Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent resource
Great supplemental resource!Has a wide range of below, at, and above grade level material.

Yet another hit by Scholastic
These are by far my favorite educational books.

The way they are set up makes it so easy to explain, and further more it does not overwhelm the parent or the child.

My son looks forward to the work, and even more so he is learning and understanding the information in the book at a faster pace than other educational books that he has read.

I also love the fact that he can rip out a page and do it on his own, without having me explain to him what it is trying to teach.

Love it! I will definitly be buying more of these scholastic books. ... Read more

Product Description
Now learning non-Roman-alphabet languages is as easy as A-B-C!

Readers wanting to learn the basics of reading and writing a new language that employs script will find all they need in the Teach Yourself Beginner's Script series. Each book includes a step-by-step introduction to reading and writing in a new language as well as tips and practice exercises to build learners' skills. Thanks to the experts at Teach Yourself, script will no longer be all "Greek" to language learners--unless of course, it is Greek script! Teach Yourself Beginner's Script series books feature:

• Origins of the language
• A systematic approach to mastering the script
• Lots of "hands-on" exercises and activities
• Practical examples from real-life situations

Customer Reviews (7)

A great learning/memorization tool
I used this book eight years ago to learn some kanji before moving to Japan. I had gotten it from the library and renewed it a couple times. The explanations and pictures are so clear and really helped me recognize dozens of kanji. I remember laughing at the time that the characters for university mean "big study." Now that my husband is indulging me and learning Japanese, I bought this book for him, and he is impressed that he is actually remembering some characters now. The only downside to the book, IMO, is that the pronunciation of the characters isn't always introduced right away. If I'm learning what a character means, I want to know how to say it, too. (They do give the pronunciations but not until later chapters.)

good for learning the basics
This book is aimed at those whose regular Japanese textbook does not cover Hiragana, Katakana, and very basic Kanji. Admittedly, the number of books that fall under this category is very small, the obvious exception being TY Japanese.

As a complement to the 'TY Japanese'-book, a book like this that teaches the script is essential, for others there is no meaning in using this book.

So, reviewing this book as a separate entity from the 'TY Japanese'-book is, I think, the wrong way to go about it.

I would have to say that the strength of this book is the way it teaches the Hiragana and Katakana, which I think is very thorough and good.

The Kanji on the other hand, is better learned from flashcards/kanji dictionaries such as A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tuttle language library) (Japanese Edition), or Japanese reading books such as A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (Tuttle Language Library), I recommend the latter book.

It depends on how ambitious you are, if it is just the basics you are after then this is a very user-friendly book to use to get you to read Hiragana and Katakana as well as recognize the most basic and important Kanji.

Waste of money
This book is not very useful, since it introduces the script's characters but contains only a minimum of texts to exercise them. For those who already know Chinese script, the chapters about Kanji are absolutely not interesting, and for those who have never seen a Kanji before, it is almost equally useless with all the effort to present everything in nice pictures. Advanced learners will find that linking characters to pictures is an absolutely ridiculous method once you want to learn a few thousands of them. Furthermore, I expected that this book would in some way relate to the volume "Teach yourself Japanese", but that is not the case.
Everyone who really wants to learn Japanese, better find something else.

A Good Start.
For it's price this book is a good find.There were some problems regarding pronouncation.Since the book is written by a British author American readers may be confused by the sounds of the hiragana.
Example:
あ= a, as in hat
え= e, as in end
い= i, as in hit
う= u, as in blue
お= o, as in hot

the two confusing ones are い and お.They should be pronounced like "ee" and "oh", respectively. The examples given, hit and hot make american readers give い the "eh" sound and お the "aw" sound, which is wrong.But if you can get past that, its actually a well written book.

excellent reference, although flawed.
this isn't as much of a review as a warning; the pronunciations throughout the book are botched for the most part. so if you are first learning your hiragana / katakana, i would not recommend beginning with this book or else you will end up quite confused later on when you learn the actual pronunciations.

for example, on page 21:
(kanji) bamboo = take. (pronounced a of "mat", and e of "end").

my knowledge of japanese is about as basic as it gets, and yet even i know this is wrong. it should be in fact pronounced a bit more similarly to "tah-kay".

other than that, it's been quite helpful resource. just do your best not to commit the erroneous pronunciations to memory, because they are an integral building block to japanese. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

interesting perspective
For the lay person, this is an interesting view point to read and perhaps get a sense of the frustration that is felt by my people with learning disabilities. However, as some who is dyslexic and also a teacher, there are significant things missing from McCabe's perspective. While I certainly understand his anger at educational "experts" he seems to operate under the assumption that he is the only one who has ever experienced his circumstances or has ever thought of the things he's promoting, which is an incorrect portrayl of the history of LD education. I was entertained at times, offended at others. Overall, there are more relavent books out there.

Sequential Spelling Strategies, not just a Personal History!
Not only is this book a description of Don McCabe's early years, he also has some fascinating information about the "word families" approach to spelling and reading, made new through his own well-developed sequential spelling strategies!
I can see that the mastery of the language is in learning the patterns of spelling. The sequencing of the words is based on research and the building of English words from the root word to an expanded form.
I really liked the fact that students correct their own papers. Immediate feedback is empowering. A student's confidence is much more significant when they can spell words that they have never seen before without studying!
I am anxious to find out more about his website [...] and check out his text books utilizing the sequential spelling techniques.

No one told him he was disabled.
Read the 12 sample pages at Amazon.com. A distinguished educator speaks of his own dyslexia and his gratitude for a loving family, high expectations, and no official disability label. The author was in elementary and high school before they had the label of dyslexic. There were plenty of kids who needed help and got help. Therapy was just active play. Early educational intervention was just playing school. Teachers taught learning (memory) strategies to all students in k-12. He offers many practical ideas for improving literacy.

It takes one to teach one
Don McCabe writes a compelling autobiography to illustrate what it is like to grow up dyslexic.He was born in 1932 and this was well before "dyslexia" was a term, let alone a diagnosis.He was justtreated as a boy who couldn't sit still.He credits his older sister andwonderful teachers who worked intensively with him to help him learn toread and eventually to become a respected scholar.McCabe has dedicatedthe last thirty years to working on literacy.This book is a quick, funread that shows a good dose of humor helps in discussing serious topicssuch as dyslexia.If you or someone you love has been diagnosed asdyslexic, don't wring your hands in despair - buy this book and learn fromsomeone who knows first hand about what it means to be a dyslexic. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the spelling sourcebook for eighth grade teachers only. The SOURCEBOOK Series for grades 1-8 provides the infrastructure to craft a spelling program your way. Opportunities to teach, practice, and apply all the traditional skills and concepts are included in this completely revised edition of the teacher-friendly, easy-to-manage series. One teacher resource book for each level contains everything you need-how to put it together day-by-day, unit-by-unit, from the beginning of the year to the end. You're in charge! Select the activities, tests, and blackline masters in every unit to create a balanced program that's right for you and your students. You'll see the results where spelling really counts-in students' everyday writing! ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Practicing grammar skills has never been so easy! This ready-to-use resource includes practice pages for important topics such as capitalization, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, contractions, and lots more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good For Review
I homeschool, and I wanted a way to find out how much my son has retained without testing. The majority of the exercises are fill-in-the-blank, with word banks. There was even some simple addition and subtraction, as part of word codes. They also had similar word codes using symbols and letters. Those sections were more like games than a way to review anything concrete.

I appreciated that the measurement exercises included items that require different units of measurement. For example, a map requires miles, while an apple would require inches.

I was expecting this workbook to be solely about vocabulary, but it seemed to focus more on grammar.

A more useful workbook from this series was Scholastic Success With Maps Workbook Grade 1.

Disappointing!
I was very disappointed to learn after buying a few of these books that the author doesn't give the purchaser rights to copy the pages!!Basically useless unless I want to go to "Copyright _ _ _ _!

Reinforcement Workbook
I am a homeschool mom who decided to try this workbook out to give reinforcement to my daughter's language arts lessons.She likes to do workbooks and this one will be great for her.It will give her solid review material in all areas of grammar - capitalization, punctuation, types of sentences, etc.I decided to try this particular workbook b/c it is Scholastic, and I have many of their books and reference books and decided it would be worth the money to take a chance on it.It is a good buy for the money and will give great reinforcement, or even basic introduction to kids in the first grade. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Help spelling rules make sense and stick! With this collection of super-fun activities, kids of all learning styles will uncover easy-to-remember rules and strategies to become better spellers. Each chapter focuses on a potential spelling trouble spot: sneaky sound patterns, homophones, compound words and contractions, rules for spelling regular plurals and past-tense verbs, and tips for spelling irregular verbs. There's also a chapter chock-full of tips for mastering particularly tricky words. Builds better spellers! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Spelling fun
This activity book is an excellent and exciting way for struggling spellers in grades 2-4 to learn strategies to spell better.The activities are very creative and fun for both boys and girls.My son, who is a visually speller, enjoyed our spelling review over the summer using this workbook, and his spelling dramatically improved.

One lesson is devoted to words containing a silent "K", another involves categorizing words into lists that use "j", "g", or "dge" to make the "j" sound,...and there are numerous other "Sneaky Sound Patterns" addressed.Various units address Spelling Stumpers, Which One/Won is It?, Rules Rule!, No Rules Here, and Putting Together Words. ... Read more

Product Description
Dozens of Activities With Engaging Reproducibles That Kids Will Love . . . From Creative Teachers Across the Country
Correlates With the Language Arts Standards!
Great for grades 2-3! Each book in this terrific new series is packed with teacher-tested ideas and activities that teach important reading, writing, grammar, spelling, or listening skills and correlate with the Language Arts Standards. Includes tips for working with second language learners; assessment ideas; and writing, art, music, and movement connections for kids of all learning styles. You'll also find reproducible graphs, charts, graphic organizers, games, mini-books, easy-to-make manipulatives, and much more! ... Read more

Product Description
This is the Teachers Guide ... Read more