Situational Functional Japanese

Situational Functional Japanese - Printable Version

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Situational Functional Japanese - brett - 2008-01-07

Has anyone used this text? I'm just getting started learning japanese and I bought it before I heard about how great Genki was. It looks good but I get the feeling it's geared more towards a classroom environment as has been suggested in previous posts. I'm just wondering how effective it will be using it as a self-learning tool. Should I go ahead with it or ditch it and get Genki instead? Does anyone have recommendations for supplementary material that goes well with the SFJ series that might fill in the gaps in information that may result from not being in a class? I've heard good things about Japanese in Mangaland.

Situational Functional Japanese - rich_f - 2008-01-07

I don't have any info on SFJ, but from my experiences, Genki is best used in a classroom setting. A lot of the exercises are pair work in-class exercises. That said, the series does have good grammar explanations, and the second book has a lot of readings in the back to help develop kanji. The audio tracks are available online. Google the ncsu.edu domain for Genki, and you'll find online audio for the series. How useful is it? I dunno. It's useful enough as a place to start.

What it lacks sometimes is in explanations. Sometimes they felt a little vague. For example, they explain how to make ーてform verbs, and they show a few places where you'd need to convert a verb to its ーてform, but they left me feeling a little vague on what the ーてform by itself means. (Then again, I suppose you could write a whole book on using the ーてform. )

I went through both Genki I and II in about 4 semesters.

Situational Functional Japanese - brett - 2008-01-07

rich_f Wrote:What it lacks sometimes is in explanations. Sometimes they felt a little vague. For example, they explain how to make ーてform verbs, and they show a few places where you'd need to convert a verb to its ーてform, but they left me feeling a little vague on what the ーてform by itself means. (Then again, I suppose you could write a whole book on using the ーてform. )

Ok, thanks Rich! Do you think the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar that I've been hearing so much about would be sufficient to fill in the gaps in the explanations you're talking about?

Situational Functional Japanese - rich_f - 2008-01-07

Yes, I like the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. It's good at filling in some of the blank patches you run into in textbooks. It's a good reference book. Entry lookup is in romaji, and examples are given in romaji, kanji, and kana, so you can use it even if you haven't mastered the written characters of Japanese.

There are also a ton of online resources you can use as well. There's a thread here somewhere with a listing of everyone's favorite online resources.

Situational Functional Japanese - styrmis - 2008-01-07

I agree with rich_f in that Genki is really a classroom text. I was just discussing with a friend today about how we should meet up once a week to do the exercises since our current Japanese class doesn't include pair work.

Situational Functional Japanese - esgrove - 2008-01-07

I went through the whole series of Sitch-Func in college, as well as the whole series of Genki while studying abroad. I found that while Situational Functional is more comprehensive in terms of length and drills, it's very rigid and old-fashioned. After studying it for almost three years, Genki was a breath of fresh air. It had a much more approachable layout, and everything was arranged more logically. Even though I had already covered most of the grammar points in Situational, I found that the Genki books explained the points better.

I had the opportunity to take a Japanese class with one of the authors of Genki as my teacher at Kansai Gaidai University, and she was very nice.

My opinion is that Genki is better, but if you already have Situational Functional Japanese, then it's good to have as a reference for additional explaination.

Situational Functional Japanese - vosmiura - 2008-01-07

I used Genki for a while in some classes at my work place, but more recently I got Japanese For Everyone for self study and I like it a lot more than Genki.

I just find the JFE dialogues and exercieses to be more interesting, and overall for most points I prefer JFE.

Genki's dialogues are more based around a young exchange student in Japan, whereas JFE is based around a couple moving to work and live in Japan, so the latter has a lot more dialogues and practice that's more directly useful to me.

Situational Functional Japanese - rich_f - 2008-01-07

Yeah, Genki's focus on college exchange students' experiences in Japan just didn't click with me either. I think it was one of the very first chapters where a good chunk of vocab was simply dedicated to college majors. That's great and all, but why not stick with the 1,000 most frequently used words in the language, and if they need to tell someone they're a stat major, they can just look it up. There were a few people in my Japanese classes who did semester/year study abroad programs there, but I don't think any of them tried it with just what they learned in Chapter two of the book, if you know what I mean. Big Grin

Situational Functional Japanese - DeKleft - 2008-01-16

this reply is likely too little too late, but i went though all 3 Situational Funtional books in college as well, and i wanted to stick a shotgun in my mouth. The layout of the book in my opinion was way too random, especially when it came to vocabulary. Later i went through the genki books and found the approach much more systematic. Still, i`m living in Japan now and taking Japanese classes, but the fastest progress i`ve been able to make is following the `all japanese all the time method`. Especially if your starting fresh, i would highly recommend doing the same

Situational Functional Japanese - brett - 2008-01-16

DeKleft Wrote:this reply is likely too little too late...

No, actually I'm still subscribed to this topic. I basically drew your conclusion from the comment from the guy a few posts earlier. I bought JFE instead and plan to use it with the AJATT method as it seems like the most effective way to learn the language and I'm glad to hear some confirmation of that. I'm just getting started with RTK1 right now, but if you have any suggestions for where a beginner should look for sentences and ideas for setting up flashcards, I would be grateful for any help. The introductory posts on the AJATT site are a little vague. Thanks!

Situational Functional Japanese - DeKleft - 2008-01-24

Well, as it says in AJATT, focus your entire attention on RTK first. Once you finish that, then keep reviewing the RTK while you start on your sentances. I've been using "A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar", because i already have a fairly firm grasp on all beginner and some intermediate grammer. If I were you, i would find "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" and use the sentances and grammer explainations in there in conjunction to something like the Genki books (the sentances they use, I personally am not familiar with JFE, but if that's an beginning Japanese textbook, that should work as well). The most important thing while you're working on your sentances while you're starting is to make sure you're able to use the different verb conjugations (passive, potential, causative, volitional, progressive, etc.) I find that the Grammar dictionaries are great supplemental guides, but are too condensed to give a thorough and complete explaination to many grammar points. Good Luck!

Situational Functional Japanese - AndamanIslander - 2008-01-24

Brett,

If the super-informal learning style suits you, you should definitely also think about http://www.JapanesePod101.com...

Situational Functional Japanese - leosmith - 2008-01-27

brett Wrote:I bought JFE instead and plan to use it with the AJATT method as it seems like the most effective way to learn the language and I'm glad to hear some confirmation of that. I'm just getting started with RTK1 right now, but if you have any suggestions for where a beginner should look for sentences

Here is the link to the majority of the JFE sentences and audio for those sentences. Big thanks to Jason Reaves for hosting this. The sentences have been reviewed by a native speaker. The voice in the recordings is my own, so not native.

Situational Functional Japanese - brett - 2008-01-27

leosmith Wrote:Here is the link to the majority of the JFE sentences and audio for those sentences. Big thanks to Jason Reaves for hosting this. The sentences have been reviewed by a native speaker. The voice in the recordings is my own, so not native.

Thanks, Leo! That looks like it will be extremely helpful when I finally get to the sentence collecting phase. I'm curious to see how different this new edition of JFE is that I see on amazon. I wonder if it will have completely different sentences and grammar explanations or just a new cover. For now, it looks like RTK will keep me busy for a couple months at the rate I'm going....