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Hey guys,
So I’m at season 5 right now, and moving through the course very quick (since I have a lot of time). I’m already making plans on how to continue after I finish textfugu. I plan on following WakiKana to learn the rest of the kanji, read Kenshin manga to see how I progress in reading (not the easiest, but I don’t really like much manga), and listen to loads of japanese tv and podcasts to try and improve my listening.What I’m missing though is a way to advance in grammar. I don’t like to start out with dry textbooks (have learned too many languages that way, sick of it), but now that I’m already on my way I feel it can help me improve my Japanese a lot.
Has anyone used (or know of) any Japanese textbooks that start off around intermediate level (i.e. where this site stops) and really dig into the nitty gritty of the language? I feel that would be beneficial next to the reading and listening of casual Japanese.
Thanks![Just a point that I thought of while writing this: don't go looking specifically for resources that contain the words "intermediate". If you've covered the stuff that's in TextFugu, you're at a mid-to-upper beginner level at best, there's really not much in it. A lot of courses like to say you're at "intermediate" level after completing, but that's BS, "intermediate" is much more than that.]
guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar – pretty standard fare, everyone seems to use it at some point.
However, if you’re not a fan of ploughing through dry textbooks, do you really want to be specifically *studying* grammar? There are some language learners who are of the opinion that grammar shouldn’t be studied but only *referenced*, by which I mean the language’s grammar is a set of rules to consult when you get stuck rather than to be learned on their own. To quote a video by Steve Kaufman I just watched earlier: ”Grammar is not a curriculum, grammar is a reference source” – from what I remember, he likes to have small books that summarise grammar so he can consult it if needs be, rather than big tomes that explore every single facet in unnecessary detail. He’d rather the grammar come naturally to him through masses of exposure to the language (listening and reading) than wasting time by memorisation of declension tables or subjunctive forms or whatever. Just to point out in case you didn’t know him, Steve Kaufman is a polyglot who’s studied around 15 languages IIRC, so it’s not an uninformed opinion by any means.
Now, I’m not necessarily advocating one approach over another, but it’s something to consider if you’re averse to textbooks. To be fair, I lean more towards studying grammar because I like it and am used to it, but I still think this alternative method is an interesting idea, something to think about. It really just depends what you think is best for your own learning and what you enjoy doing the most.
You could take a combination approach and go for A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar – from what I’ve heard, it’s a great reference source that goes into LOTS of detail on a whole host of different grammatical constructs and various usages for each, and contains lots of example sentences. I’m sure SOME people actually read it cover to cover, but I’m guessing it’s best used like any other dictionary, to look up things when you come to them.
Long post is long…
I agree for the most part. What I mean is not necessarily a ‘grammar bible’ as much as a textbook that focuses on grammar. I’ll learn a lot of vocab with kanji, and reading and listening comprehension with other resources. Of course reading and listening will also involve learning grammar.
It might be a bit hard to explain, as it’s something I’ve gotten to know and love from books in different languages. I’ve used books called ‘reading french’ and ‘german for reading’ (I believe), which basically taught a grammar point each lesson, followed by many reading examples, examples of using it in conversation, etc. For instance:
” ‘plus’ can be used for comparing, as in: ‘ plus grande que’ (bigger than)”. And then there would follow many examples of this in actual texts. The grammar point you learned every chapter was extremely small (as in “plus can be used to compare”), but you would learn a small thing every chapter, for like 400 pages or so. By the end, I could suddenly come up with my own (and read others’) complex french sentences. I loved it.
This approach is focused on grammar in that the whole point is to introduce a grammatical concept each time (supplemented with readings and conversational examples). That’s sort of what TF does, but it doesn’t go into that much detail (as you said, it’s not even intermediate, whatever that means). I wouldn’t mind reading a very large book back to back, if it introduced a small grammar concept every chapter with some nice examples. I would do a couple a day, along with more ‘fun’ activities such as actual reading and listening.
Thanks for your reply!
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This reply was modified 11 years, 7 months ago by
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This reply was modified 11 years, 7 months ago by
Ahhh, I get you :D Sorry, I can’t really think of any books quite like that. I stick by my recommendation of Tae Kim though (the site I linked to before) – it’s a really good “book” and you might find you like it, even if it’s not *quite* what you’re looking for. It’s free, so it’s not really any hassle to quickly check out haha.
I think I’d quite like a “Japanese for Reading” book as it sounds quite good, and reading is what my focus is on :D
Yeah same here. Although I’d like to understand spoken Japanese as well. I don’t think that would be too hard to learn either. Understanding spoken French is an absolute nightmare, hopefully Japanese won’t be (don’t think it’s even remotely as bad, but we’ ll see).
There is ‘Japanese the manga way’ which teaches with real manga, but I find it very patronizing. It uses Romaji the whole way through too. I sometimes do a couple of pages but I never feel like using it much. You can check pages on Amazon or download the whole thing somewhere to try it (and then buy if you like).
I will check out that web page though, thanks!
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This reply was modified 11 years, 7 months ago by
I’m sure SOME people actually read it cover to cover.
Are you implying something, perchance? =P
Anyway, I find Japanese for Busy People to be fairly good. You’d basically be starting over from scratch, though, but it does focus on slightly different grammar to Koichi – it’s geared a little bit towards businessmen.
I think most intermediate textbooks pretty much consist of reading exercises that introduce new vocab and grammar (with brief explanations) each chapter. There doesn’t seem to be many textbooks aimed at intermediate students, but the best I know of is Tobira:
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This reply was modified 11 years, 7 months ago by
Elenkis.
I’ve been using Tobira in my third-year course at uni (since Nakama has only two volumes, hah). It’s got fifteen chapters, each with a couple of passages to read, and about fifteen to twenty grammar points explained with example sentences. Thing is, I’d hesitate to call many of them actual grammar – they’re more like a special usage for specific words… though I guess that’s what grammar is, when you think about it. You can also buy a separate grammar workbook… which I’ve not touched at all. Actually, I’ve not really been doing enough self-study this year…
That’s pretty much what intermediate/advanced level grammar is. You learn こと, に and なる in basic Japanese but that doesn’t necessarily teach you the nuance of ことになる vs ことにする (even if it’s logical when you think about it). It’s mostly just combining words and grammar together in ways that you aren’t likely to comprehend as a beginner. But those “special uses” turn out to be really, really common.
The nice thing about Tobira is that a lot of the reading exercises are taken from real Japanese news articles and other sources.
Awesome, thanks. So would you say I could pick up Tobira after Textfugu? I’m asking since you used Nakama in your first two years. I checked Nakama on amazon and it seems a lot of the index is covered by Textfugu, but you can’t really judge hundreds of pages on an index alone :)
It doesn’t have to match exactly of course, as long as I won’t be completely lost I don’t mind putting in the extra effort.
I couldn’t say, to be honest – I’ve actually never gotten around to doing about half of TextFugu. Like I said, my self-study’s been rather poor lately. I’m inclining towards “yes”, with the caveat that Tobira is a fair jump up from either TextFugu OR Nakama. It’s not a direct sequel to Nakama, obviously, so it covers a bit of the same material here and there, but you’d want to be fairly confident of your reading ability, because it’s verging on Japanese-all-the-time – the only English in the book (besides the introduction “how to use this book” section) is in the lists of new vocab and grammar. Helpfully, there’s a list of assumed-knowledge kanji on the Tobira website ( http://tobira.9640.jp/tobiralogin – though I don’t know how much you can access without registering).
Are you implying something, perchance? =P
I actually wasn’t haha. I was really just putting emphasis on the fact that not a lot of people do. Only after I posted it did I think “Oh wait, didn’t Joel say…” ;)
I went from Genki 1/2 (another popular beginner textbook) to Tobira and found it the perfect step up. I was a bit thrown at first by how much Japanese it contains, but I found I could read it and the exercises were right around my level.
I gave up on TextFugu a long time go and am not really sure what it covers anymore. It still seems to be missing some beginner stuff, for example there’s a chapter on passive verbs in season 6 but unless I’m missing something Koichi still hasn’t covered causative verbs (which just seems weird to me).
The main problem I have with TextFugu is that it has pretty much 0 reading practice. You get a few really simple example sentences, but there’s none of the structured reading exercises you get in a good textbook. Genki gives you good reading exercises right from the first chapter, so you start working on your reading comprehension from the beginning with progressively more difficult articles. Which is largely why I had no problem moving on to intermediate textbooks that are mostly written all in Japanese.
I think it’s worth getting Tobira anyway, it just might take some more work if you haven’t worked on reading much.
Yeah, that’s exactly the problem I have been having. You learn all these basic grammar points on Textfugu, but you never get to have fun with them. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you can make some pretty fancy sentences using verbs with ‘can, want, is easy / hard’ and all their conjugations, together with some noun+adjective combo’s.
Just off the top of my head, I can theoretically read: “it’s not easy to read that large Japanese textbook when it’s a beautiful day. I do not want to do it. I want to play. but I can do it”.
Those few sentences aren’t rocket science but if you gradually increase length and complexity you really make learning Japanese feel rewarding. Not to mention you reinforce vocab and grammar as well.
I’ve currently downloaded nakama and I really like it. If I still feel this way in a few days I’ll probably buy it and finish both parts, then move on to Tobira. I’ll still finish textfugu because I’m almost done and this site has some great things as well (mostly kanji related), but I’ll probably use the above mentioned path to get me reading and speaking with more complexity.
Thanks again to all of you!
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This reply was modified 11 years, 7 months ago by
“It’s not easy to read that large Japanese textbook when it’s a beautiful day. I do not want to do. I want to play. But I can do it.”
Yeah, but I think only Doctor Seuss actually writes like that. =P サム・アイ・アムさん、緑の卵とハムがきらいですよ。
Anyway, I kinda think starting over from scratch with Nakama would be a bit of a step back, but if that’s what you want to do, then go ahead, though it might be worth considering Japanese for Busy People. Either way, the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is certainly worth getting, even if you don’t actually read it cover to cover. Maybe even the Intermediate and Advanced volumes too…
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This reply was modified 11 years, 7 months ago by
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