So I did some searching and it’s divided. Some people say pickup the shin kanzen books n2 and start studying them. Others say quit textbooks altogether and study from native sources and some say quit Japanese altogether. Someone said use the n2 grammar as reference only.
I personally want to move away from textbooks. I did enjoy the dialogues in genki, minna, and tobira and quartet but I want to move on from that. Is that too early at my level?
If I learn from native sources, how do I go about studying from them? How did you guys do it or are doing it? I find it nice using the n2 grammar book as reference and study from native sources probably since I’ve spent quite a long time on textbooks. I need some guidance on how to proceed please!
by Null_sense
4 comments
My advice is to move away from textbooks at this point. Start reading native material. You’ll encounter a lot of words, expressions, and grammar you don’t know. Look it up as you encounter it – this is called studying. 😉
Vocabulary is a huge issue. For various reasons, there is a lot of vocabulary in Japanese. You’ll probably want to adopt some sort of SRS strategy for this. I like Anki the best.
To be honest, IMO, the N2 and above grammar stuff doesn’t show up that much and when it does you can look it up or, even better, sometimes intuitively discover the meaning by context. When reading native material, what is much more important is vocabulary (including expressions and cultural references), differing speech styes (casual, formal, dialects, muttering and slang), and really knowing the basics like verb conjugation and those damn particles.
I highly recommend [this series](https://united-states.kinokuniya.com/products?utf8=✓&is_searching=true&restrictBy%5Bavailable_only%5D=1&keywords=５分後&taxon=&x=0&y=0) for starting reading native material after Tobira. They are short stories for native readers. As the titles suggest, after five minutes of reading (５分後に) there will be a surprise ending. Of course, as a non-native reader just graduating from Tobira , the surprise ending will probably take you about 3 hours to reach. I’d suggest putting together an order of two or three of these books online. Note the titles, though. The series started as ５分後に意外な結末 (an unexpected ending after 5 minutes), but added other types of short story collections. “A sad ending in 5 minutes”, “a romantic ending in 5 minutes” and so forth.
I would recommend one of the books you order come from the ５**秒**後に series, as these stories are even shorter and simpler. As the title suggests, they’re meant to be read by native readers in five *seconds.* The stories are only 1-2 pages, as compared to around 10 pages for the ５分後 series. The stories are nowhere near as good (how could they be at 1-2 pages), but they’re great for learning. Due to the short length, you get about 100 stories per book. And you can test your comprehension by whether or not you understand the surprise ending. Additionally, you get a different setting for each story with the associated vocabulary. For example, one story may be at a doctor’s office, and the next may be at a shopping mall.
Once you finish a few of these, you’ll be ready to digest a fair amount of native material by authors such as Hoshi shinichi, murata sayaka, keigo higashino, and others.
Reading a lot will also help your listening since your vocabulary will increase quickly and the basics will become second nature. But if you want to be really fluent, you’ll have to come up with a listening strategy in addition to reading.
TLDR; I think the textbooks can go after Tobira.
I would support at least occasionally using the shinkanzen master grammar books because with immersion alone, I found I was never able to learn the N2/N1 grammar points well enough to properly answer JLPT questions that used them (especially if the JLPT is a goal you have). I agree it can go on the back burner, but there really is nothing better out there to learn the small nuances of these grammar points (especially the differences between similar grammar points) besides dedicated grammar study.
N2 still has really common grammar, I’m looking at a list and it has things like せめて, 逆に, それとも and どうやら all that you see often. I think they’re worth just sitting down and understanding sooner rather than later. You can do this while starting to read and such.
Start engaging with native materials and learn from those. I’ll admit I did go back and do some other textbooks but generally speaking you should start reading native material.