Hey guys!

Through my many years of learning and teaching languages, I've become quite a fan of student-centred approaches, and this is going to be the basis of my research for post-grad for the next couple of years. The textbooks they use at my uni at the moment are Genki 1 and 2, and the type of curriculum they follow is a notional/functional curriculum. I've asked my supervisor about other textbooks using different approaches, but they couldn't think of any. So I'm asking you guys if you know of any? Even ones with a more communicative style of approach would be helpful too.

Thanks!

Might I suggest, Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure

Cool, I'll have a look.

Any other suggestions?

Back in my high school the books they used were called "Adventures in Japanese". I think its approach is similar to Genki's.

Japanese For Everyone is still around. (It's pretty 昭和っぽい, and it came out right around the peak of the Bubble, but it's a good intro book.)

Also, みんなのにほんご is a standard textbook as well. The texts are all in Japanese, and you have to buy translations separately, so it encourages learning in Japanese only from the get-go.

And Japanese in Mangaland is still floating around. It's not one of my favorite series, but it's out there. So is Japanese for Busy People. (That's another strangely popular one.)

I always thought Japanese the Manga Way was much better than Japanese in Mangaland, and the Mangajin book. I still use it as a reference book every now and then, mainly because it includes a ton of colloquial Japanese that I never could find in texts/grammar dictionaries.

I think Erin's Challenge also has a textbook that goes with it? That's a pretty good little intro video series.

I dunno if Yan-san and the Japanese People had a textbook, but as an intro to Japanese video series, we loved watching it in Japanese class in college. It was already pretty outdated by then (another great Bubble resource), and I don't know if it comes with a textbook, but it was a great attempt at making learning Japanese entertaining.

With a lot of online resources, like JapanesePod, iKnow, (and YouTube) and online schools like JOI, there's a whole new approach to learning Japanese that way, too. Books are still important, but I don't think they're as important as they used to be.

EDIT: Forgot about the Coscom website. http://www.coscom.co.jp/index.html

That's a good little site for Japanese learners, too. They're the KO people, but they have other books/e-books aimed at Japanese learners, too.

rich_f Wrote:With a lot of online resources, like JapanesePod, iKnow, (and YouTube) and online schools like JOI, there's a whole new approach to learning Japanese that way, too. Books are still important, but I don't think they're as important as they used to be.

Yeah, I'm all for online resources, but the direction of my research is basically going to be better ways to teach Japanese *in class*

Thanks though!

Let us know what conclusions you come to! I'm curious to see what works, and what doesn't.

Sure! I hope I can come up with something useful. I feel like there'sa lot of literature on teaching English, and generally professional development is high compared to other languages, so hopefully I can add something to the teaching of Japanese