Their advertisement method is a bit shady, but the actual content is sound.
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You think? I hated it, both their Japanese and Cantonese versions are really bad
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Completely disagree, while theyāre business practices are questionable, I think their content is great. Iāve been following this listening order (Redirecting...) and it has been a great supplement for my textbooks.
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I checked their youtube chanell for my native language andā¦ Welp, thereās a common mistake in a word in the first video and in the first example. I know it might be rare buuutā¦
Theyāre great for listening though IMO, but I personally donāt like this type of learning - it doesnāt work for me
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You must be joking. Japanesepod is fantastic. I bought two years premium and have no regrets at all. Apart from my tutor, who Iām scaling back to save money, Japanesepod is the vast majority of how I get to do probably the most important thing - actually hear native Japanese people speak Japanese. Each lesson consists of a short story, usually a conversation between actors eg Lori is buying some shoes. Then you get it repeated slowly in chunks, then you get translation in chunks, then the hosts analyse the grammar and discuss various points eg how Japanese shoe sizes work, pronunciation etc. Plus you get it all written out in a choice of ways.
And then thereās the flashcard system which isnāt bad, though I mainly use Memrise and Renshuu because they can be tied to Genki.
The one thing I would say with Japanesepod is that because it is so vast, you are best off using the list in this article Redirecting...
As for their advertising being shady, I have no idea why people say that. I have never had so much as an email off them. There is one box on the site for upgrading. I do think the premium plus subscription sound like a waste of time, not much extra for what you pay, but the premium is great.
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How did you get into the beta? Just from responding to that thread they posted last month? Sadly, I missed that. Iād rather be putting my really long streak into Japanese even if itās still slightly sketchy.
Listening to native Japanese speakers is kind of essential to learning the language, donāt you think? And this is the place to get it as far as I can see, unless you move to Japan. Even there, they arenāt gonna stop and explain everything like on Japanesepod101.
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Eh, I donāt see anything wrong with those charts. Theyāre only $16 (or both for $27) and they seem to cover the most common kanji and vocabulary for the first two tests. Of course, you need more than that to pass the tests. But whatās wrong with having the vocabulary on a convenient chart? Sure, the marketing is sketchy, butā¦ Well, have you seen the crazy stuff that ToFufu says about WK and TextFugu? Theyāre all the same in the Japanese learning market. They all promise way too much.
JPod might be a fine resource (I havenāt used it), but they also have very sketchy marketing and they send out absurd amounts of spam emails.
Well, yeah, but I would listen to actual japanese speakers and actual langauge if I had enough knoledge or near that.
I checked a lot of their videos about my language and, wellā¦ To be short, they are not good. Maybe itās different with japanese, I donāt know, but with my langauge - no-one even talks like this! Thereāre A LOT of phrases that are not correct and they sound hilarious. I hope itās better woth japanese 'cause I listened to their beginner stuff. Iām not so sure now though
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I donāt see how they can be incorrect, seeing as they are spoken by Japanese people, and one of the hosts is always Japanese.
Iāve been signed up for nearly a year and Iāve never had one spam email off them.
Thanks to @DiMono and @Franken for the Japanesepod101 order recommendation link. I agree I always found their content good at times but the amount of content put me off and was either very good or very patchy. Time to make a free account using this method and see if I can do better this time.
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Hi @Kwami, a wall chart would be fine in a classroom, school corridor, bedroom, study or back of the toilet door.
Their suggestion that the folded up chart āgives you freedomā is laughable. A chart, which you can fold up and ātake (it) on the roadā, as the web site suggests, is not as good as having a kanji app on your smartphone. If I am standing at a bus stop on a windy day, I would prefer a smartphone app to a large unfolded chart flapping in the wind.
The ad says āPass the JLPT on your first try with the JLPT Wall Chartā. This product might be aimed at the parents of exam candidates because you would have to be really ignorant to think this is sufficient.
The chart might help someone pass the kanji section but that is not enough to pass JLPT. They mention having a list of radicals with English and Japanese names. The chart appears to show the stroke count too. There is no need to learn any of that for JLPT N5.
I look at this advertisement and see it as something which preys on vulnerable people. It wants them to be very afraid of the exam and then offer an easy solution.
As for this nonsense:
Guaranteed Effective - The JLPT Wall Chartā¢ increases your exposure to the JLPT kanji and vocabulary so you can memorize them easily and effortlessly.
āGuaranteedā? They are not offering a full refund if the candidate fails the exam.
āEffortlesslyā? When something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
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Iām just saying that I hope their proninciation is okay because I used/use them too on youtube for listening. BUT not every native speaker is going to be either good with pronunciation/have correct speach or just be in general grammatically correct. I have plenty of examples with my own freinds who donāt know how to write/speak correctly. Iām not trying to say that jpod101 is bad, Iām saying that russianpod101 is pretty terrible. I cannot check that for japanese though unfortunately
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If weāre satisfied that Japanesepod101, we should move further discussion of it to the following thread:
Does the wall chart have Kanji on them? Is the information about the Kanji correct?
If you answered yes to both those questions then your problem isnāt with the product, itās with the marketing of the product.
Which if your that sensitive to marketing making excess claims, you should probably add Wanikani and Textfugu to your list of bad resources, because they both (especially textfugu) make claims that are no where close to trueā¦
Well thatās the problem. The actors suck, makes the whole thing boring to death, and the conversations arenāt even interesting to begin with. Just my opinion
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WK isnāt just for kanji, it only teaches 2000+ kanji (which is almost enough though). The real important thing that WK teaches you (IMO) is the over 6000 words. Knowing kanji alone wonāt help you much, knowing over 6000 words though, will.
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From what Iāve seen (Iāve tried a demo for Spanish a long time ago to see if it would help my sister in class)ā¦ RosettaStone is not bad per se.
Itās certainly an okay way to learn some basic vocab and grammar but the cost definitely is far far too much for what it offers. Especially considering there are other apps and websites who offer nearly the same service for free or at least at a much lower cost.
Iād avoid it to be sure. If they lowered the price significantly then itād be a good resource to supplement things. But Iām just bothered by how it always seems to advertise itself as a way to get fluent, which I donāt think it could do on itās own.
Well yes, you also learn vocab, but thatās the case with every learning tool and the vocab you learn in wk isnāt enough to pass the jlpt exams with, so you need to have another vocab tool on the side anyway. Itās a great tool, I was making the case for Rosetta stone being cheaper