Sou Matome is a nice summary but it doesn’t provide a ton of explanations. If you don’t want to get Shin Kanzen Master (which is usually the most recommended one but it is a bit dry imo) then it is worth it considering the Try! series as an alternative.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Sou Matome but I also have a teacher and other books for additional preparation.
Then you will get an idea of how mich vocabulary you are missing and whether you should study that a bit more too. There are vocabulary books eg by Sou Matome or the JLPT Tango series that you could get. Or you could go through a premade N4 Anki deck.
By dry you mean boring, right? I’ve never heard of Shin Kanzen Master before, so I’ll check it out. I don’t mind it being somewhat boring, as long as I end up understanding the taught material, so I’ll consider it as well.
And I might try Try! (I like the way this sentence ended up) also.
Maybe not „boring“ but Try! and Sou Matome try to lighten things up a bit with pictures and stories while Shin Kanzen Master has less of that but provides the most details.
If you don’t mind that then it is a great resource. The „Reading“ one is also really nice practice. I only know the N3 and N4 one but I imagine N4 will be similar; the other resources that I used for N5/ N4 and then for later levels were very consistent ik their quality. The only exception is Shin Kanzen Master which switches to 100% Japanese at N2 level while Try! and Sou Matome always have some English explanations.
It seems great then. Thanks a lot!
Do you think you can send pictures of the first few pages just so that I could take a look at the general contents before purchasing it?
My post probably won’t help much, but my 2 cents on the kanji as someone who made N4 a few weeks ago.
As I understand, the allocation of kanji to some N level is just an indication. In my test I’ve encountered N3 and N5 kanji (according to wkstats). And they asked for the readings of those kanji; they weren’t assumed known.
I’m still level 16, and I breezed through the kanji/vocabulary section. I don’t want to project too much, but I wouldn’t worry a lot about checking off the last few N4 kanji. There’s obviously no harm in doing so, but if you’re not as confident about other sections, I’d prioritize those.
I agree with @yorbon . I would make sure to know the kanji that you learned in WaniKani well and then just focus on grammar, vocabulary and practicing listening every day.
Not all sites have previews but with google image search it was easy to find some that had them. If you want to see more, I suggest to do another google image search.
But of course if you want to see more pictures of birds, google image search could also help with bird watching.
My pic is Elizabeth, a character in the anime Gintama. She is an alien, has the outward appearance of a duck, but an often used joke in the series is that under her clothes/skin (unclear which) there is a pair of old man’s legs.
So to answer your question: I just don’t know.
I’m bumping this thread because I also have a question regarding it.
For grammar, I’m still at the N5 level, and I’m thinking about adding specific JLPT resources to prepare for next summer’s test.
Is there a good test-oriented text that would cover N4 and N5 or would it be best to do the N5 book (separate?) and then move on to N4? Or just use Genki (and others) to address the N5 grammar?