Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronin4hire
Japanese don't "laugh" at the genki books and if they did it would be because of the cheesy stories in them but that's about it.
I've shown my books to some Japanese friends when I was still using them and nobody "laughed".
In fact some of them said it was quite good for begginers and they were the required texts in my university.
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I guess we spoke to different people about the book then! I'm not talking about just one person or just one case.
Starting in the masu-form might certainly be a good idea, but showing a wrong example of its usage isn't helping anyone in my opinion. My problem with these kinds of textbooks is that they are geared at a kind of "quick" learning style that prepares people for tests. How well it does that, I wouldn't know because I've never taken a JLPT test. If you are into that kind of thing (and I take it a lot of people are as it can get you a job), then that's fine.
The Genki books were required at my college, too. The teachers there felt that the book didn't cut the mustard (although it does seem to work for some people) so they switched to another book (not that I can vouch for the new book they are using eiher though).
If you want some insight, read the reviews on amazon. It overwhelmingly has positive reviews. Unfortunately, a lot of those positive reviews read like ebay feedback. Not only that, you can tell a lot of other people reviewed the product right after it arrived. There are, however a number of genuinely good reviews (about 10-15). There are some really bad reviews, too (about 5 or so). There are some people who give good ratings but have rather backhanded compliments in their reviews. Likewise, some of the bad reviews do go over the good parts of the book. I think if you read the reviews you'll know what to expect. If you are aware of its shortcomings, then I think you can get some good use out of it. Don't expect to get by with just the genki series alone, though.
As far as a list of books to get with/after Genki, here's a short list of books that I've read that were decent: (you can get them for dirt cheap on amazon)
Communicative Styles of Japanese and Americans (Barnlund)
Beyond Words: How to Walk and Talk like a Japanese (Hovart)
Doing Business with Japanese Men: A Woman's Handbook (Brannen & Wilen)
Second Language Learning: Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis, and Related Aspects (Robinette & Schachter)
An Introduction to Japanese Grammar and Communication Strategies (Maynard) [note: I personally didn't find this book very useful, but a lot of people around me did... I think it's hit or miss]
A few notes on these books: Some of them are a bit dated and it shows. Even though they are pretty old, a lot of their subject matter is still really relavant. The "Second Language Learning" book is pretty technical and doesn't have much to do with Japanese specifically. It has a lot of old essays and work on a lot of different languages. Some of the stuff in there has "research" (statistical data) that I find to be very hard to draw conclusions from. It certainly helped me to become aware of a lot of the stuff they are talking about though. "Doing Business..." is a fun book. Don't let the title throw you, it is helpful for anyone learning Japanese and not just women who are interested in "Doing Business with Japanese Men". It has a lot of insight on the culture and also on different ways on how to handle certain situations that you may very well find yourself in (or different ways on how NOT to handle those situations). The truth about these kinds of books is, though, that they are pretty boring (with "Doing Business..." aside). They aren't the kinds of books you want to read cover to cover. Reading chunks at a time from these kinds of books will help you learn Japanese though. They also prove to be semi-decent reference material.