This thing has no workbook and I'm not sure whether that's good or bad. I just struggled through Parts 1 - 7 of "Basic sounds." I can repeat a sound and a single word, but trying to rattle off said word in a phrase when I don't know the rest of the words in the phrase is tough. I expect it to make a bit more sense as I go, and I always did pretty well at the audio exercises in language lab when I was in college, so it's a matter of doing this regularly.

However, I do already own two dictionaries and a small grammar which contains hiragana and katakana charts, courtesy of James.