Are podcasts good for Newbies?

[Ninjai]

hi .
are podcasts like japanesepod101 or other podcasts good for newbies and beginners for learning?? or they show use certain books like minna no nihongo ??or combination of them ?

[Realism]

Anything (yes, anything), in Japanese is good for newbies. It just has to be in Japanese.

I don't care if its the news, variety shows, anime, TV shows, podcast, internet, whatever....books....manga..

As long as its in Japanese it should be good.

Now, I don't know what JapanesePodcast 101 is...I mean, I've heard of it, but it is 98% in Japanese? If it's only 50% in Japanese with the other 50% in English....don't even bother...that's not gonna help you.

[yuriyuri]

JapanesePod101 is fairly good in my opinion.
They go from newbie lessons up to advanced lessons, so you can start at any point.
They do not use any text books - All of the lessons/podcasts are written by them.

In the newbie/beginner lessons they use English to explain grammar and use example dialogues which are read by Japanese natives.

Then once you get the the intermediate and higher podcasts they gradually switch to Japanese only.

They cover quite a lot of grammar and vocabulary throughout the entire series of podcasts but of course the only way for you to find out if they are of use to you is to try them out and see what you think.

Of course you can also find any Japanese podcasts.
For example I sometimes listen to podcasts about games or music, and I like to listen to comedy podcasts too.
Those are all of course in Japanese only since they are Japanese podcasts, but any podcast can help you, as long as you can hear some Japanese or learn something from it.
And the great thing is that most (or all?) podcasts are completely free - So like I said, try them out and see if you like them.