What audio after Pimsleur
In a previous post, I was praising Pimsleur Japanese as a good introduction to the language. I also noted that while 3 parts of ~30 lessons each are quite long, you are still left as a beginner japanese student.
I’ve been looking for an audio “class” replacement for my daily commute, and am happy to report that I have found an excellent one. JapanesePod101.com is the website. I actually stumbled upon them a few months ago, but for some reason didn’t trust it. Their main page looks similar to one of those “Buy this book and discover the secret of life!” website, and you’ll find a few concerns of worrying students on the net.
But their trial is free, so there’s definitely nothing to lose on trying it. The amount of audio is amazing, and they have transcripts and a clear content for each lesson. They have 4 levels of difficulty (Absolute Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced), each containing about 100 lessons.
To get an idea of the transition from Pimsleur to JapanesePod101, I started at the Absolute Beginner’s 40th lesson, and find it is a good level match. Each lesson (as far as I heard) is about 15 minutes, starts with a dialogue, followed by the slow version, and the translated version. Then 2 teachers dive in detail about the vocabulary and grammar. All of it in a seemingly relaxed atmosphere.
After a long period of trying to immerse myself into incomprehensible japanese audio, I find the podcast very good, and a very good supplement for any new japanese student. If you have other similar resources let me know!