So, I got level 5 last week (I am a deeply irregular worker (This sentence means probably nothing)) and I remembered about this, in the WK guide:
Level 1-10:
You should get through these levels before trying to read too much. But, by level 5 you’ll have completed most of the kanji you’ll find in most beginner Japanese textbooks. This is a good time for you to start grammar study.)
So what kind of ressources should I use for grammar? I have tons of favorites page (stored links) and txt file with the name of many ressources but I’m afraid to choose a bad/wrong method.
Could you share your methods with me?
By the way, I am french :@
Many of us use genki. ($40ish online for book 1 of 2)
There’s also Tae Kim’s grammar guide. (Free and apps, been meaning to look into.)
Also, textfugu.
Those are the main ones I see a lot. I personally use genki.
Tae Kim’s guide will have most of what you need; though it’s pretty content-dense. Genki does a better job of easing you in, but the two book set won’t cover quite as much.
It’s honestly just a matter of finding what works best for you.
We use “Japanese Graded Readers” in our Japanese classes. The sets start from level 0 and go up to 4. Each level offers three different sets, and each set has 5 books and an audio CD. Each set runs about $27, and are available from Amazon.
We read from these daily to build fluency and recognition. The stories are interesting, and cover both Japanese folklore, morality stories (like Aesop’s Fables), as well as stories about life/culture in Japan. Some of them are sad, some are quite funny.
All the kanji have furigana to aid in pronunciation. Here are the number of vocab and characters (kanji/hiragana/katakana) in each book, by level:
I used “Japanese for busy people”. but now that I am enrolled into a language school, i use “minna no nihingo”. It is a bit tougher, and the listing exercises are on normal talking speed. But it has a really good build up all the way till N2 at least
Our uni used Minna no Nihongo too - it needs some more love on here. It’s more daunting than Genki, I think, as you need two separate books (the actual text and the grammar book) but I found all of the exercises to be more logical than Genki. It also has a book called やさしい作文, which is brilliant for building your writing skills and is accessible pretty much from the start of the course and builds with the first two books. I preferred the listening exercises too.
I just bought the first Genki book online and I love it. It’s a great way to start easing into grammar (although a lot of it is review for me from my college courses and I’m taking it slow).
Everyone raves about Tae Kim so I plan on looking through that after familiarizing myself a bit more with what Genki has to offer. Seems like it might help a bit to work with Genki to learn basics and then Tae Kim for a more in-depth experience.
I think Minna no Nihongo gave me a strong foundation when I was starting my Japanese studies. It throws a lot of vocab at you, but all in all pretty useful words. The supplementary books were also really useful (like the writing one…I really liked the collection of stories/essays too). Since introducing the Intermediate level books a couple of years back, it’s been good to use as a reference, especially for some of the tougher grammar patterns. Their review books have also been handy to brush up after those periods where I don’t study for a while.
I will try minna no nihongo!
There is several versions for the translation&grammatical notes (including french!) so it will be easier to use for me.
I will use the beginner I and II, but what about the intermediate serie? Are they useful when we are at higher level on wk?