JVS is brilliant for me because it teaches the fundamental basics of the language. Despite its name, Japanese Vocabulary: The Shortcut, it offers much more than just vocabulary. I am confident that this course is the most efficient way to learn Japanese, aside from living and conversing with native speakers. I’d like to explain why I don’t hesitate to give it 5 out of 5 points.
JVS focuses on the simplest conversations we encounter in our everyday lives. This is crucial because, as a German, I find Japanese grammar and its writing system particularly complex. I don’t want to spend energy and time on sentences with words and phrases that are too difficult for my current understanding or that I won’t use anyway.
I appreciate the Level System from 1 to 4. There are plenty of lessons at each level, and every week, a new lesson is published for all levels. For example, a Level 1 lesson is broken down into four parts, covering different settings such as work, school, friends, and family. This is beneficial for understanding the rules of honorifics. All conversations are clearly spoken, and after the listening part, the entire conversation is broken down into sentences for reading practice, emphasizing the words I need to focus on for the quiz later, which is always enjoyable. While reading the sentences, I can hover my mouse over a word, and an explanation appears with meanings and other useful information like more phrase examples.
The Furigana in the lesson sentences and quizzes can be switched on or off. I really love this feature! It helps so much with getting used to Kanji while reading. I always turn it off, and if I am unsure, I can just hover over the Kanji with my mouse to see what it means in the current sentence and how it is spelled in Hiragana. Fantastic!
From Level 2 onwards, there are only two conversations per lesson, but they are more complex and much longer. I can’t say much about Levels 3 and 4 because Level 2 is still challenging enough for my current level of understanding, and there are still many lessons left to complete. The very basic verbs and nouns are repetitive in all lessons, which I need! I appreciate the artistic style of the conversations. The characters in the lessons are beautifully drawn, adding a very nice flair that suits my taste perfectly.
After finishing the quiz, I can answer three questions in the comment section, which will be corrected by a real person. I am free to express my answers however I like, and they are always corrected in a very understandable, kind and sympathetic manner. A very powerful feature and it shows me, that a real person needs to correct me. Otherwise I might put much effort in something wrong.
Yuta Aoki is very interested and open to improvement, and he might answer your question or suggestion personally and even act immediately when possible. I like this mentality a lot. Also, I can see that the team puts a lot of effort into this course and continues to do so. If you are an absolute Beginner, you can learn Hiragana and Katakana there as well. How to use this Course in general is explained by a video from Yuta himself. All in all, Good job!
I am 39 years old and feel very challenged learning Japanese. When I first started with the goal of singing with Hatsune Miku and watching anime properly, I felt overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start. With JVS, I finally see a way and a strategy to approach my goal. JVS will definitely be my go-to place for learning Japanese until I no longer need it because I can sing with Miku and understand Anime.
I highly recommend this course.