Japanese Language Learning Reviews

Berlitz Japanese in 30 Days (audio CDs and lesson book)

Score:
6 / 10
Pros:
thorough coverage of grammar; lots of audio dialogs and exercises; space to write in the coursebook/workbook; good variation on themes and practice with each topic; explanations kept short but pertinent

Cons:
set aside a lot of time if you actually want to complete it in 30 days; Japanese dialogues are practical, but formulaic; the lessons are more book-driven than audio-driven; intro to writing is too limited to really teach you the script; neither an immersive method nor a comprehensive grammar (you’ll need other resources for that)

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Berlitz Japanese in 30 Days offers you a conventional, conversation and exercise-driven course with sections that explain grammar and vocabulary.

Most chapters present some language topic, like “Telling Time” or “All About Food”, while others deal with linguistic skills, like how to use adjectives or the Japanese particle “de”.

Along the way, you’ll listen to and read along with dialogues. You’ll study explanations of vocabulary words and grammar functions. There are a number of cultural notes distributed throughout the book, too.

Each chapter asks you to complete practice exercises. These activities include translating (Japanese-English and English-Japanese translation), saying something aloud in Japanese and checking your answer against the audio CD, matching, answering questions based on pictures, and others. Instructions are always in English. It’s nothing novel, but it gets the learning done.

For a beginner’s 30-day lesson course, the book ends up covering some more complicated aspects of Japanese grammar and sentence structure.

The Berlitz lessons perform less admirably when it comes to writing the Japanese script. Short sections in each chapter introduce a handful of kana and ask you to practice writing them. But you never see or use hiragana and katakana outside of these small sections. The final chapter introduces kanji, but barely scratches the surface. See my review category “script and writing” for some suggestions that will teach you what you can’t learn here.

If you’re a grammar-minded student who wants some structure in your studies, but still enjoy plenty of exposure to native spoken Japanese and plenty of practice exercises, this is a good beginner’s course for you. Learners looking to immerse themselves in an all-audio program should look elsewhere. Students who want master fluent Japanese, and especially want to start out writing Japanese, won’t find much help here. All in all, though, it’s a thorough introduction to the basics of Japanese, and a stable stepping stone to further study.