Textbooks for learning and teaching Japanese

Posted on 06. Jan, 2009 @ 5:53 pm by in Books, Language Views: 1,204

Genki Textbook

Genki Textbook


My wife is thinking about trying to teach Japanese to people in the neighborhood as a side-business. She knows Japanese, of course, but has never taught it, so now she has to “study” Japanese in order to build up a lesson plan.

Luckily with the excellent textbooks available for Japanese learning this isn’t going to be too tough to figure out.

The Genki Textbook series alone has enough information available for both the student and teacher. Genki is still on top in terms of best texts for beginners learning Japanese. Highly recommended.

Genki 1 Textbook: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese

Genki 1 Workbook

Genki 1 Student CD

Genki 1 Student Cd

And last but not least…


The Genki Teacher’s Manual.

This is what my wife will need to in order to start teaching. In order to get any use out of this book you need to be able to read Japanese fairly fluently. Technically I could probably teach beginners Japanese myself… Something about not being a native speaker though that just doesn’t sit right with me there though.

New year, a new challenge! Did anyone make a new year’s resolution to study Japanese more seriously this year?

Good luck to all.

- Harvey

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  • Leo Wong

    I didn’t really make a new year’s resolution about learning more Japanese but… since I’m learning now anyway… Thanks for the info. I think it’ll be too difficult for me but I am using the DS game, My Japanese Coach, which I wrote a blurb about and now I’m at a Grade 3 level.

    http://cadlookshkdlearnjpy.blogspot.com/2008/12/nintendo-ds-my-japanese-coach.html

  • http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

    Sometimes non-native speakers have an advantage when it comes to teaching at the beginne level – the’ve already been there themselves.

    I haven’t looked at these Genki books myself, so far every serious Japanese teacher I’ve encountered used the Minna no Nihongo series, which is rather nice. The grammar explanations are seperated in another book and the main book is entirely in Japanase without any roomaji.

    Some people also recommend Japanese for Busy people, but in my opinion, they are not as good as Minna no Nihongo.

    About this DS game, I haven’t tried it yet but I’ve read a few things about it. It seems to be ok, but there seem to be some serious flaws in the user interface and some errors in the grammar, so be careful not to learn wrong things!
    I only play the Kanken DS 2 game which is mainly for kanji training, originally aimed at native speakers, but learners of the language can also profit from the kanji drills. :)

  • http://www.japannewbie.com harvey

    I use Kanken2 as well, only Kanji, but great stuff. Very high difficulty level! I’m struggling to clear 4級 now.

    I have seen Japanese for Busy People and personally I think it’s low quality. Japanese isn’t something you learn if you’re too busy to give it the time it requires… Any book that tries to do that is going about it the wrong way.

    I have never seen a teacher using Minna no Nihongo, and I’ve seen many teachers both in Japan and in the States. But I see you’re in Europe, so maybe it’s an issue of regional popularity?

    The other book I have seen a lot here for beginners is NAKAMA.

  • http://discojing.com Nicole

    Love the site, I find many useful things here (and am always impressed by your useful stash of information).

    I went to school to be a Japanese teacher, but since I live on the east coast, I’ve reached a dead end with no Graduate programs here! I successfully finished my undergraduate degree (including classical Japanese yay) but am quickly loosing vocabulary and kanji as everyday goes by. Looks like the longer I wait to take the ACTFL test (which is tricky because you have to find someone to proctor it and I was too busy post-graduation looking for jobs and teaching English in Japan to do that) the more likely it is that I will have wasted all my Japanese-learning because I am going backwards.

    Do you have any recommendations?

    I’ve used every Japanese textbook imaginable (Nakama, Yokoso, Minna no Nihongo, Genki, Nihongo Hanasou), and I think the best was Genki paired with a grammar dictionary, but for some reason it still didn’t give me all the information I needed. Minna no Nihongo was horrible, horrible horrible. I used it when I studied in Japan and learned nothing because of its lack of explaination.

  • http://www.zdwonline.de Haf

    Harvey, that about the Minna no Nihongo series might be quite possible, but my Japanese teacher in Japan used it as well, which was quite nice for me as I brought my book with me. :)
    If you go to example to the Japanese language learning section of the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku, you can see that this series of books has a lot of volumes and additional learning material as well as translations in many languages for the grammar volumes, which suggests that it’s quite popular/successful. Or maybe the publishers are just crazy. ;)

    Nicole, did you also use the Grammar volumes of Minna no Nihongo? My first Japanese teacher didn’t tell us pupils about the grammar books at all so we were quite surprised to not have any real grammar information in the text books. But I think the explanations in the grammar books are relatively good.

    Probably the best grammar books are the dictionaries of basic/intermediate/advanced Japanese grammar by The Japan Times. Unfortunately they are only available in English, which makes using them a bit harder for me, as I don’t know all the terms that are used. But by using them, I also improve my English a little bit along the way.

  • http://www.japannewbie.com Harvey

    I don’t judge whether a book is good by it’s prominence on bookstore shelves. I don’t think I have -ever- seen GENKI on a shelf. Japanese for Busy People is everywhere, and I would never recommend that book to anyone.

    Publishers and bookstores push what sells, not necessarily what’s good.

    The textbook dilemma… I agree with both of you though that a good mix of textbooks plus grammar books and dictionaries is important though!

  • http://www.japannewbie.com Harvey

    Oh and Nicole, I don’t have any advice on how to get going as a Japanese teacher. I’m surprised there are no grad programs on the east coast.
    What grad programs were there in other places that you were looking at? I’m curious!

  • http://fivefooteater.blogspot.com/ Kim

    Thank you for your recommendation — I just bought Genki and I am so shocked at how much is left out of other textbooks. The Japan Society in New York teaches using a mixture of Japanese for Busy People and a really old college text book. Busy People is definitely for conversation only but it moves too slow and their grammar explanations are too brief. The all Romaji style definitely put me at a disadvantage with reading.

    After a weekend with Genki, I feel like I have reviewed and learned more than a year with Busy People. Busy People leaves out a lot of vocabulary that you need if you go to Japan.

  • http://www.joshuazimmerman.com Joshua Zimmerman

    I loved Genki, I hated Nakama. Makes me miss college.

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