Learn Japanese with Paul Noble for Beginners – Complete Course: Japanese Made Easy with Your Personal Language Coach

I am a few weeks in to my Japanese language learning. After trying Duolingo for a week or so, I realised it wasn't going to be anywhere near enough, so I decided to delve into my audiobook collection.I have a few different Paul Noble language learning titles : Japanese, French, German, and Spanish. Japanese is the first of those that I have gotten round to listening to.I actually bought the audiobook a year or two ago, and never paid any more attention to it.Once I started listening a couple of weeks ago, I was hooked! I love Paul's way of teaching : the whole "don't try to remember anything" scenario is alien to most, but following his instructions it actually works! I listened to it whilst at work, and it kind of just sunk in whilst I went about my working day.I've never been very studious, however I found I managed to retain the majority of the grammar and vocabulary that Paul was teaching in the audiobook.I enjoyed it so much that now that I have finished the complete course, I have started on the "Next Steps..." audiobook.I just wish Paul would do a further audiobook to follow on after that. I could listen to his teaching (and absorbing all of the information) every day.

Well thought out and structured. You certainly improve you Japanese.Very clear and slowly paced.

As a student of Japanese, I was excited when Amazon announced that Paul Noble was going to write a Japanese course, so I pre-ordered both his Beginner and Next Step courses. Last week I received the message that the course was ready for downloading. However, upon reading the accompanying pdf booklet I was horrified that his Japanese course had far fewer scenarios and vocabulary than his European language courses.For example, Spanish with Paul Noble includes: At the Hotel, Finding a Campsite, Taking a Taxi, At a Café, Eating Out, At the Tourist Office, Asking Directions, Taking a Coach, Taking a Train, Introducing Yourself, A Brief Encounter, At the Bakers, Shopping at the Market, At the Pharmacy and Seeing a Doctor.His Japanese course however is restricted to three scenarios: At the Café, At the Japanese Hotel / B&B and Meeting an Acquaintance for Lunch.I was disappointed to find there was no vocabulary on asking directions, buying tickets or feeling ill.I hope The Next Step will include the missing scenarios, pity because I was looking forward to this course.

I am finding with trying to learn Japanese that you have to approach it using different angles to fully understand it, but Paul Noble takes the complexity of the language away and has you speaking it without being bogged down with the other stuff, but at the same time explains clearly what and why things are said. I like the way he has a very friendly and patient voice, like a good friend is teaching you and the course gives you plenty of time to think out your answers. Some might say that it repeats itself a lot, but I find this a good thing, I just hope he brings out a lot more courses so that I can expand my vocal vocabulary. I had before been using the Pimsleur courses before this, but they go too fast (maybe it's my age) and I found it hard for words to sink in, also Paul gets you straight to ordering a meal etc while Pimsleur seems to be focused on chatting the women up and is very Americanised.

I've been looking forward to this Japanese course as I like the way Paul Noble structures his learning.After just a few lessons i can now say quite long sentences in the correct word order.I think actually that's why the course has less scenarios as mentioned by the previous reviewer - the word order is vitally important in Japanese and that above all needs to be learned. Its basically opposite to how we speak. For example "I went to the bar for a drink with Paul" is spoken "With Paul to the bar for a drink I went". Paul is relentless in making sure this sinks in, which is great.The only slight gripe I have is that the learning is one way in that its always "how do you say this in Japanese?" There is no "translate this into English?"However, like I say it's only a minor gripe to what so far is a marvellous course