Good afternoon to all!

I am very happy that I have finally (after 1.05y) I've finished RTK1 and "Assimil with Ease" (1&2). But now, I don't know what to do next. I will certainly start with RTK2, probably listen to some JapanesePod101 lessons to chill after work, but I'd also like to have something more ... "substantial" to work on concurrently and I really don't want to pick a book that goes though all the basics again.

I've glanced over the resources topic, and I found plenty reference material there, not so much for a steady pace self-studying though. What I find best to work with, is some kind of a textbook with some exercises that will force you to use what you should have learnt.

Thank you in advance

What I'm doing is reading short stories from "real" books from the public library. (i.e., by "real" books I mean real as opposed to books cooked up specifically for learners of Japanese).

So I take a short story and read through it carefully, looking up every word I don't know. If there's grammar points I get stuck on, I go back and review the grammar either by looking in textbooks or my comprehensive Japanese grammar book. I keep a notebook where I write down all the new vocabulary I had to look up plus any grammar points that are worth noting.

Periodically I go back and read over my notes.

It's slow going but I feel I'm learning a lot.

Well, I appriciate your good will sir, but it is not really helpful for me since I am looking specifically for a book with cookbooked texts and exercises for students I personally like it more this way. ^_^

Kreweta Wrote:Well, I appriciate your good will sir, but it is not really helpful for me since I am looking specifically for a book with cookbooked texts and exercises for students I personally like it more this way. ^_^

Sorry I didn't read your comment carefully enough. You're looking for reading material/exercises.

Here are two that I found VERY useful (in fact, the Martin book is the one that finally bridged me over into "real" books):

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Reading-W...n+japanese

The Martin book has drill sentences that can be used as exercises. Excellent notes to the reading passages. You'll learn/review a lot of grammar points with this one.

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Writt...n+japanese

No exercises but the reading passages and the notes that accompany them are good.

I finished Assimil around March or April and spent a while looking for something to take me over to native materials with no luck. Lessons 92-99 are quite complex, and since Assimil is basically an easy route into real books, following them up with another similar book would be boring in my opinion. You're going to go over a lot of stuff you covered in volume 1. If reading native materials is your goal, I think you should just jump into it now, if you put enough effort into Assimil then you are definitely ready.

I'm more interested in speaking, so I finished Pimsleur and then got on Skype. I'm working through a few books right now. Shadowing daily with Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese. No exercises in this one, just a bunch of conversations. I'm also picking up new words and common pairings for works I already know in Common Japanese Collocations. Again, no exercises, it's basically a list of words sorted by topic, and then for each word there is a list of collocations and example sentences.

If you are really desperate for exercises then somebody told me that Tobira might be suitable to follow Assimil. I haven't looked at it so I can't be sure of the level but it seems to have a very good reputation as a textbook. I wish they would make Using Japanese or a third volume of Japanese with Ease though, I actually really miss going through it and I'm seriously considering starting another language just to buy the Assimil set for it. Great great method in my opinion.

Thank you both for your kind replies. I will check them out as soon as I can and I will tell you what I picked.