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Japanese Courses Like Barron's Mastering Japanese 1 & 2

PostPosted: April 15th, 2011, 6:39 pm
by tayloth1
Do you have any plans to add the FSI courses on basic Japanese to your web site? I believe there were two such courses, and were publish by Barron's as "Mastering Japanese 1" and "Mastering Japanese 2". Unfortunately, these Barron's courses are now out of print.

As these Barron's courses were based on the original FSI courses, I was wondering if you could post the original courses on line.

Currently, all I see on line is the manual for the FAST course, but no audio files. I'd like to see everything you might have, including the two basic Japanese courses and their associated manuals.

Re: Japanese Courses Like Barron's Mastering Japanese 1 & 2

PostPosted: April 16th, 2011, 10:58 am
by VagabondPilgrim
I'm not aware of any such work being done at the moment. The Japanese material seems to have been particularly hard to get a hold of.

Yet, the interest is certainly there. The Japanese FAST text that you've referred to has consistently competed for the most downloaded file since it was uploaded a couple of years ago.

Sorry I can't be of any better help.

-VP

Re: Japanese Courses Like Barron's Mastering Japanese 1 & 2

PostPosted: April 17th, 2011, 4:29 pm
by Oberon
According to the WorldCat page on "Mastering Japanese", the course is composed of sound recordings and the book "Beginning Japanese" written by Eleanor Harz Jorden. While the sound recordings may have been created by the Foreign Service Institue, the book is most certainly copyrighted. The book was published by Yale University Press and the copyright renewed on 1990-01-12. Eleanor Harz Jorden, who also wrote the FSI Vietnamese courses, died in 2009.

A later companion book "Reading Japanese" by Jorden is in the public domain and the full text is available (at least in the US) from google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1MF6kC ... &q&f=false


The book contains katakana, hiragana, and kanji with stroke order diagrams and plenty of sample sentences. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has already produced software flashcards from it (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki) Note that some of the kanji characters forms have been changed (reformed) since the printing of the book.

But why use a 1963 textbook when the same author has a later 1987 course "Japanese, The Spoken Language" (JSL) with new audio files available online at Ohio State University? The co-author (Mari Noda) is currently a professor and the chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. Unlike the other languages at OSU, there is explicitly no login required to access the files. Ostensibly, non-students are free to use the files, though they are copyrighted. If there is any concern, you may wish to send an email and inquire with the professor. There is also audio and a special web page for "Japanese, The Written Language" (JWL).

http://deall.osu.edu/resources/default.cfm (See the last two bullets in "DEALL-Hosted Home Pages")
http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/ (note the "No Login Required")


The books Vols 1-3 of JSL can be found used for about $10-$20 each. Each book took around two semesters to complete when combined with the written book. When I took the course, we had two 50 minutes lectures and five 50 minutes recitals per week. It was expected that the student would spend at least an equal amount of time outside the class reviewing materials and listening to audio, so 10 hours or more a week were needed. For under $50 or so, one could have three years of full time college material.

Typical Lesson Plan:

The student was required to memorize the lesson dialogue and be able to play either part in class. The lesson also included new vocabulary relating to the dialogue. For example, after making sure each student knew the dialogue, the TA would set up scenarios where the students would need to plug in new words. If the dialogue involved asking the price for a blue umbrella, the TA might hold up a yellow pencil. The student would need to quickly recall the Japanese words for "yellow" and pencil. I still get knots in my stomach just thinking about it.

Re: Japanese Courses Like Barron's Mastering Japanese 1 & 2

PostPosted: April 17th, 2011, 4:42 pm
by Oberon
One more comment - For Japanese FAST, consider asking Japanese Student Associations at universities if they would be willing to record the audio. Typically as part of their mission statement, they state they will work to advance the understanding of Japanese culture and language. Recording the audio for this public domain course would meet that mission statement as well as raise the visibility of the student association.

If anyone does volunteer to record, make sure they put some sort of spoken copyright notice in both Japanese and English stating how the audio may be used. Preferably they would use a Creative Commons Share Alike License or else go public domain.

If there is any question to the public domain status of the written work, point them to:

http://www.hathitrust.org/

which has declared the work to be in the public domain and has the full text available online. Search for "Japanese Familiarization" and click on the "Full view" tag in the result.

Several major respected universities stand behind the Hathi Trust Digital Library:

http://www.hathitrust.org/community

Re: Japanese Courses Like Barron's Mastering Japanese 1 & 2

PostPosted: May 6th, 2011, 7:18 pm
by tayloth1
Thank you, Oberon, for such a complete and informative reply!

Re: Japanese Courses Like Barron's Mastering Japanese 1 & 2

PostPosted: July 3rd, 2011, 4:46 am
by onebir
It seems that "Japanese, The Written Language" (JWL) is an updated version of "Reading Japanese" (RJ), see:
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Written- ... 0300048181
(review by J. Christopher Kern)

As Oberon has pointed out that the audio for JWL and book for RJ are both available online. There's a chance the revisions didn't affect the recorded passage, so perhaps they can be used together...