Here's a list of the resources I use/have used to study Japanese and my thoughts on them. Listed in the order that I first used them.

Japanese from Zero! Book 1 (George Trombley and Yukari Takenaka)

Pros:

• Takes you through hiragana gradually.
• Doubles up as a workbook to reinforce learning.
• Teaches in a way that you will remember.

Cons:

• I found the learning rate too slow. Not many sentence constructions were introduced and I eventually got bored of it.
• Too much emphasis on polite form -we need to learn the plain form, too!
• I would have preferred to learn how to construct verbs earlier on. Unfortunately, that comes towards the end of the book, and then they only teach you godan verbs (i.e. -u verbs) conjugated to polite present tense, so I was under the false impression that 見る (miru) would actually conjugate to 見ります (mirimasu), because they didn't explain -ru verbs at all (or indeed acknowledge there were two groups of verbs).
• Goes into numbers almost straight away. You are just presented with a long list and told to memorise them. Hardly a good way to learn.
• Not really a con, but... Continue reading →