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Learning written Japanese independently

asahikawa

後輩
21 Jul 2008
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Hi,

I'm starting a master's program in Taiwan history this fall. Since Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese for 50 years, the program requires all students to learn Japanese--you have to pass the Level 2 JLPT before you can graduate. I know Mandarin, which means kanji are pretty easy for me, but verbs and grammar are difficult.

I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a good textbook that focuses on written Japanese. I've been using Genki I, but I find it hard to memorize the vocabulary when there are so few sample sentences and so little dialogue. The ideal textbook would have two or three sample sentences for every new word introduced, and lots of dialogue and text passages that would help me retain what I learn. (If anyone has read any of John DeFrancis's Character Text for Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced Chinese books, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.) With a book like that, I'd get more of a feel for how the written language works--right now I feel like I'm just memorizing inefficiently.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Arigatou gozaimasu!

Nick
 
You have a great advantage there!

I am right now studying Japanese by picking sentences from books, magazines, etc. and entering them to anki (an SRS program).
I find it very helpful and I'm not bound to any textbook.
I favor sentences with one or max two new sentences.
I have found this a very good way to learn vocabulary and get a feel of how the language works.

The whole technique is explained in detail here.

Also one book comes to mind that I like. It's "Read Real Japanese" by Janet Ashby. It's not very good for someone that has just started studying the language though. Not a conventional text book really.
 
The guys at White Rabbit Press (I can't post links so please google it) are selling some great stuff for learning Japanese. I bought their Kana flash cards so I can learn to read Japanese while on the subway to and from work.

They also have learning books which seem to have more text than "usual" learning books. I have not used one of those but I bought a "real" book about gardens which is bilingual with Japanese and English and pretty easy to understand. I use my electronic dictionary (a Sharp PW-AT760) for looking up the kanji I encounter. This combination works pretty good!
 
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