Eleanor Harz Jorden (1920–2009)

If you love JSL but you need more writing practice, the supplements are useful. They're thin newsprint volumes with all of the dialogues printed in normal Japanese (the usual kanji, no furigana, etc.). They're intended for native speaker teachers who find romanization annoying to read, but they're interesting for students as well.

Not worth buying if you aren't using JSL!

If you love JSL but you need more writing practice, the supplements are useful. They're thin newsprint volumes with all of the dialogues printed in normal Japanese (the usual kanji, no furigana, etc.). They're intended for native speaker teachers who find romanization annoying to read, but they're interesting for students as well.

Not worth buying if you aren't using JSL!

Unlike many Japanese textbooks, this one does a good job of addressing the needs of an intelligent adult student. Its most obvious difference is that it starts with katakana rather than hiragana. It also has some good explanations of punctuation and little quirks of written Japanese I don't usually see covered. However, I would not recommend it as a stand-alone book; it's meant to be used with Japanese The Spoken Language, and it shows.

Five stars if you liked JSL. One star if you didn't.

Japanese Reader