A superbly paced and structured course
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I have been studying Japanese casually for more than 5 years, and seriously for about 6 months. This is the first course I've used that's made a real impact on my ability to speak Japanese. You won't become fluent in 30 days, but you will learn how to express yourself in a whole range of social and practical situations.
The approach is similar to Michel Thomas's French course: you learn each individual grammatical point or expression and then add onto them cumulatively. Before long, you find you are able to string together quite elaborate sentences. In addition, greetings and idioms are well covered.
The accompanying CD is very well done, too. The words are spoken slowly so that you can hear the correct pronunciation, and dialogues are spoken slowly so that you can follow them. This is a favourable contrast with other courses, in which after two or three lessons you are confronted with full-speed colloquial Japanese. You need to walk before you run, and that's the quickest way to progress!
The course teaches hiragana and katakana, with correct stroke order, which I have found very useful. Further, vital kanji are introduced at the end.
For a first course in Japanese or as a tool for building up your conversational ability this is first-rate, and at a tenner it's a steal.
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United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada