As I mentioned in another thread, we could use one of these threads. Start listing your favorite books, and try to break them down by level if you can.

Note: These books are best used in coordination with a good grammar dictionary or two, because some of them skimp on the definitions or the details. It's kind of hit and miss.

JLPT-N4 level
Kanzen Master JLPT 3 Grammar ISBN 978-4-88319-354-7. 1200 yen. A good overview of everything you should have already learned in basic to lower-intermediate Japanese. That means you probably shouldn't use it alone as a textbook. Usually, you get the basic meaning, formation, 3-4 examples, then 3-4 fill-in-the-blank problems. It doesn't go into a whole lot of detail, which can confuse/derail people who haven't studied the material before, or don't have access to other sources. At the end of parts, you get bigger reviews. (But that means you'll get like 25 questions to cover 40 odd concepts sometimes.)
http://is.gd/9spqg

短期集中初級日本語文法総まとめ ポイント20 ISBN 978-4-88319-328-8. 1400 yen. Another good overview of selected topics of basic to lower intermediate Japanese. Short test, explanation, exercises format. More exercises than in KM3, but covers less material. Good for reviewing big stuff like giving/receiving, causative, passive, etc.
http://is.gd/9sp86

N4-N2
文法が弱いあなたへ ISBN 978-4-89358-513-4. 1200 yen. Covers a lot of random material that you may have missed or you may just suck at, or you may just be confused about. No English. Lots of exercises, covers a lot of stuff. Don't expect much in the way of explanations.
http://is.gd/9soYj

Kanzen Master JLPT 2 Grammar ISBN 978-4-88319-088-1. 1200 yen. Covers a lot of higher-level random grammatical phrases for the N3 & 2 JLPT. I'm not a huge fan of the random-seeming order, but it's very thorough. Not the same as the JLPT 3 book. Phrase, meaning (in JP only), construction, examples. Every 20-30 grammar bits or so, you get a chunk of exercises. (This is better than the JLPT 3 book in number of exercises.) Then after 60 or so, you get another combined test of 35 or so questions. Again, don't look to this alone for learning the grammar points, because the explanations are far too terse to learn everything you need to know. It's best for review.
http://is.gd/9spzB

中級日本語文法要点整理ポイント20 ISBN 978-4-88319-457-5. 2000 yen. Like the lower level version, it has a short test to check your knowledge, then explanations, problems, more explanations, more problems, then a chapter test. 20 chapters, covers intermediate level material. Nice thing about it: the items are clustered logically. (Ex: Chapter 5-- Phrases used like particles. Then it's broken down even further, so you don't get confused.) Eng/Kor/Chn translations of some bits in the back in case you get lost.
http://is.gd/9soPm

初級から中級への日本語ドリル 文法 a/k/a Nihongo Drills for Intermediate Learners: Grammar ISBN: 978-4-7890-1328-4. 1200 yen. This is closer to N4, because it mostly covers basic stuff, with some intermediate stuff sprinkled in, too. This book is good for chapter 2, which is all about tranitive/intransitive verbs, and crammed full of problems on them. Also good for causative, passive, and caus/pass. But it has some really odd stuff in it, too. Like a whole chapter on そう. Huh? Lots of problems to work through, and sprinkled with Eng/Kor/Chn help here and there.
http://is.gd/9soHt

初級から中級への日本語ドリル 語彙 a/k/a Nihongo Drills for Intermediate Learners: Vocabulary ISBN: 978-4-7890-1329-1. 1200 yen. This book is weird. It's supposed to be a vocab builder, and I guess it is, but it's mostly just a verb builder. It covers 24 verbs in 24 chapters, and each chapter has a verb with a ton of auxiliaries. Ex: Ch. 13 is all about つく. So you learn about 火がつく、力がつく、しみがつく、etc... there are 16 different phrases around つく, it seems. Lots of exercises around it, too. I suppose this would be really good for those who want to really get serious about learning vocab... but if you're just trying for mass quantity kanji ingestion, you'll probably be disappointed. (But it is cool for covering a lot of phrases you don't see anywhere else.)
http://is.gd/9souB

Anybody else?

EDIT: added some cautionary info on relying too much on these things as textbooks.

Japanese: The Spoken Language.

As the name suggest its all about the spoken word. Since it's all about the spoken word, the main type of drills are speaking drills. So if you learn something new expect about 3 or 4 different drills (each drill has about 5-12 actual sentences that you need to repeat and mimic from the cd) at first and then a few reviews as you progress through the bok. This book has worked magic for me because it has really wonderful grammar explanations and lots and lots of speaking drills. It has some application drills, but those are really just to make sure that you learned the stuff when you were doing the speaking drills.

As far as JLPT goes, I'm not sure where it will get you for reading (since it totally ignores reading from the start). I know that you will be able to hold conversations at native speed by the time you finish the book (when those conversations are within the range of the words and phrases you learned). but as long as you are doing RTK or sentence mining, that shouldn't be a problem.

there are two books, so I'll only link the 1st.

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Spoken-La...0300038348

bizarrojosh Wrote:Japanese: The Spoken Language.

That's an Eleanor Harz Jordan book... I assume it uses that God-awful romanization where 'chi' is 'ti' and such? Romaji is stupid enough to begin with, but when it no longer even resembles the language, it's evil. I've got a few of her books (from when I was first starting to learn) and the exercises are good, but the romanization just kills it.

idk about JSL. i know it has rave reviews, and ive never used it BUT

it seems that teachers/advanced students like this book

the students who used that i met cant speak that well. ironic. their grammar is wonderful, but their pronunciation is especially bad. one person always spoke in ridiculousl keigo and always used ?(ware) or ??(sessha) instead of anything normal.

i know these kinds of things are similar to bashing RTK because of a few users, but the students who used it also complained about it
just saying

Asriel Wrote:idk about JSL. i know it has rave reviews, and ive never used it BUT

it seems that teachers/advanced students like this book

the students who used that i met cant speak that well. ironic. their grammar is wonderful, but their pronunciation is especially bad. one person always spoke in ridiculousl keigo and always used ?(ware) or ??(sessha) instead of anything normal.

i know these kinds of things are similar to bashing RTK because of a few users, but the students who used it also complained about it
just saying

Thanks. I did confirm from Amazon that it's got that horrid romanization. It doesn't surprise me that the students using the book have horrid pronunciation, either, simply because words don't look how they sound. In a phonetic language like Japanese, that's just unforgivable.

I really wish there was a kana/kanji version of her books. I think the content is good, it's just the form that sucks.

Any online resources？　（for drills that is)

mezbup Wrote:Any online resources??(for drills that is)

give me a few minutes and i will pound my head on my keyboard and if were incredibly unlucky, it might end up resembling random characters that, god forbid, might be typed into a site that phymes with sega pup toad. i can only hope the files therein contained do not lead to some of the kanzen master 2 and 1 books in pdf format

Is JSL good for self learning?

Asriel Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:Any online resources??(for drills that is)

give me a few minutes and i will pound my head on my keyboard and if were incredibly unlucky, it might end up resembling random characters that, god forbid, might be typed into a site that phymes with sega pup toad. i can only hope the files therein contained do not lead to some of the kanzen master 2 and 1 books in pdf format

I got KM2 in digi... I'm talking about a magical website that generates endless drills for you to sit there and do until you're 上手 as all shit.

linksはとても便利だ

mezbup Wrote:I got KM2 in digi... I'm talking about a magical website that generates endless drills for you to sit there and do until you're 上手 as all shit.

Aah, well then I can't really help you. That'd be 便利 as all shit though.
Turns out, it wasn't "sega pup toad" anyway, it rhymed 4 squared" and I think it may have had "/dir/" before the weird random codes it filled in...

I wouldn't go there, because as you can see, book piracy is on the loose: http://tinyurl.com/8764768-6f1b0f9a-JLPT-html

Also, it doesn't like "-" to be in the random codes, it prefers "/" and then "/" and then "." instead.

wccrawford Wrote:Thanks. I did confirm from Amazon that it's got that horrid romanization. It doesn't surprise me that the students using the book have horrid pronunciation, either, simply because words don't look how they sound. In a phonetic language like Japanese, that's just unforgivable.

I teach using JSL; the students pronunciation is generally fine because in class, they have to speak without any book or notes and they get their pronunciation constantly corrected.

The romanization thing is a pretty small issue; the meat of JSL is the audio and the CD-ROM program. Complaining about someone who has bad pronunciation because of JSL's romanization is like complaining about someone who thinks they can read Japanese with kanji meanings because of RTK.

That's close to the kind of romanization Japanese kids learn in elementary school anyway.

Quote:Is JSL good for self learning?

Probably not. It was never designed to stand alone; at the bare minimum you need audio files to go along with it, and it was designed to be used in a particular type of class taught in a particular way. If you have that particular format and are diligent it can produce really good results, but if not, I would only recommend it for the grammatical explanations.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I teach using JSL;
it was designed to be used in a particular type of class taught in a particular way

pretty consistent with my experience with it

teachers like it, and to be honest, they did complain more about the "teaching style" as opposed to the book itself. with jsl, i was under the impression that that they were too close to separate.

of course not all of the students had bad pronunciation, and that could very well be the fault of the teachers, not the book.

and the grammar is good, ???

i dont think romaji is the reason for bad pronunciation, any student of japanese should be able to get around reading romaji as if it were english

Certainly some students do have bad pronunciation, but there can be any number of reasons for that -- pronunciation is one of those things that seems to be very hard for some people and very easy for others, no matter what the learning method.

For the drills, I guess that actually the drill material in JSL could be OK for self-study as long as it was being used as a supplement to other methods of learning -- the problem is that the cost involved in buying the textbooks and the audio files (CD-ROM, etc) is too high for the benefit you get, probably. But I do think a certain amount of mechanical drilling on basic things like conjugation is helpful. People tend to be disdainful of mechanical drills but they can provide a lot of benefit as long as it's not the only thing you're doing.

What I do like about the JSL drill material is that even though the drills are mechanical, they are in a small context and constitute a small conversation, so for instance just pulling a random drill from lesson 9 ("T" is what you hear and "S" is what you have to say)
T: おいしいお酒を飲みましたよ。
S: どこで飲んだんですか。

T: 新しい時計を買いますよ。
S: どこで買うんですか。

So even though this is just a mechanical drill of converting masu-form to plain form + んです, it gives a small context as well (and it encourages the students to think of contexts for them, and in class they are used in wider contexts).

oh yes i completely agree with mechanical methods

i think classes and the like are a great way to get the foundations down and get to a point to where self study can be done reading native media and not getting discouraged

Added links to the first page for Amazon.co.jp, but I don't recommend buying from them. Also, if people have more recommendations for actual practice or drill books, now would be a good time to add them to this thread to get it back on track.

good point

i do really enjoy the kanzen master series, but the 2kyuu kanji book isnt that friendly to people who did rtk

oh, but i am not a fan of their(3-A something) or grammar book about jidoushi and tadoushi and other stuff
the drills are ok, but the problem is that they have you fill stuff and then they explain the grammar, so its a blind guess followed by them laughing at you for being wrong.

Asriel Wrote:the problem is that they have you fill stuff and then they explain the grammar, so its a blind guess followed by them laughing at you for being wrong.

Yeah, that blind-guessing can work in certain situations, but it's a pretty seldom that it'll work.

Ah, sweet thread. I needed something like this. I have a lot of trouble finding the right resources sometimes.

Thanks a lot

This is sweet. I'm going to buy a load of prep books+j-books pretty soon.

rich_f Wrote:Added links to the first page for Amazon.co.jp, but I don't recommend buying from them.

You could make the links be to the ja.wikipedia ISBN search page, which in turn will give links to online shops including bk1 and amazon.jp:
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%89%B9%E...4883193547

I recently bought Kanzen Master 2 & 3 Grammar and so far I'm very happy with 3 kyu. It only uses JLPT3 vocabulary for examples&questions which is very convenient since I can practice words I learned a while ago and learn new grammar. Book layout is simple and efficient, grammar explanations are a bit sparse but they serve their purpose.
My only problem with this book is that it uses furigana in every kanji so I can't use it as kanji reading practice and it doesn't use much kanji (everything is from JLPT3) and that makes deciphering some words a bit harder for me than it could be.

Overall I really recommend it for everyone preparing for JLPT3 and up.

I can't say anything about 2 kyu since its beyond my level.

As for Amazon, after getting overwhelmed/lost/irritated by it in almost every possible aspect (and I'm an IT guy, don't know how normal people can handle that!!) I turned to Roellin Books and so far I'm very happy. Following Tobberoths advice I've just ordered "A dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" & "A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar" from them and as soon as they arrive I'll give some feedback about them from my (meaning novice) perspective.

I just checked my shelf... JSL is one of the first books I bought. The romanization put me off it, and I don't have the audio for it.

Instead, I have the audio from Barron's Mastering Japanese which came with another Jorden book: Beginning Japanese Part 1.

I was put off it by the romanization as well... And the audio was meant more for a class than solo study, too, despite being on the shelf at Barnes & Noble.

Regarding JSL...

Ohio State University uses the JSL course materials and it appears that they have put the audio portions on the web. So if you already have the books and you want to give it a go, this may work for you.

http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/index.php?id=1672

shihoro Wrote:You may already realise this but Beginning Japanese is quite separate from Japanese: the Spoken Language.

Yeah, I've actually got both books, but only the audio for BJ.

I just went cover-to-cover through BJ P1 to see how much I could learn from it at this point. Total waste of my money... In the time since I bought it, I've learned everything in it to the point that I could do every exercise in the book without thinking.

I paid way too much for it with the audio, too. -sigh-

I'd be more inclined to go through JSL if I had the audio for that as well... I'll probably take time later and look through it to see if it's worth hunting down, or if I've passed it, too.