There are a couple of different JLPT study books out there and I’ve already peaked into the Nihongo-so-matome series. I’m personally a big fan of the study books by the Japanese publisher Ask publishing who are steadily releasing quality material with a good eye for design (among The Japan Times (Genki) of course).
The Asian Students Cultural Association (ABK) developed the series TRY! which wants to give you a quick but comprehensive overview of the main grammar points which you need to pass each JLPT level. I’m still extremely interested in taking the test but probably won’t be able to until after I’ve finished my exams in mid-2019.
Still, a long way to go but doesn’t hinder me from studying and finding out which JLPT books work best for me.
I always prefer a quick condensed look at grammar with a couple of example sentences and not overly sophisticated explanations. The Genki textbook series is great but some of their grammar explanations really weren’t so spot on and quite hard to grasp. I like to use the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar for these cases but a simple google search of the term with “Japanese” attached works like a charm in most cases as well.
TRY! is pretty straightforward in this case and just gives you a quick glance on each grammar term and lots of tasks are following right after. So just take it as a neat little grammar repetition book, highly condensed, with grammar points selected after JLPT difficulty.
I bought N5 for my cousin in Berlin and will probably buy the rest of the bunch for me personally. I still have the Nihongo Challenge N4 books lying around, waiting for me to get properly worked through. I bet using those study books together with Bunpro will work like a charm.
- Buy TRY! JLPT N5 at CDjapan
(If you buy the book through my link, I’ll get a small referral fee which will be used to buy even more awesome books for review.)
Who is studying for the JLPT or has already done a level? Would love to hear some impressions about this. Some readers already told me in the comments that taking the JLPT was the best thing they ever did for their Japanese studies. Probably the push one needs to really sit down and cram that grammar.
