Buy Genki 1 or stick with Bunpro?

Japanese Language Questions
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I want to start participating in the absolute beginners book club in a month or so and it’s only been 1 month since I started learning japanese. I‘m making a whole lot of progress and I wanted to heavily start learning grammar since a few days now. I originally planned to buy the Genki 1 textbook + workbook in a bundle for 65$ but I’ve tested Bunpro today and I’ve studied and understood about 13 grammar concepts(JLPT N5 Grammar path)in under 90 minutes and now I’m wondering if I even need to buy Genki since it’s so expensive. What are the pros for Genki 1 compared to Bunpro?

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The practice dialogs, culture tips, etc. really. It’s a little more friendly and consistently-styled. Bunpro is a little more bare-bones in its explanations, but that might be fine since it does refer you to other places on the internet.

I’ll throw another option on the pile, look at irodori. It’s like genki, but free. Then if money is a big consideration, instead of OR, maybe it could be AND.

TOP | IRODORI Japanese for Life in Japan .

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Thanks for the suggestion, will definitely look into that!

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I think it also depends on your learning style.

Despite using textbooks for other languages (mostly at school), for some reason I could never engage with Genki. I suspect it’s because I’m quite a bit older now and also because the rest of my Japanese learning has also been based on SRS sites.

I’ve managed to pass N3 with essentially using Bunpro and reading. I realise that wouldn’t work for everyone though.

Another useful resource to consider is the dictionary of basic Japanese grammar. I don’t think you can learn from it alone, but it’s great for looking up points that you’re not certain on.

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If you like Bunpro, and it’s working for you, then stick with it. If after a few weeks you find you’re not retaining the information, then start looking for other grammar resources. And this doesn’t have to be a physical textbook either. You could use an online source like Tae Kim, or a Youtube series like Cure Dolly or 日本語(にほんご)の森(もり). The important thing is to find a source you like and stick with it.

I did Bunpro to reenforce the grammar from Genki, but then dropped it because it wasn’t very useful for me. I continued with an intermediate textbook without Bunpro and I’m doing just fine now, and there are people who used nothing but Bunpro all the way up to N1 just fine.

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I recommended Genki, It worked well for me, BUT~ I wouldn’t get bogged down on the writing exercises. When it comes to exercises they usually make you think you are learning something, but really they are mostly wasting time. I’d do the reading exercises before spending all my time doing writing exercises. When you don’t know enough to make interesting sentences you are really just boring yourself. Get graded readers, and just input input input.

I also recommend renshuu.org, but again avoid getting bogged down on testing yourself.

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I recommend Genki and Bunpro together but you can also do Genki without buying Genki :slight_smile:

This textbook is so popular that many people have made great tools to go along it. Those tools are so great, that I ended up using them and not really opening the actual book anymore. (So basically you can skip the step where you buy the book and use the resources for free).

The way to do Genki, without buying Genki, is as follow.

For each lesson, first watch the video of TokiniAndy on youtube go through it:

Then do the exercises for the lesson on this website:

Then next lesson :slight_smile:

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Japanese learners are so fortunate. That is an incredibly high quality resource that could get someone to the stage of reading and learning independently.

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