Hi! I have browsed through a lot of threads here and was surprised to see that there aren't many learners here who are using/have used audio programs like Rosetta Stone, Assimil, Living Language and Michel Thomas.

In other online communities, programs like these are quite popular. In fact, I am using Assimil to study French on my own. I never used an audio program for Japanese because I went to a Nihongo school.

So my question is, has anyone ever tried audio programs for Japanese and how far along did it get you in your study of Japanese?

Japanese TV has always been my audio program. That's the only one you would ever need. http://www.fengyunzhibo.com/space/japan.htm

sherlock Wrote:Hi! I have browsed through a lot of threads here and was surprised to see that there aren't many learners here who are using/have used audio programs like Rosetta Stone, Assimil, Living Language and Michel Thomas.

In other online communities, programs like these are quite popular.

A lot of people do Core 6k specifically because it has audio. It works pretty good as an audio program (especially when paired with a text book with audio).

I have tried listening to VocabULearn audio lessons, but they contained too many words I already knew, the PDFs were scanned and difficult to read, and the words I didn't know were often difficult to learn without seeing the kanji.

I'm currently generating audio lessons with shell scripts like Audio Lesson Studio. I can include only words I have marked as to learn and exclude words like two kanji compounds. I'm also reviewing vocabulary items and sentences by playing audio for some fields while reading other fields.

I'm using audio files from JapanesePod101 / WWWJDIC, Core 6000, and Japanese Sensei Deluxe / Core 10k, and I have posted a few of the scripts I use at http://lri.me/notes.html.

I used Pimsleur (Japanese) and I found it really good if you can stomach its price - in my case, I was able to borrow the tapes from the New York library.

However, do not hold any illusion about how far it leads you in the language: you barely scratch the surface after the 90 lessons. So their claims in promotional materials are entirely bogus. I wish they had 900 lessons, not just 90. I am always surprised at how people despise this method, as it is a very natural way of learning and it forces students into production from the start. If you delay production, you end up sounding like an idiot savant. It is also great as a means of nailing down the sounds of the language early on.

I tried Pimsleur Thai (at the library again), but I couldn't really figure out precisely the sounds of the language, so I gave up, so maybe it is not as effective as a live teacher in front of you for languages more difficult to pronounce than Japanese.

I used Assimil Russian some 25 years ago and I still remember a few sentences. I also did Assimil German, Greek and Italian. Assimil is awesome, and I especially like their idea of the "second wave". Same problem as Pimsleur: it does not take you far enough in the language, although there was a second tome for German. Moreover, their coverage of grammar is insufficient.

So in summary, these methods are great at what they try to do, which is to give a basic, intuitive production ability, but you need to go on by yourself after if you want to reach a deeper ability.

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sherlock Wrote:So my question is, has anyone ever tried audio programs for Japanese and how far along did it get you in your study of Japanese?

When I was commuting to London (last October) I did 1/2 of the Michel Thomas beginner course. I remembered the grammar rules from it when I came across them in other materials months afterwards, so I would recommend the course as a simple introduction to grammar. The vocabulary didn't go very far though.

I tried listening to the start of Pimsleur a month back and couldn't stand the slow pace.

Tried Pimsleur, only did 30 lessons. It wasn't useless, but very boring, slow, and way too much English. If I had instead spent those 20-30 hours listening to comprehensible audio I ripped from native sources (comprehensible because I watched those native sources with subs before), I would've been much better off.

As far as Rosetta Stone, this one, I can confidently say, is about as close to useless as you can get. Pointless repetition, for no rhyme or reason.

As far as studying grammar specifically, doing that from a textbook is much more efficient than listening to audio. In general, grammar is best understood from a written source, for what I think are pretty obvious reasons (grammar is a written system of rules, especially in Japanese, where the way the Kanji and Kana are used plays an important role). Studying grammar from audio seems very similar to studying computer programming from audio. If you've ever studied programming, you understand why that would be difficult.

These courses are all ok as absolute beginner listening practice but are extremely limited and tend to get very boring. I wouldn't bother with them beyond the first couple of weeks.

I've tried Teach yourself, Pimsleur and Michel Thomas as well as a handful of podcasts at various times in various languages. Teach Yourself and Pimsleur are OK. Michel Thomas is crap. Podcasts (if you can find a good one) are beter because they have longer dialogues.

louischa Wrote:If you delay production, you end up sounding like an idiot savant. It is also great as a means of nailing down the sounds of the language early on.

Better an idiot savant than an idiot. Production is going to be hard and full of mistakes for a very long time whether you practice production or not. To think otherwise is just naive. As for nailing down the sounds, your pronunciation is only ever going to be as good as your ability to notice the difference between your own pronunciation and that of natives. This can vary a lot from person to person. But I have never met someone with good pronunciation right from the start. Actually I have, he had watched bucket loads of anime.

I'm currently doing Pimsleur and I enjoy it and here is why:
-Helps you build a strong base of vocab and strong pronunciation skills
-The recall puts pressure on you so you have to answer fast, you don't get 30 seconds for each answer
-In conjunction with RTK, it's perfect. With RTK I don't have too much time left in my day to study anything else. So while I commute I get to practice vocab, listening and speaking skills all at once

The cons:
-It can be boring but not all areas of language learning will be "fun". Think RTK for example it's not exactly enjoyable.
-The price
-There is a lot of english compared to japanese

Since doing Pimsleur I'm 40 lessons in. Other than that the only japanese studies I've been doing is RTK. With out pimsleur I would know absolutely no japanese. When I watch anime I'm starting to pick out a word here and there all because of pimsleur. I'm not necessarily advocating pimsleur but some audio courses are good. Native audio might be superior to an audio course but what's the point if you can't understand anything? After pimsleur I will probably graduate to more complex audio when I'm a couple hundred cards in to Core.

I did all three levels of Pimsleur Japanese when I first started. Combining that with a basic grammar guide, and learning hiragana/katakana I was able to skip the first few terms of a well respected 10 year part-time Japanese program, with year 10 representing slightly beyond N1 level.

Yes, you read that correct - 10 years, 3 terms per year, and it got me about 1 to 2 terms in. So basically it got me about 5% of the way through my Japanese journey, and to be honest 10 years on that seems generous.

Pimsleur is decent and I would recommend it to a beginner (perhaps), but you have to be realistic about how far it will take you. I think Pimsleur + Heisig is probably a pretty decent foundation to help you *start* learning the language.

Sounds like a pretty crappy course if it takes you 10 years to get to N1.

I can't imagine a pimsleur course having more than 500 words (maybe not even that) so if you think of 10,000 words as a kind of good base level, then pimsleur alone isn't going to get you there. In order to succeed you need to eventually be finding strategies beyond pimsleur (and other beginner courses for that matter). You won't ever reach a substantial level if you don't figure out a method of learning from real materials or people. This is the important thing. Beginner material only represents a tiny first step so just pick anything that isn't boring.