Study materials for Experienced Intermediate level

[SEYZJP]

I have been studying Japanese for over a year now and I am at a level where I need to really enhance my knowledge of the language to get to an Advanced level. I had this problem with Spanish as well.

I have completed Pimsleur course, rosetta stone levels 1 and 2, tys books(old and new), learn in your car, genki 1, and i am currently working through genki 2.

I am wondering if anyone can offer me some advanced learning materials to help me comprehend the grammar and use of vocabulary better. Right now I am not so much worried about the kanji because I have a different book for that.

Please let me know

Thank you

 

[nekojita]

A lot of this depends on where you feel your weak points are, what style of learning you like, and exactly what your level is; I'd suggest checking on Amazon/elsewhere to see if they have pictures of the contents and how things are laid out.

Personally, I like the どんな時どう使う books. I have どんな時どう使う 日本語表現文型500, it's pretty much all in Japanese, has plenty of examples and test questions, and covers grammar points that appear in １級・２級 JLPT.

e.g. the first section covers:
２級：について、に関して・に関する、に対して・に対する、にこたえて・にこたえる、をめぐって・をめぐる、向けに・向けの・向けだ
１級： にかかわる

There is a lower level book as well. I like the tests because they focus a lot on when you use one pattern rather than another. There is a lot of furigana (I suppose because this is aimed at someone who has passed ３級 and is moving on to the upper levels, but probably only knows JLPT ３級 kanji).

I also like Naoko Chino's books, particularly "How to Tell the Difference between Japanese Particles"; and Kakuko Shoji's books like "Japanese Core Words and Phrases: Things You Can't Find in a Dictionary" and "Basic Connections: Making Your Japanese Flow".


I'd also suggest, if you can, starting to read as soon as possible. This is the best thing for vocabulary. Material on a subject you already know pretty well in English is a good idea - if you knit, look up Japanese knitting blogs, if you go mountain climbing, see if there's a Japanese mountain climber's forum or something. 人気ブログランキングとブログ検索 - にほんブログ村 is a good way of finding Japanese blogs by topic.
If you have a lot of trouble with the grammar then you might have to come back to this later, but if you can find something where you understand most of the grammar used even if you have to look up words, then that's ideal.

 

[Mikawa Ossan]

Try www.asahi.com
It is an online newspaper from Japan. There is no teacher like the "real world".

 

[GreenCat]

This guy got good collection of online materials:
I'd like to share some material...

Checked Uni Open courses yet?
You need to make sure you have not overlooked any basics because else you can end up wasting so much time.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm#Mathematics

You should be able to read magazines, news papers and use dictionary once you have finished basics: of cause not with ease or without a dictionary though. If you are up to that level, then it is probably time to learn from books and news papers like Mikawa-san posted.
There are few text books on Amazon, written in Japanese for people learning Japanese, but I don't know if they are any good.

Tips?(I've not learnt Japanese myself so I might be wrong though )
Vocab building and learning grammar need to be done in parallel but with language like Japanese, you cannot even extract bare form of words from a sentence without knowing the grammar. As learning grammar makes building vocab easier and even good vocab size probably won't make up for bad grammar or helps learning, probably first thing you should do is to learn the basic Japanese grammar by heart.
Things like Manga can be read even if you do not have very good understanding of Japanese grammar if you need some break from cramming.