I want to take the JLPT2 but my only source for grammar study now is Tae Kim. Will finishing that alone be enough for the test or is that just wishful thinking?

Wishful thinking is an understatement. Sorry to burst your bubble but tae kim covers the basic grammar only up to the first 2 levels of the JLPT (the old 4級 and 3級).

It's generally recommended that one complete something like Kanzen Master 2級 to gain the required grammar to pass JLPT2. JLPT aside, the grammar points in that book are a goldmine as they are actually quite common in real world Japanese.

mez is right. Unfortunately, a few of the sections in Tae Kim are misleadingly given titles like "Advanced" or "Special Expressions," which leaves the impression that you're going to be the pokemon master of Japanese once you finish his guide. The sections are in need of some renaming.

But on the bright side, Tae Kim's grammar page helps with *some* of the N3/N2 grammer. Just not nearly as much as you may need.

vileru Wrote:mez is right. Unfortunately, a few of the sections in Tae Kim are misleadingly given titles like "Advanced" or "Special Expressions," which leaves the impression that you're going to be the pokemon master of Japanese once you finish his guide. The sections are in need of some renaming.

Or just shuffling -- some of the things in the Advanced area (like the かろう ending of adjectivals) I think can legitimately be considered advanced, but others (like はず) I would barely consider intermediate.

vileru Wrote:... which leaves the impression that you're going to be the pokemon master of Japanese once you finish his guide..

That made me seriously LOL.

Anyway It's a great starting point. So work your way through it first then get cracking on KM2級. The way I did it was get a list of all the grammar points in the book, then use the Dictionary Of Japanese Grammar Deck and just unsuspend sentences with each of the points in there. Worked out to be like a total of 800 or so that I unsuspended. Was fast and worked pretty effectively.

Say, just a general question for anyone... I was wondering at what point in university Japanese does JLPT2kyuu grammar get taught and to what extent? Just curious on this one.

mezbup Wrote:It's generally recommended that one complete something like Kanzen Master 2級 to gain the required grammar to pass JLPT2.

Not by me :-) I think that KM2 is useful for (a) the list of grammar itself (b) some example sentences and © revision quizzes. But its actual explanations are pretty poor and I think it's a much better plan to look up the grammar somewhere else (eg the D*JG or 日本語文型事典). (If you just want the list, try this website...)

I went through the JLPT1 grammar points recently, and I did it by gradually adding cards to anki for each point, where the 'front' was an example sentence using the grammar with the grammar in bold, and the back was a pile of notes about form, usage restrictions, etc, distilled from reading D*JG etc. I don't mark the cards as passed unless I remember a reasonable amount of the notes.

Quote:JLPT aside, the grammar points in that book are a goldmine as they are actually quite common in real world Japanese.

I agree with this. Even the JLPT1 grammar I think is not so obscure as it is sometimes painted.

"Say, just a general question for anyone... I was wondering at what point in university Japanese does JLPT2kyuu grammar get taught and to what extent? Just curious on this one."

Well I attended the highest level Japanese class at two community colleges, the teacher would move from one college to the other for different levels, through running start and I was dissapointed. We finished the last part of the first book in the げんき series. That class was labled as "Japanese IV Advance Writing". >_>;

We didn't even finish 3/4 of the kanji. (100-150 kanji in the book) Though I hear it really depends on the school. I had a freind who had Japanese 4 years in High-school and they covered a fair amount of JLPT 2. ;__; Too bad my schools weren't as rigorous.

Tae Kim's guide does cover most of the Modern Japanese "Core" Grammar: things like sentence structure, verb conjugation, etc; but its coverage of the extras is rather weak. That's why I think it's a good idea to read the D?JG books after it.

pm215 Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:It's generally recommended that one complete something like Kanzen Master 2級 to gain the required grammar to pass JLPT2.

Not by me :-) I think that KM2 is useful for (a) the list of grammar itself (b) some example sentences and © revision quizzes. But its actual explanations are pretty poor and I think it's a much better plan to look up the grammar somewhere else (eg the D*JG or 日本語文型事典). (If you just want the list, try this website...)

Yeah that's kinda what I mean. Like it's not the book itself that's good but the list of points is what its useful for and then its best to use DoJG for the examples. I wouldn't use just KM2 itself

mezbup Wrote:Say, just a general question for anyone... I was wondering at what point in university Japanese does JLPT2kyuu grammar get taught and to what extent? Just curious on this one.

I did up to level 4 of university Japanese, and I think we definitely were exposed to most of the 二級　grammar but very little of 一級. It's hard to say because we weren't studying to the test and we weren't working from a textbook, and I did a lot of reading outside of class, but by then we had learned grammar sufficient to deal with most kinds of reading material for native speakers.