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.

Last edited by Nagareboshi (2011 February 19, 3:21 am)