Series 'Nakama'
Books in the 'Nakama' series
Reviews of the 'Nakama' series
Review by Charles Eicher
I see lots of students using Nakama, since it was written by professors at my school. Its about the best program I've seen for classroom instruction, but I've never heard of anyone using it for self study. I suspect it might be even more valuable in this role, since it comes with audio tapes. Its kinda expensive with the tapes, but this would really help if you don't have native speakers to practice with. Nakama is pretty thorough, it takes you through pretty much all the basic grammar, once you're through with this book you've got all the fundamentals.
Review by Shawn O'Donnell
For Nakama 1, the "student's Audio CD" is actually two CDs, with audio for the dialogs, listening exercises and conversation drills found in the textbook.
The "Audio Program" is a set of 7 CDs that goes with the "Workbook/Laboratory Manual." The Workbook/Lab Manual is a paperback book with ... read more
Review of Nakama series by Shawn O'Donnell
For Nakama 1, the "student's Audio CD" is actually two CDs, with audio for the dialogs, listening exercises and conversation drills found in the textbook.
The "Audio Program" is a set of 7 CDs that goes with the "Workbook/Laboratory Manual." The Workbook/Lab Manual is a paperback book with tear-out pages that make it easy for students to turn in their work.
The Workbook/Lab manual is laid out in two separate sections: first the Workbook, chapter by chapter, and then the Lab Manual, chapter by chapter. I was confused by the non-collated arrangement at first.
The workbook focuses on written exercises. The lab manual is more closely linked with the audio program. There are recordings of the vocabulary words for each chapter followed by a number of speaking and comprehension activities.
There are 12 chapters in Nakama 1, so each chapter comes with about 5-10 minutes of audio on the textbook CDs and 20-30 minutes of audio on the audio program CDs.
I hate trying to make sense of fine distinctions in pronunciation from crappy recordings. You won't have that problem with these CDs. The recordings are professional, high quality audio.
I can't imagine working through the Nakama text without the full audio program and the workbook/lab manual. I recommend you invest in the complete set. I think you'll be happy you did.
My only complaints about Nakama 1 are...
(1) some of the grammatical explanations are a bit glib. If you are using the text in a class, you can rely on your instructor to flesh things out. If you're studying by yourself, you may want to consult a grammar or another text on occasion.
(2) It took me a long time to figure out what was included in the Nakama program. Neither the publisher nor resellers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble make it clear.
☆ See all reviews by Shawn O'Donnell.