time now, but the addition of relearning them and the intricacies of their stroke orders and positioning when writing is helping to tidy my handwriting. I'm finding this also helps to break up the lesson enough so that you haven't forgotten all of the grammar points and vocab, but by the time of the Q&As you've forgotten enough that you're still challenged enough to have to think properly through your answers.I'm really looking forward to the next lessons in this book and in the next books to come and will definitely be buying the rest. Just a note: if you have this book and book 2 it isn't necessary to buy the Kana from Zero book cause it's literally an exact copy to the word of what's in this book and book 2.