Japanese distance courses- recommendations, please

[Annie G]

A friend is looking for a distance course in Japanese for her son. Our dd did BYU's Japanese but it left a lot to be desired. And it appears that they now only offer one year of Japanese anyway.
When dd was looking for further Japanese, several of you gave some excellent recommendations but I didn't keep them because she jumped ship and started German through OSU. So...can any of you recommend distance courses for beginning Japanese?

Thanks!

[Lux Et Veritas Academy]

I speak and have taught in Japanese at a college level so I feel I can answer this. I would use MIT Open Courseware (free) and scale it back to a highschool level. Maybe not as many Kanji (chinese characters to memorize) etc. BYU Highschool online has a good program for Japanese 1 and 2 that is age appropriate, but to be honest it you want to beef it up start studying Kanji and writing. Beginning Japanese in college is not much more than Hiragana/ Katakana days of the week, month,years, counting and phrases. Verb tenses etc are introduced.

Good Luck

[Annie G]

Thanks for the reply- I'll pass it on. BYU appears to only offer year one now and they have changed it since dd took it so I don't know exactly what remains of the old courses.
Do you think an inexperienced mom would know how to scale back the MIT Open Coursework? Her son is motivated, but he's a young teen so she will need to guide him. And she's not a foreign language kind of gal...

[Anne/Ankara]

Have you seen the Georgia Public TV series? I believe it is free Japanese video lessons, with two levels...

http://www.gpb.org/irasshai

[Kareni]

Here's an older thread which looks helpful: I need recommendations for Japanese courses.... (http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19546).

Regards,
Kareni