Contemporary Japanese is a textbook series for beginning students of Japanese at the college or high school level. It is intended for classroom use as well as self-study. Each lesson in the books is very short-meant to be covered in just an hour-and has a single, clearly-defined objective. All lessons make use of the "active discovery" approach which encourages rapid learning through "guess and try" problem-solving and participation as opposed to rote memorization. This highly effective method uses real-life conversations that make learning fun by involving you in a conversation with your peers. It also removes the fear of saying something wrong!This book, the second volume in the series, contains 45 short lessons grouped into 12 chapters-each of which presents a wide variety of activities and exercises and yet is designed to be covered in a single session. This "daily multivitamin" approach to language learning makes it easy to track your progress and to review later! Free online audio files can be downloaded, providing native speaker recordings and giving correct pronunciations for the dialogs and vocabulary in each lesson. In this book you'll learn more about:Kanji and their meaningsJapanese verb formsComparison and stating preferencesUsing common set phrases and making requestsEvaluating facts and expressing opinionsSightseeing, food cravings and tastesInsights into Japanese cultureAccompanying the textbook is Contemporary Japanese Workbook Volume 2-it serves as a supplementary material as well as a standalone comprehensive workbook for practicing and reviewing the language.

Eriko Sato is Associate Professor of Japanese and translation studies at the State of University of New York at Stony Brook, where she is also the Director of the Japanese Teacher Education Program. She has authored and co-authored over a dozen books, includingJapanese Stories for Language Learners, Essential Japanese Grammar and Learning Japanese Kanji. She has also authored or co-authored Japanese Demystified, Japanese for Dummies, Complete Japanese Grammar, Japanese Phrases for Dummies, Basic Japanese, and My First Japanese Kanji Book.