I was wondering what kinds of textbooks are available for intermediate study. I've been doing research and I've encountered a lot of mixed feelings about the following textbooks:

An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
From what I understand, a follow up to the Genki series although perhaps not as good. I don't have any experience with the Genki series anyway, though.

Authentic Japanese: Progressing from Intermediate to Advanced / 中級から上級への日本語
Seems to be regarded as more of an upper-intermediate to advanced book.

Minna no Nihongo Chukyu / みんなの日本語中級
It has been very hard to find any useful info on this title (maybe because it's relatively new?). I own the 初級１ book and liked it a lot. I'm not sure if 中級 might be too easy though (for about N3).

Tobira / 上級へのとびら
I've heard some great things about this book but some people say that there are too few practice exercises.

I was hoping that people who have experience with one or more of these could share their opinions. I'm especially interested in the MNN book and would like to know what it covers. Also, example sentences with translations are a must. The JLPT-oriented resources seem to cover a lot but in little detail. That's mainly why I'm looking for a "textbook" rather than prep material.

Also my question. I am a textbook guy and before i go on preparing for concrete jlpt levels i would like to work with y textbook suitable after finishing with the genki 2 book. I have heard an approach to intermediate japanese by the japan times is good, but i cannot fimd a cheap copy... Anybody? Pm me, please, thank you..

tylerdevlin Wrote:I was wondering what kinds of textbooks are available for intermediate study. I've been doing research and I've encountered a lot of mixed feelings about the following textbooks:

An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
From what I understand, a follow up to the Genki series although perhaps not as good. I don't have any experience with the Genki series anyway, though.

Authentic Japanese: Progressing from Intermediate to Advanced / 中級から上級への日本語
Seems to be regarded as more of an upper-intermediate to advanced book.

Yes, An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese is considered as the next step after finishing the Genki series of text / workbooks. And Authentic Japanese: Progressing from Intermediate to Advanced is the next step after finishing An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. There is a rumor out there that says it has been written by the same authors as the Genki books. AIAJ however is written by Akira Miura and Naomi Hanaoka McGloin. It is just published by the same company as the Genki books: The Japan Times.

I can only comment on An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. I have not started with AIAJ yet but I own both the 教科書 and ワークブック. So the following are only observations i made while flipping through the pages.

Genki 1 + 2 has many group / classroom / grammar exercises in it's textbooks. So, one could well do without buying the workbook. This is different in AIAIJ which only contains some 会話練習 and 聞き取り練習, as well as some multiple choice questions in the 教科書. There are no classroom activities or group exercises. If you are looking for 文法練習 you would have to buy the workbook as well. The workbook contains only 文法練習 and 読み物練習. In the back of it there are some 漢字練習.

文法 where Genki 1 or 2 would give good examples and in depth explanation of every grammar point treated, AIAJ is explaining 文法 like this:

Vないで済む

Vないで (negative て-form) followed by 済むmeans that one manages or gets by without doing V.

... example sentences a - b - c.

So when you are learning on your own a good set of grammar books is must. And someone to go over your answer in the 練習 sections because AIAJ has no Answer key.

Where this book seems to be good at is listening, reading, vocab. It contains plenty of those. Also the book comes with Audio CD while for Genki I + II you have to either buy student CD or the 6 CD set. It is a big step moving on from Genki II to AIAJ.

Don't take the following as recommendation or disapproval, but i would not say that it is not a good book it's just different and a big step up from Genki II. I will use it and see how things go. If you like you can take a look into the book. *click*

I also pre-ordered Hiyaku: An Intermediate Japanese Course and Japanese for All Occasions. Both seem to be good to have but are not out yet just in case.

I have both tobira and An integrated approach. Tobira has more grammar to learn and has some nice videos on its website. However, grammar exercises...pretty much non existent.

I'm not yet finished with tobira (had a burnout from studying with with and I'm still gaining mental strenght to get back on track - lesson 14 though, out of 15 lol).

I did AIAIJ before Tobira, and comparing both AIAIJ has grammar exercises that are helpfull (after getting used to not having grammar exercices I now think that AIAIJ's ones are great, and I didn't though that way before).

One the others I can't comment.

Any particular questions be my guest.