Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication: A Self-Study Course and Reference

I bought this book as a low intermediate learner because I felt like I was plateauing and not really learning much after the Genki series. I decided to start from the beginner section just to see how much I knew and as expected I already knew quite a bit. However, what is really scary is that some of the stuff in the beginner section were things I didn't know. For example Genki only teaches you 1 case use for たり, たりする but this book immediately made me aware that, that grammar point is much more broad and I have only been reading for a few minutes. So I feel like this book will have a lot to offer during the harder stages.My only gripe about this book is how polite even their casual speech is but since I am aware of it I can work around it I guess.

This book is designed for upper-beginner learners of Japanese. I say this because if you've studied Genki 1, you'll pretty much know how to do everything in this book. However, even if you have studied Genki 1, this is a great book to use for additional practice and will teach you more sentence structures then Genki 1.The examples are written in natural Japanese (Kanji + hiragana/katakana) and then written again in romanji. This means you don't need to know how to read Japanese to use this book. However, if you're a serious learner of Japanese, I'd highly highly recommend learning to read being the first thing you do. Losing the crutch of romanji is one of the best things you can do the first day you start learning. Learn Hiragana and Katakana first. Kanji is takes longer to learn but it's not hard, just tedious. The book does not provide furigana (kana above the kanji), but this is not needed because if you know how to read Japanese, it's extremely easy to spot the reading of the kanji in the romanji text.This book has one main goal in mind. That goal is to teach you tons of different sentence structures which is essential to know in pretty much every language. If you're a upper beginner, you most likely will not know all the vocab, but you will learn how to use most vocab once you've learn them. After mastering this book, you'll be able to express yourself in various different ways and structures.This book would work best if you're already an upper-beginner with a decent amount of vocabulary in your grasp. The best way to practice would be to study each section, then try to make as many sentences with the structures you've learn using the vocab you already know. Since this book does start off slow, I'd recommend it to a beginner of any level. Also to any lower intermediates who want to refreshen up on their sentence structures.

Many books deal with Japanese grammar somewhat in a vacuum, whereas this book provides an index of different English meanings, ideas, and sentence structures, and explains how the same (or a similar) idea would be conveyed in Japanese. The book is very well structured, with the index in the front of the book grouped by broad categories (describing actions, making comparisons, explaining causes and reasons, etc.), and each individual concept is listed with one or more pairs of English sentences and corresponding Japanese translations, as well as the page number for the detailed lesson. In many cases, simply looking at this index may be enough to jog your memory, but if not, every lesson is presented in detail with example sentences, one or more paragraphs of explanation, and several practice exercises where you are given an English sentence, and asked to translate the statement to Japanese using the concepts provided in the lesson. I recommend using a highlighter, and going through the index highlighting the relevant word/particle/structure for each Japanese example, as this will make it even easier to find what you're looking for. This book is an easy recommendation for anybody studying Japanese.

This is book is simply amazing.Grammatical coverage is methodical and logically ordered.Plenty of example sentences are offered in both kanji and romaji. I would have liked kana/furigana as well, but the scheme the author chose works well and is nice for reading practice. The romaji is printed under the kanji examples; so it is easily covered with the included bookmark if you want to test yourself.The book is organized by grammar point. There are 142 grammar points in all.Each grammar point consists of:1) A simple demonstrative example in large print2) A short paragraph explaining the usage of the grammar point3) Three to five additional example sentences to shown usage variations4) A small translation quiz consisting of 3 English sentences that require the grammar point (answers provided)Also included is 45 pages of appendix material, which provides charts/tables covering:* Numerals - Cardinal and ordinal numbers* Counters (measure words)* Adjective inflection for common I- and Na- adjectives* Verb conjugation for common verbsI study vocabulary ordered by common usage frequency using iKnow -- words are introduced (with audio) along with an example sentence (also with audio). This book helps in understanding some of the more complex example sentences. Conversely, the vocabulary gained through iKnow makes reading this grammar book much easier and natural.In short, if you have an external regimented vocabulary study program, this book might very well be the only textbook you need as you progress into upper-intermediate territory.

Addition of Hiragana would be idealwould pay bit more for a slightly bigger hard-cover edition