Japanese Pod 101 - Learn Japanese On-line A Review of Their Platform

If you haven't checked out Japanese Pod 101.com you need to. Any one who has an interest in getting a good grip on the language needs to check them out.

Here is a breakdown of what this wickedly smoothly integrated machine can do for your Japanese ability.

What is it? - Essentially this is an online Japanese learning platform. Not an in-house Japanese class that you go to.

What Does It Cover? - Pretty much everything. Hearing, speaking, reading, pronunciation, writing and comprehension of the Japanese language in all forms. It also divides the attack by topic. How to talk about your work day, saying your sorry, talking about the weather, romance talk, office talk etc.

It also gets into casual and formal uses quite heavily. This means it will give you a sentence in a formal tense and then give you a more casual way of saying it that you would use with friends. It helps the beginning learner who is grappling with the concept of levels of politeness .

It also warns you on odd usages. For example for those of you who are English teachers out there, have you ever had a Japanese ask you "How much gas do you consume per month?" I have. Although consume and use are quite similar, consume smells like something puked out of a textbook. A native speaker would simply say "What's your monthly gas bill run you?" Get the drift?

What are the Japanese Pod 101 Formats? - The formats are audio via podcasts and visual via video with of course audio combined. PDF formats are also offered for subscribers. They also offer downloadable android aps so you can study on the go.

What Levels do They Offer? - They offer lessons for core beginners who literally can't introduce themselves in the language up to quite advanced learners who could carry out a business presentation in Japanese. It is divided roughly into:

Absolute Beginner
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced

How Does Japanese Pod 101 Present Their Material?

Japanese Pod 101 is presented largely incrementally. It starts with word lists and then progresses rapidly to sentence structures and conversations. (Of course you can study at your own pace and review as much as you need to).

Word lists and sentences are all presented in both languages English and Japanese in written and audio formats.
You can adjust the speed of how fast the material is presented so for example if your listening ability is weak you can adjust the program to speak slowly. When you master you can crank up the speed.
After an audio or audio / visual dialog is presented and you study it, you can look at a written PDF form and study it line by line or word by word. Audio is included in the dialog. It allows you to dissect the conversation so you don't feel like you got hit by a truck. Didn't get it? Fine. Play it again and drill it down until you do.
Pronunciation practice is also worked into dialogs. You hear the speakers sentence in the dialog and then click a button and repeat it. It measures how close you are to a native speaker so you can perfect or at least get your pronunciation very close to a native speaker.

Click here to learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com

How Much Material is There Available? - More than most students possibly have time to study. There are thousands of audio and video lessons available - we're not kidding. And they just keep adding to them week after week after week.

Okay, If There's so Much How do I Keep Track of it? In a sense you don't. After you study a lesson you can mark it studied. It remembers what you studied and what you didn't. You mark the lessons completed and then it moves you forward in the curriculum which is divided by seasons within the level you choose to start at.

Another nice feature is their Flash Card / Word Bank option. If there is a set of words that you can't get into your head no matter how many times you listen to the dialogues then the platform will let you put them into a word bank.

The word bank is your personal collection of the stuff that didn't stick. Like a pack of vocabulary index cards with a rubber band around them jammed into your back pocket - the way I learned. Only it is electronic and portable because it can all be downloaded, viewed, studied & reviewed on portable devices.

Japanese Pod 101 also offers reviews and quizzes that follow each of the lessons so you can check how well you mastered the material.

How Much Does it Cost? - It depends on how much you want. They have 3 levels:

Basic level at $4 per Month
Premium at $10 per Month
Premium Plus at $23 Month * Includes a personal tutor!

Can I Get a Free Trial? Yes. You can get complete access for a week. After that you can choose how much access to their platform you need.

Are Japanese Pod 101 Speakers Native Japanese Speakers? Yes.

Money Back Guarantee? Yes. 100%. You can cancel at any time.

Are There Free Lessons? Yes. Tons of them. They are available for a few weeks. Every week new ones appear and you can study them for free for a while but then they lock them behind a subscription wall for paid only subscribers. (After all, if you give away the house you don't really have a house to live in now do you?) And then they roll out some new free lessons. But still at $4 per month??? Plus they run big discounts often.

As a visitor to our site we'll let you know when they run them. Just look at the blog, RSS feed or stop by and visit. We usually run their promotions on the "Recent Articles" side bar.

We have included a promo video that explains the whole platform extremely well. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video has to to worth waaaaaaaaaay more!

To support our site we would appreciate if you order or try out their free trial through our link just below the video. :)