Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've used the 2nd edition of Genki for the past four years in university classes as an associate instructor, and now as the lead instructor, so I was quite excited to see what had changed in the 3rd edition. The most significant changes are aesthetic, and the book does indeed look professional and modern. Very little has changed with regards to the content, which could be nice for teachers who were hoping to avoid making new lesson plans and materials. To those hoping for substantial improvements to Genki’s many problems, this will be a disappointment. Some changes are skillfully done; for example, one of the Ch. 5's readings was converted to a blog entry from a postcard to be more realistic and allow more ideas, while still maintaining the postcard format of the second reading so that teachers could continue to use those lessons if they so preferred, and the Ch. 5 dialogue was altered deftly to shorten and simplify Takeshi’s lines. Overall, Genki’s advantages over other textbooks like Nakama and Minna no Nihongo remain largely unchanged, including: 1) Plentiful, high-quality visuals 2) Clear and consistent organization and separation between dialogue, vocabulary, grammar, practice, and readings 3) An overall plot to follow the textbook characters (albeit superficial, disjointed, and contrived) 4) Textbook font (‘kyokasho-tai’) that models handwriting (as opposed to Nakama's computer fonts with one-stroke り, one-stroke ゆ, and so on) Unfortunately, Genki’s many weak points also remain unchanged or were even worse. A full review of these would take many pages, but they include: A) Unnatural, and sometimes ungrammatical English. (p. 231’s “It will take about two and half hours by train and bus” is a newly introduced grammar mistake, but other minor examples like this can be found throughout) The dialogues are stilted at best even in Japanese, but the English translations are often ridiculed by students for their stilted sound and incomprehensible use of discourse markers like “Well then.” B) Obtuse grammar explanations that sound like a poorly written linguistics article, with very few example sentences. My native English speakers have difficulty understanding the grammar explanations without help, let alone students for whom English is a second language. C) Inaccurate translations of grammar points or words. Frankly, Genki’s explanations of Japanese grammar are just occasionally wrong, putting teachers in an awkward position of having to correct the textbook or, worse still, having less experienced teachers believe those mistakes. For example, ～つ is not actually a “counter for small items” (pencils, grains of rice, and a smartphone don’t take ～つ, while planets, campuses, ideas, and questions do). It’s the default counter for words that don’t have a more specific unit. D) Disorganized vocabulary with at best tenuous connections to the grammar, chapter outcomes, and each other. Many words (e.g. 用事、荷物) appear once and then are never recycled again. E) (Related to D) The only time when sets of useful vocabulary (e.g. seasons, tastes, foods, furniture, colors) are presented together is in throw-away pages at the end of chapters, rather than in chapter lists. Otherwise we have spring and autumn in one chapter, summer and winter in another, and so on. F) The kanji characters are entirely disconnected from the listening and speaking. Effectively, the “Reading and Writing” section at the back of the book amounts to an entirely separate textbook. For example, the kanji 川 is introduced in Ch. 4, but the vocabulary word ‘river’ is then later introduced in Ch. 11. The characters, like the vocabulary, are not recycled or incorporated with the rest of the text. G) The kanji appear to be chosen at random. For example, infrequent characters like 牛 and 連are introduced in the Tanabata reading, while much more widely used kanji like 取 and 願 that appear in that same reading are not taught at all, including in Genki 2. H) The order of grammar points is not tied to any overall plan for what beginner students are expected to become able to do with the language. For example, potential forms aren’t introduced until the next book, long after Ch. 10’s description of changes using adjective+なる, when ACTFL, CEFR, and most other language standards suggest the opposite order. Now, this review is already long, so I will cut the list off here, but I could go on. (The book introduces hardly any sound symbolism despite its frequent use in Japanese, the "culture notes" have no connection to any other content and no suggested activities for incorporating them into the classroom, and so on) In the end, despite all this, I will recommend to my university to keep using Genki. The textbook is more affordable than its competitors, and those competitors share many of the same problems that Genki has, especially in terms of grammar explanations and dialogues. It is sadly a reflection of the status of our field that our most popular textbooks are so poorly designed and written, and that Genki might genuinely be the best value for university-level instruction or adult self-study. Is the 3rd edition of Genki worth buying for nearly double the price compared to the 2nd edition? I don’t particularly see why that would be the case. If you or your students are hard-pressed for cash, and if you are able to secure enough copies of the 2nd edition to meet your needs (still available on Amazon at the time of this review), saving the money seems like the way to go.