Hi everyone. I recently bought the 新完全マスター N3 book on grammar and am having trouble understanding some of the grammar points and completing the exercises. Would anyone be interested in maybe compiling explanations/links/helpful tips and maybe working through some of the content together?
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Reserved for me
I’ve taken N3 last year already, but I’d be up to trying to answer (some of) your questions 
I’m sure that will be a good refresher for me, and probably I will also understand some stuff better than before…
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Thank you for the reply
１課文法 I was able to grasp fairly well but I’ve been struggling on the ２課文法!
When I read the short grammar explanations and example sentences for ～とおりだ、～によって、～たびに、～ついでに、I feel like I understand them fairly well. ～ほど I definitely am just struggling to comprehend though. However, when I go into the exercises though I was only able to answer 3 comfortably.
For example:
人生の自分の（ ）とおりにはいかない。
(As pointed out it’s 人生は自分の sorry for the typo!）
考え 計画 思う are the options.
Is this いかない supposed to be 行く?
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Yes.
So, what do you think is the correct solution, and why?
As a general remark, I guess it’s getting increasingly important to know about the “construction rules” for the grammar points (the explanations next to the chain symbol in the book). In your example, all three options have a pretty similar meaning, so you cannot decide based on what the sentence means. But only one of them fits the grammatical structure.
Maybe this feels like “gaming the test” because you just look at the grammatical structure and not at the contents, but it is of course very important to know about that as well because it can change the meaning completely (example: ~てから means something entirely different from ~たから). So I think it’s actually at the center of studying grammar to know about this.
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Okay wow that actually helps a lot and changes how I’m looking at the exercises than… I was just trying to look at it more as a which meaning fits.
Originally I went with 計画 as いかない paired 考え and 思う don’t make sense to me. But apparently the answer is 思う according to the answer key. Now I’ll be honest… I have no clue why this is the answer. (lol) It doesn’t even make too much sense to me and I don’t see why 計画 doesn’t fit. Even after going over the “construction rules” I don’t see how they rule out 計画. This problem continues to persist for me for almost all the questions lol. I’ll try going through them though with that new perspective and see how it goes.
This really confused me, so I checked my copy and it’s 人生は自分の（ ）とおりにはいかない。
As mentioned, this いかない is 行かない, but it’s used figuratively. For example, a common phrase is うまくいく (to go well).
So the whole sentence is “Life doesn’t go according to one’s ____”. For the options, in this case you have to pick based on part of speech, because the construction of the grammar point differs by part of speech.
計画 and 考え are nouns, so you’d use どおり, not とおり (if directly attached to the noun that is). 思う is a verb, so you use とおり.
Even though I understand some of these grammar points, at least at a basic level, I still get a lot of these questions wrong. I only got two of the first four questions right when I just tried them.
Are you referring to the ～ば～ほど one? I feel like that one is best explained through a literal translation. Let’s take an example from the book:
休みの日は多ければ多いほどうれしい。
In English we’d translate this as “The more vacation days (I have) the happier” (you’d naturally use “better”, not “happier”, but whatever). The literal Japanese would be “If (ば) there are many vacation days, to the extent that (ほど) there are many vacation days, I’m happy”. Your happiness increases to the extent (ほど) of how many vacation days there are. Hence, the “the more the ____” translation that tends to come up in English.
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OK let’s look at the construction rules. Do you understand the symbols that are being used there? That would be step 1, to learn and understand them 
So then it says in the first line:
You need
Noun + の OR Verb in Dictionary-Form OR Verb in past tense OR てある OR ている
and then
とおりだ OR とおり OR とおりに
Now if we look at the examples, 計画 is a noun but there is no の, 考え is either a noun (again without の) or the masu-stem of a verb (which does not appear in the list), and so we have 思う which is in dictionary form and matches the pattern.
That’s it
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Ah thank you I didn’t even noticed I typed it wrong!!
Major facepalm moment right now… 
Thank you it’s so obvious to me now. Also the context of what you posted earlier helps it make sense as well. Thank you
Thank you as well for this explanation I think I’m starting to wrap my head around it better now.
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With the kanzen master, you need laser focus on the grammar explanation because they cram a lot of information in them.
名の・動辞書形/た形/てある/ている+とおりだ・とおり(に)
名+どおりだ・どおり(に)
（ ）とおりにはいかない, if it were a noun like 考え or 計画 it can only be either （ ）のとおり or （ ）どおり
Also, I found many times that the little English sentence under each grammar point is often not as precise as the Japanese explanation, and sometimes even wrong 
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Yes, thank you I understand now! I was missing something fairly obvious lol…
This grammar book emphasizes the difference between language consumption and language production. If you are reading a novel, the author will obviously use the right construction and you will understand it, even if you don’t understand all the construction rules. But when producing language, you need to know the rules in order to produce correct Japanese. (Hence why I still suck at this book. 
)
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Yeah I’m beginning to see that! They get really specific with the grammar points. I’ll have to pay closer attention to those parts specifically because I was glossing over them before.
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Funny you say that because I was just beginning to draw that same conclusion
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Alright I went back through and was able to complete the rest of the questions. Almost all the issues I had were solved by paying attention the aforementioned structure rules!
Here were the two that I got incorrect:
この絵の（ ）３０年前はこの辺は畑だった。
あしたは。所によっては（ ）。
For the first one I had put とおりの instead of とおり。I kinda just guessed for this one though. Not too sure about this one. The sentence itself is kinda confusing to me as well. Breaking it down literally it’s something along the lines of “This picture exactly 30 years ago this area was a field.” No idea what it’s trying to say
Second one I put 天気が皆違う which I thought would be like saying “Tomorrow, the weather will be different everywhere depending on the place”. But the answer is actually, 雨が降るかもしれない. Which doesn’t really make sense to me again…
I’m really just noticing I have no idea how Japanese sentences work most of the time. I can understand everything in the sentence individually; but when put together, nothing makes sense to me…
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I made the same mistake, but I can explain what’s going on here. I put とおりの like you, because it seemed at first glace like it was modifying what followed. Once I looked more closely, I realized that that wasn’t the case. Personally, I think a comma would have helped a lot.
この絵のとおり、３０年前はこの辺は畑だった。
So it’s more like “as this picture indicates, 30 years ago this area was a field”.
I also picked the same as you here, but I still don’t really get this one…
(Also, I spent about a minute reading あした as あたし 
)
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Why does it feel so incredibly familiar…
Oh, right. I did the kanzen master three times in total, and I got those two wrong three times too
About second sentence, from the explanation “The term ~によっては… pinpoint one outcome from a range of possible outcomes” so it can’t be “weather is different everywhere”. Also I believe the feeling in this sentence is closer to “Tomorrow it will be mostly sunny, but depending on the place it can’t rain too”
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Honestly? This is a big part of how I used Bunpro. There were points where I wondered if I was cheating but it worked out in the end so I guess not.
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The explanation says that the sentence after によっては gives one possible outcome as an example, which only applies to answer ( c ) as far as I can see.
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I see now. I didn’t really review the grammar points before trying to answer. 
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