My background: I have a lot of formal Japanese instruction (community college classes in high school + 4 year degree, plus various classes every few years when I got the Japanese itch). The most useful thing I got out of my degree imo was reading Japanese (translated) literature plus history classes. Anything approaching fluency that I have has come from tv, YouTube, and reading.
Based on my history, I don’t have a lot of faith in textbook learning. There’s some amount of if you want to be able to read books you should just read books that I’m pretty well bought into, but I’m getting a little bored with the books I can read and am trying to figure out my path forward. I’m comfortable to about level 25 both reading and listening, but there seems to be a huge gulf between 25 and 30 where there just isn’t a lot of media. I’m wondering if spending some time with more formal studies would help…
I have Tobira and I looked at it the other day, got bored halfway through the first reading and went back to reading my kid’s book.
I do like doing workbook type stuff or at least I have in the past (apparently I used to beg my mom for math and vocabulary workbooks so there’s precident for me enjoying that kind of study).
So for all the textbook learners out there:
How do you self study?
How do you split your time between study and extensive reading/media watching?
Are there any textbooks that you would recommend?
And just generally, is there anything anyone else would recommend?
Tbh, I have struggled with self study and get frustrated with it a lot of the time because I don’t have the knowledge to know what I need to do when and just kinda feel like I bumble along at times
My Japanese language learning journey started and has continued to mostly be self study (the lessons with a tutor and my language exchange partners are free talking with them correcting my word use or giving me more natural words and grammar to use, none of it is formal classroom study and I’ve never been to a proper Japanese class before).
I have tried a lot of the textbooks (I have over 70 different textbooks, dictionaries and books on parts of the language) and the ones I found most helpful was みんなの日本語 but I actually think it’s because it’s fully in Japanese so it forced me to use Japanese in context and have to understand the questions etc by using intensive reading.
My self study now flits from textbook study along side watching native content or listening to audiobooks or reading books I can get the gist of what’s going on in as well as writing out Kanji or sentences using the grammar I know. I also try to do something every day, even if it’s just my Kanji reviews from Wanikani.
My overall understanding has improved from what it was but the times I’ve noticed the largest increases has been when I’ve been doing the intensive and extensive reading and listening. Usually I use the textbooks intensively and the native material extensively for reading, or textbook audio/ comprehensible input for intensive listening and anime/ audiobooks for extensive listening.
I think my recommendation would be to find something you like working with and study it intensely while having something you enjoy to use extensively.
If higher level books are an issue, maybe the Read Real Japanese essays and fiction books may help as those use native materials (Lv 29 or higher so far from what I can tell) as might the Breaking into Japanese literature books. Both series have free audio downloads by a native speaker and all the stories/essays are native level from a variety of authors.
Read Real Japanese series has some explanations for grammar on parallel pages, furigana on Kanji the first time it’s seen in the story, as well as a glossary at the rear, but does not fully translate the stories whereas Breaking into Japanese literature has the glossary below the pages with an English translation of the text on the parallel page and no furigana though the glossary does have the vocabulary reading for Kanji in brackets next to the words.
A word of caution, some of the stories do deal with sensitive topics such as death, suicide etc.
I’m curious about this gulf. What is the gulf composed of, and you can tailor your studies to that. Is it lack of understanding grammar? Is it vocab? Is it running into dialects? Something else entirely?
I only used Genki I+II and then have kind of cobbled together my understanding since then by googling things I didn’t understand, so I unfortunately can’t help with textbook suggestions, but I do think I’m reasonably good at filling gaps in my learning so might be able to offer suggestions there if we have more of an idea of what the pain point(s) is/are.
Maybe the more correct answer is that there’s not a lot that I’m excited about until about level 30. I think I might die if I read another milquetoast slice of life or 陰キャラ LN.
I’ve found I have a low tolerance for lookups and also for ambiguity. I prefer to read things where there are less than 3 lookups a page and the majority of those I can guess from context. Almost all of the 青い鳥, つばさ and similar kids 文庫 books fall into this category for me now.
That said the few times I have read something more difficult and pushed though has been the times that I’ve really enjoyed reading. But I find that I really really need audio to push into 28-30 territory and that limits my choices quite a bit.
This is an interesting question…
So there are a few lvl 24-25 fantasy LNs that I started that were easy enough grammar-wise but absolutely owned me on vocabulary that I’ve shelved for the moment. It’s the combination of vocab plus a bit of kanji readings that was the worst for me (I did also ask people recently what they did for kanji they didn’t know the readings for and have consequently restarted anki for common words that have been popping up in my reading).
My original thought was to watch some more fantasy anime and hopefully pick up the vocab that way since my listening is at least as good as my reading and TV is a lower barrier for me to engage with harder things. But I also rarely stop for vocabulary words if I can get the gist so I’m not sure how well this is actually going to work out (hence thinking about starting textbook study again…).
What’s funny is that you come to mind as one of the more studious people on the forums because you’re always working on textbooks. I always feel like I’m eating cake all the time and watching you all eat a balanced diet, wondering why my tummy hurts
Those are probably the ones I’m most interested in, given what I know about the main ones that people are using. I’m just not sure I want to buy another textbook to sit with all the others that I never use
I have those too
I’ve read most of the fiction one and some of the essay one. I just am not sure that I know how to engage with it as a textbook… if that makes sense?
I think you’re probably right here. I have too many extensive resources, if we’re being honest, but I think what I’m wondering if I’m lacking is something to intensively study. Or maybe I’m just in some amount of plateau and just need to keep on…
I think targeted vocab acquisition may help here if reading lots of unknown words feels like it bogs you down. I have never used it, but I’ve heard many people talk about using decks from https://jpdb.io/ to basically pre-learn words from a novel so that when they go to read it the friction is lower.
Basically, ‘do anki’ is a wide net, and can be frustrating in its own way. ‘Do this one deck to conquer this book (and then books after it will be easier!)’ seems more manageable possibly.
I also think sticking to a constrained genre may help? In addition to that, checking reviews to see if people mention ‘oh this has lots of baseball vocab’ or ‘this has tons of legal terminology’ and tune your choices in the upper levels that way?
Ex: this book has a specific language quirk and medical vocab, this book has fairly limited unique vocab (these are my reviews since I can reference them easily, but I have seen other people leave reviews calling out vocab types!)
The most basic grammar like N5 and N4 is probably most efficiently learnt by textbooks, N3 grammar is arguable. But you will not learn enough vocab in textbooks to read easier books, like manga where to know this grammar is sufficient. You‘ll have to actually read the manga to learn their vocab, as you did.
But the vocab you learn in manga is not enough to actually read novels, as novels and manga have different kind of vocab, like vocab to describe scene and action, things which manga and also TV series and movies just show by the images. You‘ll have to learn these by actually reading novels. There you’ll also come in contact with higher level grammar that you could learn on the fly, if you just want to understand it and not use it yourself. Edit: And as @cat pointed out here is the wide field of genre specific vocab where you‘ll spend much time to get it all to at least some degree.
Then there are the higher level novels or essays that contain vocab to describe abstract concepts and ideas. Here you’ll again have the same problem of not knowing enough of these words, and also the higher level grammar will be more common and fine differentiations of their usage will become important. At this stage it might be efficient to get back to some drills like the Shinkansen series, also in order to maybe fill in some gaps. But again you‘ll have to read this stuff to learn the vocab and see the grammar in actual usage.
Hey I love this topic, I’m definitely a textbook lover and evangelist! This is kind of a poorly formatted brain dump I wrote on my phone, but I hope there is some helpful stuff in here!
① How do you self study?
I actually just sit down with a pen, paper, the book, and work through the material. If it’s a reading exercise, I find all the unknown words first and write them down and then look them up and reread the passage. If it’s some listening stuff I’ll do the exercises or if it’s a longer audio clip I’ll do dictation or shadowing. If it’s grammar I take notes and try to do the exercises. If it’s writing I skip it because who wants to learn writing skills (I’m jk maybe). I make sure to take my time and write everything by hand and put my phone away so I can focus. Some nice study music is optional! I try to just have fun and get excited about adding new language to my repertoire and complete one “study loop”, stopping when I get to whatever stopping point in the chapter or section.
Then I make sure to review the stuff a few days or weeks later when I feel like I’m forgetting it. I may make anki cards depending on my backlog and if I feel like I need to or whatever. I’m kinda just a vibes based anki card maker.
If it’s a textbook that doesn’t necessarily have exercises or stopping points, I take notes and pretend I’m still a uni student and try to connect what I’m learning to other things I know.
② How do you split your time between study and extensive reading/media watching?
If I am actively studying a topic or language, I do 30 mins to an hour or so of textbook stuff a couple nights a week after work and then spend the rest of the time reading or watching something or playing video games etc in the language, which kinda works out to a few hours based on my free time.
Right now I do a lot of studying with audio materials during my commute which skews my numbers really high, so if you have some kind of dead time like that it’s a good candidate to fill with an audio resource for sure!
③ Recommended textbooks?
Thoughts incoming!!!
So, I’ve learned a few languages now, the first of which was Japanese, leaning on textbooks a lot! That means I’ve gotten to experiment with a ton of different textbooks in different formats from different countries! Yay! Japan in particular happens to have many fabulous textbooks…for Japanese people learning topics besides Japanese as a foreign language. I find a lot of the materials for foreigners to be kind of lacking and very heavily focused on the JLPT. That’s just my opinion after having used probably 30+ textbooks for different languages and topics in my life, but anyways!
Here are a few suggestions that are off the beaten path:
Vocab
漢字学習ステップ Books - These are for Japanese people to study for the 漢検 and they are actually fabulous. I know lots of people here did or do WK and feel comfy with kanji, but these present kanji and vocab to you in the order Japanese kids learn them which there may be something to speak for!? If you don’t care about writing, these are still a good resource for pure vocab if you want to add cards to anki. You just may need to get a few different volumes at different levels to identify where your “starting point” is (or look up the kanji lists for different 漢検 levels).
Not really a textbook but I have read a few and found them useful: Books about Japanese for 社会人 - there are tons of these out there, you just have to search for them. Example: 社会人に絶対必要な語彙力が身につく本
General textbooks
日本語検定 Textbooks - It’s the Japanese test for Japanese people! And they have their own textbooks to study with that are very comprehensive and full of exercises and explanations! The test has different sections like 敬語、語彙、言葉の意味 etc. and there are dedicated textbooks for each or ones with a mix of old test questions that cover a spread of sections. They are entirely in Japanese so they are harder to work through, and the advanced stuff is extremely advanced, but I think the things from the lower levels of the test may be a fun challenge at your level? I certainly feel like the studying I’ve done with the these (which has just been dabbling so far) has been some really deep learning ™️.
ビジネス日本語能力試験 textbooks - these books are for the business JLPT, which is the JLPT but with more sadness (jk). The content and format is a bit different so it’s kind of a fun change of pace. The standard textbooks provided by the testing organization have lots of questions to answer and work through so it’s easy to pick up when you just want to do 20 mins here or there. A lot of the business vocabulary is relevant for any media taking place in an office.
Grammar
どんなときにどう使う日本語文法辞典 - a reference book and not a textbook, but it’s the GOAT
Not off the beaten path and more of a classic, but the 日本語総まとめ grammar series - kind of dry and utilitarian, but imo you want your grammar resource to be utilitarian. It’s divided into topics and chapters that make sense and split up by day, so the study path and plan is predefined for you. Just follow the format, trust the process, and put in the work and you’ll be a grammar master!
Other Textbooks
Materials for the 日本語教育能力検定試験 - people who want to become a Japanese teacher have to take their own test! Japan loves tests. These are about Japanese grammar from the perspective of someone who already speaks Japanese, so they’re really different from learner materials. They also include goodies such as phonetics etc.
More like a subject matter textbook to read closely and take notes on versus one with exercises.
Linguistics, meta knowledge
Not a textbook, but - Books about the Japanese language: Do you really think you understand the difference between は and が？Maybe you don’t until you read a 200 page book on why.
Something like 日本人のための日本語文法入門 or related books on Amazon or bookwalker will have you covered (there are weirdly tons of them).
Misc & Other Ideas, both textbook and non-textbook
Try learning another topic in Japanese using a Japanese textbook? I’ve used Japanese reference books to improve my excel skills, professional skills related to my job, learn about computer science, finance, and marketing. You can learn two things at once and double dip!
Get kindle unlimited or the bookwalker equivalent and read whatever random stuff catches your eye. To have a big vocabulary you have to read widely too! Words from non fiction can pop up in fiction and vice versa.
Start learning another language in Japanese. Learning low level grammar and vocabulary in another language is a great chance to review it in Japanese and really solidify what you know (and fill in some gaps).
Ahh, I can certainly understand that I’ve managed to find some stuff I’m interesting in, at this level, but certainly a lot of the stuff I’m really interested in is L30+.
I can certainly relate wrt low tolerance for lookups & ambiguity
Yeah, that does limit things pretty severely
This is basically the conclusion I came to recently, and have been using jpdb for 声優ラジオのウラオモテ #05 夕陽とやすみは大人になれない? | L28 and it’s done wonders for reading that book, plus helped a bit with other books (common vocab).
Any chance you could link to one? I think I have the gyst from Amazon, but wanna make sure that I’m actually looking at the right thing
This looks amazing!! Their does seem to be a textbook version with 500 phrases, but I like the formatting of this one (which I’m guessing is what you’re referring to) much better… besides that it also has Chinese and Korean (cool, but useless for me)
Ah yes, sorry I forgot a link to the ones I like! I have this one that covers keigo from the official test organization. They have a bunch with similar covers for all the different topics!
So, I own the second one you linked, but have downloaded the 500 example sentences one you shared when it was on Kindle Unlimited before. (A true textbook マニアック checks out multiple versions of a textbook they already own😂). It’s good if you want examples to really drill the grammar or if you want to make some anki cards covering a specific grammar point. The second one that I own is better as a quick reference to check what something means. It also has an alternate way to express each grammar point in simpler Japanese (like 「にしたがって」= 「…すると、だんだん…」) which is useful.
Power’s out over here so I’m conserving phone battery but not very well, apparently in case we don’t get back up tonight. Will reply at length later because there’s a ton of good stuff here (thanks all!! ) but I also couldn’t leave this:
Any suggestions?
Although… Now that I think about it, I do have something like 20 squirreled away that my friend made me buy at Book Off at some point based only on covers… maybe it’s time to start vetting them for readability…
Hmm…actually, any of them? A lot can be quite similar (that is the charm ). I guess it depends on what type of trope or setting you like, then I may have more specific recs. I’d say it’s worth vetting your pile and asking in the BL university thread for sure, though!
I “self-studied” basically making sure I read at least one section of the chapter a day (planned non study days too like Sat/Sun). If I recall correctly I would start the week with my iTalki tutor, and go through it with them (read the reading section) check I got the meaning or readings right. Then we’d just have a conversation (ideally in Japanese) about the topic, then I would study the rest of the material the rest of the week. You could just subtract the tutor from the equation and do it by yourself for free and look everything up and maybe write an opinion on it (ideally in Japanese).
I was also doing Anki JLPT decks in the morning for my vocab, so it wasn’t purely textbooks. The secret to language acquisition is you’ll ultimately need to just keep finding what works for you in the moment. There is no magic routine that will get you to fluency faster than the one you enjoy doing. Language acquisition happens in low stress and engaging environments, so if textbooks stress you out, try to avoid them and find another way.
There is also an entirely-in-Japanese edition of that which I own, if you feel you’re at a level where you’d prefer to work through the explanations of the meanings of the grammar in Japanese rather than in English.
First of all I’m definitely a textbook enjoyer, but not sure if textbooks is the way for you regarding your goals. Textbooks have a certain target group, and things like conversation practice take up much more room than you would need to just be able to read higher material. They’re not really targeted at the person sitting at home with no intention to travel to Japan but just read Japanese books imo.
Whether you can get something out of it I’d say it depends on what areas you need to work on.
For me, textbooks help to get the foundations of grammar down, because I need the grammar drills to really hammer it in my brain. Of those, textbooks like Tobira have a lot, think it should cover N3 and some of N2. For focused grammar practice, JLPT grammar books could also be useful, I have Shin Kanzen Master and it pairs the grammar points up quite well and the exercises could help gauge potential weak spots. Since the JLPT grammar books are usually quite short on the explanations, I mostly cross-lookup with Bunpro or A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar.
Since every grammar point up to N2 is very frequent (N1 probably too depending on the genre), I’d say it’s generally good to have a solid grasp on it.
The way I have worked through Tobira’s first lessons was quite a thorough approach since I’m aiming for a kind of comprehensive skill set. I did all of the parts including dialogue and conversation practice (due to lack of partner with an AI bot), the grammar book, the kanji book (to practice writing) and the extra materials on the homepage. Doesn’t sound to me like you would need all that.
Vocab and kanji I’m studying with SRS via Renshuu-I think pre-studying with vocab lists could definitely benefit you for material in higher areas that are too daunting otherwise, but if you don’t like SRS I think just briefing a few times through a vocab list should also work. I’m currently pre-studying for 美しい彼 while reading it and I think it helped me a lot. A textbook can definitely not cover that. With Renshuu I’m sitting at nearly 10k unique words and I still feel like I have so many to lookups.
So yeah, tldr what you can get out of a textbook are mostly designed for comprehensive skill set so most likely you need to tailor it to your needs and complement with focused study.
I find more tolerance for intensive work using the textbooks as I rarely have to look up anything using outside sources so it jeeps me off my phone whereas books I need to look stuff up more often and it can be a chore at times to do so.
I also use the text books to keep some sort of structure since it’s only been within the last year or so that I’ve actually been using a tutor or language exchange partner and the textbooks helped me to figure out what to study.
I have heard there are other textbooks all in Japanese so maybe ones like that might be the next step. I’ve seen a lot of the みんなの日本語 textbook online and there are ebook options or free apps with the content in it. Not sure if that may be an alternative option for you if you don’t want to buy it?
So I found reading these stories through in sections, once without look ups, trying to figure out what I could, then going back through and intensely studying the grammar and vocab, breaking it down to try to fully understand it then re- reading it a third time trying to remember everything I’ve just looked up. It was taking me about a week to go through each story and break ut all down then once I was done I read through it entirely while trying to remember it all. I don’t use anki or such though but if you do, adding anki cards or studying a deck from it might help and make you have to read through it less times.
It could be just needing that intensive study is what’s missing. You can essentially use any book like a textbook by studying the vocab and grammar intensively but it can spoil the reading experience as it’s similar to analyzing a book in your native language so I would only recommend it either with books you’ve read before or books you may not read again for quite some time.
I learnt the foundation of Japanese through textbooks, from memory
みんなの日本語 and An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, and maybe Tobira.
This was almost entirely classroom based learning though, which I think some aspects of these books really specialise for.
If I were to do again, or recommend to someone, I would recommend these textbooks studies over stuff like wanikani. With the caveat, that I would recommend you have a tutor who you can go over the lessons with after you’ve done a first pass through them.
Slightly more recently I went through the Shin Kanzen N2 books, through self study, just trying to do some regularly. (Honestly though, I got a bit bored of this, and picked reading books over doing this 9 times out of 10).
These books are great for JLPT preparation, but I think that makes them slightly on the duller side (obviously personal preference).
I’ve occasionally used as a reference A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar online, which I think is great, and I will one day get both this and the advanced version in paper copies.
How do you self study? For me, what really helps is to set a goal, otherwise I cannot follow through. Mostly, that has been studying for JLPT: when I was studying for the N3 last year, I really wanted to finish Tobira, so I set a retroactive goal to study a chapter every 3 weeks. Keeping myself accountable with the exam date really helped me. I’ve just started a new schedule to go through the Shin Kanzen Master books (N2) - a week for grammar chapters, two weeks for vocab. This has been helping me so far.
How do you split your time between study and extensive reading/media watching? Honestly, by adapting to what fixes my routine. I read/listen to media mostly while commuting to work, and study grammar for the half an hour-ish per day when I’m actually sitting on my desk at home. It helps me if I tell myself that I should at least spend 15 minutes a day on grammar before starting to play a game or watch tv in the evenings.
Are there any textbooks that you would recommend? Honestly, maybe it’s just nostalgia talking, but nothing ever felt as fun as Genki for me.
And just generally, is there anything anyone else would recommend?
I’ve seen a couple of book clubs for grammar at WaniKani, which can maybe be helpful for accountability and just for the group experience. I followed the ones for the Dictionary of Basic and Intermediate Grammar, and I enjoyed it.
Or maybe I’m just in some amount of plateau and just need to keep on…
maybe). I make sure to take my time and write everything by hand and put my phone away so I can focus. Some nice study music is optional! I try to just have fun and get excited about adding new language to my repertoire and complete one “study loop”, stopping when I get to whatever stopping point in the chapter or section.
I know lots of people here did or do WK and feel comfy with kanji, but these present kanji and vocab to you in the order Japanese kids learn them which there may be something to speak for!? If you don’t care about writing, these are still a good resource for pure vocab if you want to add cards to anki. You just may need to get a few different volumes at different levels to identify where your “starting point” is (or look up the kanji lists for different 漢検 levels).
) but I also couldn’t leave this: 
