Minna no nihongo books help!

At minimum, you’ll probably want みんなの日本語初級2本冊 and the grammar explanation/translation book, みんなの日本語初級II 翻訳・文法解説 (if English isn’t your preferred language to learn in, you could look to see if there’s a version available in your native language instead).

The rest of the books are optional; you can use whichever ones seem useful to you. Personally, I have 標準問題集 and 書いて覚える 文型練習帳 (the title is wrong on the amazon page, but that’s what it looks like). I also have the same set of four books for the red 初級1 books, but you sound like you’re past that level. I skipped all the kanji books because WK takes care of that for me.

I just finished the 初級 series, and I followed the same basic strategy for both books, which I talk about in more detail here. Basically, my biggest tip would be to SRS the vocab before reading each chapter (I used Anki, personally). After I got comfortable with the new vocab, I’d read the grammar explanations, then read the main textbook and do the exercises.

I always aimed to work as much in Japanese as possible without referencing the translation book or looking anything up, and succeeded pretty well at that. I’d do all of the textbook/workbook exercises off of my own memory and then check my answers afterward, and when I got one wrong, I’d make sure I understood why the right answer was correct before moving on.

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