(2016-03-16, 6:23 am)Meriden Wrote: I'm abou to finish genki 2. Since plan to continue through the textbooks route, I was wondering how I should proceed AFTER reaching N1. Should I do Imabi, and after that buy 日本語文型辞典 monolingual?
You've got two different things going on here. Okay, maybe three.
One, you're finishing up Genki 2 (good job), so you're almost at N4 level now. Don't worry about N1 yet. Worry about getting to N4, then N3, then N2. There's a TON of material to take care of along the way from N4 to N2, and you need to solidify all of that so you can use the language functionally.
Two, while I haven't checked Imabi lately, I know that 日本語文型辞典 is a dictionary/reference book of grammar. I would not recommend using it as a textbook, if that's what you mean by "doing" it. You can use either one, or renshuu.org as a resource for looking stuff up, though! If you just mean using it as a source for an Anki deck, I'd just warn about one thing: boring Anki decks full of boring sentences are boring. Most people stop doing boring things eventually, because they're boring. I tried to go at it with a deck full of boring sentences, and it worked for a while, but in the end, boredom won. It can work short-term, but long-term, ugh.
Third: when should you go monolingual? I'm no expert on this, but I'd say the best time to go is as soon as you can functionally handle it. The sooner you do it, the more benefits you'll get. You don't need to be challenging N1 to go monolingual-- it's doable (albeit difficult) at N3 level. The sooner you do it, the harder it will be at first (at first!). And there's probably a point where it's TOO hard or TOO soon, but only you can really figure that one out.