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K-8 Resources for learning Japanese.


mom2bee
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I have been doing some research and thought that others might be interested in these resources.

 

NOTE I don't own any of this stuff and most of it I've never held in my hands, but there are a lot of extensive reviews for programs online via blogs and YouTube so you can probably find something that will give you more info about it.

 

This is only meant to be a place for me to accumulate a list of resources.

 

Book Series with extensive multimedia support, suitable for Self-Study

 

Japanese from Zero

A series of 4 work-texts that teach basic Japanese incrementally. Each book has I think 13 lessons/units and is meant to be self-study. There are TONS of supplementary media available on the creators website and YouTube channel for this series. Looks very "do-able" and the formatting looks friendly for middle school students. The books teach from zero, as the name implies and require absolutely no background info going into them and are designed to be used by an individual.

 

Irasshai

  • An (interactive?) Japanese video course for use over 2-3 "levels" of Japanese. A public broadcasting series from the 90s/00s.
  • The FREE version: Online are 163 30-minute videos and each video has an accompanying worksheet available as a PDF. Watching the series  that cover the elementary levels of the language.
  • You can "beef up" the video program if you buy and complete the 5-book series available on Amazon/Abebooks/Ebay that are based on the video series to expound upon the program and go further with the lessons.
    • Teacher's Guide: ISBN-13: 978-1439226681

      Textbook Volume 1: ISBN-13: 978-1419685552

      Workbook Volume 1: ISBN-13: 978-1419685590
      Textbook Volume 2: ISBN-13: 978-1419685576

      Workbook Volume 2: ISBN-13: 978-1419685606

Genki (1-2)

  • A two level series that seems to be considered The Standard Core of Japanese language (self) study. It is designed to include multiple parts and very widely recommended course for self-study but it is MADE for classroom use.

Lets Learn Japanese Basic 1-2

  • A 1980s Japanese tele-course with accompanying workbooks. The videos are on YouTube and the out-of-print texts are available used on Amazon.

Learnables Japanese 1-2

  • Like a 1980s, book based version of Rosetta Stone. You listen to a CD while looking at pictures in a book. I don't think it teaches grammar explicitly. I have no idea how extensive or comprehensive it is, but it's available through both RainbowResource and Learnables.com.

Japanese Graded Readers

  • A series of books that are, exactly as the title implies --- graded readers. These books are written for JApanese Language LEarners thought and the first level, level 0 has just a few words per page and a healthy dose of pictures and arrows and by the end of the series you are reading full pages of text with minimal illustrations.
  • There are 3 volumes of booklets in each level Level 0, 1, 2, 3, and level 4 has only 2 volumes. Each booklet comes with a CD for support.

 

TO BE CONTINUED.

 

Books without extensive multimedia support, may be supplemental.

 

Real Japanese

  • This is sort of like the Fun Stuff series available for several "common" European languages. It is a romaji-based supplement/guide to learning language based on learning language the way that the authors child learned the Japanese language as a kid. So first it's nouns and adjectives, then it's short phrases. This looks like a great book for FAMILIES learning communicative-Japanese.

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TO BE CONTINUED.

 

Lite-Introductory Material for young kids.

Slangmans Fairy Tales

Level 1 - Cinderella

Level 2 - Goldilocks

Level 3 - Beauty and the Beast

 

DinoLingo - Japanese for Kids

 

 

Japanese for Kids 2-DVDs for introducing basic words and phrases in Japanese. Amazon.

Level 1 - Volume 1

Level 1 - Volume 2

 

Last updated 2/26/2018.

 

More to come later.

Edited by mom2bee
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Nice collection! BTW, the Irrashai program is a 3 credit high school program if you use all of the books in addition. I'm not sure how much the videos would hold a younger student's interest, but maybe. They do include a good amount of humor (sometimes cheesy though!) The videos are not really interactive but they do encourage the student to practice saying words along with the instructor's college-age students (usually a class of 4 or so students is included at some point during each video). They do a nice job and my son enjoyed this program in high school.

 

There is a program for the Nintendo DS that could be fun reinforcement...My Japanese Coach. More info on that and a few other games here.

 

 

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I’ve considered studying Japanese just to use these graded readers. They look so cute!

 

http://www.ask-books.com/tadoku/en/

 

Google “Tadoku†as a concept. It’s a whole Japanese philosophy of language learning through extensive reading. (Extensive reading = Just read naturally, don’t stop to think or look things up.) These books were designed to allow just that.

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My older kids liked to watch the Irasshai videos after we moved back to the states from Japan to help remember the Japanese they had learned while we lived there. They were upper elementary/middle school age by the time we were back in the states.

 

I don't know if it was interesting to them because it had context for them or if my kids were just weird. Both are possible lol! But I do think the videos could be done with say ages 10 and up maybe.

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Before we began our studies we listened to the Hiragana song over and over and over again until I went insane. All of the Japanese sounds, rules and exceptions were ingrained in my son's brain before we ever put a pen to paper so that when we did put a pen to paper we knew exactly what we were doing.

 

Right now we're doing Japanese Hiragana & Katakana For Beginners which is excellent and will probably follow it up with Japanese Kanji For Beginners by the same publisher, and then Genki I & II if he can handle it as we've begun quite young.

 

For audio we are listening to Rapid Japanese before we move on to Pimsluer and then I will set him loose on Duolingo.

 

 

 

Japanese The Menga Way and A Guide to Japanese Grammar have also gotten my attention.

 

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