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Japanese For The Younger Crowd


Slache
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What have your kids enjoyed and learned from? We have used Hiragana & Katakana For Beginners and Rapid Japanese, are currently using Remembering The Kanji and Duolingo, and didn't like Japanese From Zero. Long term plans include Japanese The Manga Way done casually followed by Genki and Mobira, but he's not ready for that. I'm looking at Let's Learn Japanese, the TV show from the 90s (?) and Pokemon. :ph34r:

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9 hours ago, Slache said:

Very, but I don't want to introduce more than 10-15 minutes of seatwork or 30 minutes of screen time.

But what kind of seat work? It seems like everything you listed in meant for an adult student or intensive university audience so I'm just confused. How many kids do you have learning Japanese? Do they have the maturity to productively complete boring/sloggish materials in pursuit of accomplishing a goal? Are you or your husband able to teach/correct Japanese?

What is the goal of your crowd studying Japanese now instead of later?

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51 minutes ago, Gil said:

But what kind of seat work? I was thinking workbook. It seems like everything you listed in meant for an adult student or intensive university audience so I'm just confused. That's the problem. I can't find anything for younger students that I like. How many kids do you have learning Japanese? Two. 2nd & K, but only looking for the older one. Do they have the maturity to productively complete boring/sloggish materials in pursuit of accomplishing a goal? Absolutely. Are you or your husband able to teach/correct Japanese? I'm learning alongside them.

What is the goal of your crowd studying Japanese now instead of later? I don't have one. He wanted to.

 

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Well, quality control and editing consistency/quality tends to be very low for Japanese resources made/produced in the US.Many times "series" that are just built around generically and have different langauges applied to them tend to be hit or miss. The standards for quality/accuracy for "For Kids" Japanese/Chinese resources seem to be laughably low, so I"m extremely skeptical and wary of (US Made) "Japanese for Kids" resources, but the most promising source I've found for actually learning Japanese in the family is this book, which--according to the reviews--contains errors in the transcription: Use Japanese At Home. We haven't used it.

Locally, I'm looking for a native and fully fluent Japanese speaker to review the Use Japanese At Home book for me in depth before I give it to The Boys, but it certainly looks the most promising out of everything that I've seen.

As for easy to use workbooks, if you're not ready to jump into a more expensive and expansive resource there is Teach Me Everyday Japanese and a couple of Japanese Picture Dictionaries made by US/English publishers.

Additionally there are DVDs out there for kids who want to learn Japanese like Little Pim and Dino Lingo.  Personally, I disdain 99.99% of all edutainment ever created, and The Boys are in 6th grade so it's not really appealing to them to even try, so we've never used these things either and I can't recommend them personally.

Berlitz Kids has some Japanese materials.

Again, I'm not recommending ANY of these things and I have reason to believe that they're of poor quality and may contain (several) instances of incorrect Japanese language.

The Boys use a select few adult-learner materials, that are (from what I can tell) are excedingly well done and fairly niche in their approach, but I can't recommend the Beginning Japanese series to you for your early elementary students. 5th is probably the earliest that I'd start the series, and even so halfway through 6th or even 7th grade would probably be a better age.

In your shoes, as a USABLE resources for your crowd I'd recommend that you go with the Teach Me Everyday Japanese and maybe import a Native picture dictionary.

We'

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