learn japanese textbook courses

Proven Course Teaches Japanese Quickly with Audio, Video and Mobile Apps

Beginner and advanced levels alike will enjoy JapanesePod101, an excellent online and mobile way to learn Japanese quickly.

JapanesePod101's fun method and modern platform immerse you in the Japanese language, giving you just what you need to achieve your goals for travel, business, family and other needs.

JapanesePod101 is web and mobile based, giving you a custom Japanese Learning Center anywhere. Download podcasts on your iPhone, Android, iPod Touch, iPod or any mp3 player and take them with you for practice and learning on the go.

High-Quality Content for Learning Japanese

A key aspect to learning a language is quality content. JapanesePod101 creates a steady flow of fresh content covering everything from cultural aspects of Japanese to tidbits about navigating in Japan, plus practical information to help you get by.

Beyond Audio and Video

Engage in a combination of audio and video lessons, lesson notes and checklists, transcripts, PDFs, vocabulary training with flashcards and quizzes plus a Japanese dictionary, grammar bank, a verb reference, social network and plenty more.

It's simple to get a free lifetime account.

Learn Survival Japanese

Wikitravel users have collectively created a free Japanese phrasebook with the goal of making it possible for travelers to "get by" while traveling in areas where Japanese is spoken.

Wikitravel phrasebooks are available in many languages and each one varies in depth and detail. Most of the phrasebooks include a pronunciation guide, a general phrase list, information about dates and numbers, a color list, transportation-related phrases, vocabulary for shopping and phrases for eating and drinking. Some are even more in depth, and all are free!

From Website

Summary

MIT has joined a growing list of universities worldwide in the OCW (OpenCourseWare) Consortium. An OpenCourseWare is "a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses".

Of interest to language learners is MIT's Foreign Languages and Literatures Department on the MIT OpenCourseWare website. While courses in this department range from "Communicating Across Cultures" and "Japanese Literature and Cinema" to "Topics in South Asian Literature and Culture" and "Expository Writing for Bilingual Students", they do also include specific language education courses. Currently at ocw.mit.edu, OpenCourseWares are available for learning the French, German, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish languages.

What makes these truly "free and open" to the general public is the Creative Commons license under which these OpenCourseWares are licensed: The Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike 3.0 License. In a nutshell, this license gives the public freedom to share, copy, distribute, display and make derivative works of the courses as long as they give proper attribution, do not use it for commercial purposes and "share alike" (under the same license) any new changes or improvements.

This is an exciting project to see! In time, free and "OpenCourseWares" should be available for learning all the world's major languages and, I hope, at least some of the minority languages as well. Bravo MIT and the OCW Consortium!

From Website

MIT OpenCourseWare is an idea—and an ideal—developed, supported, and embraced by the MIT faculty, who share the Institute's mission to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship to best serve the nation and the world. In 1999 the Faculty considered how to take best advantage of the Internet to advance education, and in 2000 proposed OCW. The rest is our history...

Link

Visit the MIT OpenCourseWare Foreign Languages and Literatures Department.