 
Japanese for Busy People II: Third Revised Edition incl. 1 CD (Bk. 2)
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Japanese for Busy People II: Third Revised Edition incl. 1 CD (Bk. 2) Editorial Review:
Volume I dealt with survival Japanese for tourists and other short-term travelers and newcomers to Japan. Volume II, meanwhile, turns to the basics of Japanese syntax. The book is by no means only about grammar, however. Rather, it is designed to help learners consolidate their understanding of syntactical structure through lessons that focus on how to talk about topics relevant to daily life. In addition to serving learners continuing from Volume I, Volume II will benefit those who have already studied beginning Japanese to some extent but wish to brush up on syntax.
Major Features of Japanese for Busy People II, Revised 3rd Edition
Japanese for Busy People II, Revised 3rd Edition will enable learners to progress smoothly through the equivalent of the latter half of a typical first-year Japanese course while gradually building speaking and listening skills.
Learners approaching mid-beginner status often find themselves suddenly faced with syntax and vocabulary much more complex than what they have studied before. Such grammar and vocabulary do not appear as frequently in everyday conversation as those words and structures they have learned up to this point, necessitating that they spend ample time on review. Moreover, learners at this stage are expected to become familiar with verb tense and aspect, time expressions, conditional clauses, and other topics that require them to have a solid grasp of context and speaker intent if they are to fully understand the differences in meaning conveyed by each. Such points cannot be mastered by reading through grammatical explanations alone. In short, the mid-beginner level is a difficult one for many adult learners who, unlike students in school, have neither time nor opportunities to take repeated tests or to otherwise gauge their progress.
Japanese for Busy People II, Revised 3rd Edition helps overcome the above obstacles through grammar and content topics carefully selected to be appropriate to learners at this level of Japanese proficiency. The book is designed so that by practicing talking about each topic, learners will gradually and effectively acquire sentence patterns and vocabulary related to that topic. Like Volume I, Volume II is organized into several large units, each covering topics grouped under a particular theme. In this way, the book enables learners to achieve a well-balanced understanding of grammar, sentence structure, and context.
Themes and lesson objectives of the five units in Volume II are as follows.
Unit 1: Souvenir Shopping Following up on Volume I, Unit 1 presents survival Japanese related to shopping, thus providing learners with a thorough review of simple clauses. The unit also goes beyond what was covered in Volume I by showing ways of asking someones opinion while shopping, making comparisons between items, and describing an items characteristics. The overall theme is picking souvenirs, a subject that should be relevant to learners both in Japan and abroad. The verbal skills and dialogue patterns studied here may be applied not only to shopping but also more broadly to any situation that involves choosing between options.
Unit 2: Building Rapport with Colleagues This unit introduces the plain forms of verbsa crucial component of Japanese compound sentencesalong with several sentence-final elements that make use of these forms. Topics are selected from among those that typically come up when interacting with people from work. Covered are constructions for indicating interest in anothers actions, inviting someone to do something outside of work, asking for help or offering advice, and otherwise interacting with people in ways that help build relationships of trust and understanding.
Unit 3: Returning to Japan for Work This unit explains how to build sentences using temporal clauses, direct and indirect quotation, and attributive modifiers. Through talking about factual events in ones life history or in that of a particular neighborhood, learners will study how to relate an event in chronological sequence, compare the way something is now to how it was in the past, and describe facilities and other things around them.
Unit 4: Planning a Vacation Along with sentences with clauses for stating reasons or reporting questions, this unit covers sentence-final elements used to express indefiniteness, for example wish or probability. Topics deal with verbal skills necessary for planning and carrying out activities in cooperation with others, including explaining reasons or circumstances, expressing probability, and indicating desire. The overall theme is that of planning and going on a trip to a unique place in Japan.
Unit 5: Solving Problems The focus of this unit is on forming conditional clauses. Topics include preparing for earthquakes or other disasters, discussing dreams for the future, solving problems, helping someone who is lost, and other situations that call on learners to talk about what might happen in the future, discuss options for solving problems, and give instructions or explain steps for doing something.Customer Reviews:
great sequel!
This is a great sequel to the first book Japanese for Busy People: Kana Version v.1: Kana Version Vol 1 and continues in the same style.
This book is structured just like the first book:
> shorter chapters [8-10 pages]
> one dialogue per chapter
> easily-explained grammar [a "no-nonsense" approach]
> a large number of exercises that varies in type [same sort of exercises as in the first book]
> no romanization of the dialogues
So far the book is just like the first book, but in this book Kanji is introduced.
I feel I need to expand on the Kanji taught in this book: the book teaches you Kanji by using the character-compound method, meaning that you learn whole words and not individual Kanji - you will not learn every possible pronunciation of a character. The book shows you how to draw most of the characters.
This series is aimed at people wanting to learn practical Japanese relatively fast, there is simply not enough time to study each individual Kanji when you have this goal.
In the prospectus of the book it states that 5-10 kanji are introduced in each chapter, but this is not entirely true: in addition to the 5-10 new Kanji-words introduced at the end of each chapter, each chapter introduces 10-15 Kanji words in the dialogues and exercises - so you actually learn alot more Kanji words than what the authors let on.
Just like the first book this one has vocabulary aimed at professionals learning Japanese: business people, diplomats, scientists etc...i.e. people who have practical reasons for learning Japanese.
But the method used in this book suits anyone who wants to learn Japanese relatively fast and still have a very good mastery of grammar.
Above all, it suits people like myself, who like to learn gradually through many short chapters rather than few large chapters.
This book was just as I expected, so I'm very happy with it. Book II For Busy People
Again second year of Japanese required text book for class. Good as the first in the series recommend using CD more often with this book which will help the reader through un familiar sounding phrases and greetings. Used separately the book will help a beginner practice sounding out words in the most typical everyday lifestyle from asking directions to buying stamps at the post office, to counting items in an department store. as good as you will find
This book is the intermediate level in a really well-done series. The progression from simple conversation to more sophisticated material is so seamless that a learner will probably not even notice how much ground has been covered. This series is very much skewed toward everyday conversation, but the presentation has been done so comprehensively that transitioning into more sophisticated areas can be done very smoothly. The CDs are really high quality as well, making these books overall a fine value for the price. I do recommend getting the kana edition of book 1- students who put off kanji and kana until level two will find they have a lot on their plate. nice 3rd edition
I studied JFBP I. this series are both usable, and new edition has a clearer sound recording and the units are so fine designed. can be studied for the japanese language profiency test. Challenging
I have the Kana version. Romaji is not used. All words are defined in English. Naratives are in Kana and Kanji. Kanji the first few times are explained in Kana. Many proper nouns, if not all, are in Kanji. The Exercises often use vocabulary from the first book, so if you haven't memorized this earlier Vocabulary, one can waste time looking for definitions. This takes away from the learning process. I would prefer the glossery include the prior Book(s) vocabulary (that is, book II including both glosseries I and II, combined. The subject matter is sufficiently diverse. At times in the exercises they include a word that is simular to one in the story but may not unrelated to the story. A learning plus. It is quite a challenge to read 3 foreign sylabets, learn new vocabulary, and new grammar. A good teacher can make the difference. Related Categories:
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