Over a year ago, I bought a textbook, called "Japanese Stage-Step Course: Grammar Textbook" by Wako Tawa. There is an accompanying workbook, but that did not seem to be worth buying. This summer I took the time to read it and for me it was a fantastic read, which is why I'm telling about it.
The biggest plus in this book for me is that it constantly compares grammatical structures and tries to convey the nuances between the grammatical structures. I consider myself intermediate, already went to big portions of Tae Kim, but the problems I had when speaking was that I knew all these structures, but I didn't know the different nuances and I wound up just using one structure over and over (e.g. if I wanted to say because, just using kara all the time). I sometimes get the feeling that other grammar guides take a structure, explain what it does, but do not place it in a wider perspective of when and how to use it. It also comes with nice examples and every chapter ends with "conversational devices", highlighting some often used casual speech patterns and contractions. This is very nice, because I was worried that 'formal' textbooks like this wouldn't pay attention to colloquial speech.
But there are also some downsides. First of all the book is rather expensive (around 50 dollars on Amazon) and large (around 500 pages). The indexes are not that good, so it is hard to look up something. I think that some would consider the pace of the book rather slow, as it sometimes reiterates earlier structures used for more advanced structures. I did not find this a problem, as I quickly tend to forget certain details and repetition makes me remember better.
Well, just putting my humble opinion out there. If there are more advanced learners here that have seen this book and consider it rubbish, please do tell, I do not want people wasting money on something not worth buying.
The biggest plus in this book for me is that it constantly compares grammatical structures and tries to convey the nuances between the grammatical structures. I consider myself intermediate, already went to big portions of Tae Kim, but the problems I had when speaking was that I knew all these structures, but I didn't know the different nuances and I wound up just using one structure over and over (e.g. if I wanted to say because, just using kara all the time). I sometimes get the feeling that other grammar guides take a structure, explain what it does, but do not place it in a wider perspective of when and how to use it. It also comes with nice examples and every chapter ends with "conversational devices", highlighting some often used casual speech patterns and contractions. This is very nice, because I was worried that 'formal' textbooks like this wouldn't pay attention to colloquial speech.
But there are also some downsides. First of all the book is rather expensive (around 50 dollars on Amazon) and large (around 500 pages). The indexes are not that good, so it is hard to look up something. I think that some would consider the pace of the book rather slow, as it sometimes reiterates earlier structures used for more advanced structures. I did not find this a problem, as I quickly tend to forget certain details and repetition makes me remember better.
Well, just putting my humble opinion out there. If there are more advanced learners here that have seen this book and consider it rubbish, please do tell, I do not want people wasting money on something not worth buying.
Edited: 2010-08-23, 6:32 am