For 3 Kyuu Which Study Guide have you found most useful

[lazysunday]

I have many books on kanji and grammar but I need to know where to focus my studies. Which of these books did you find most helpful and why?

[Belton]

Complete Master

Gokaku Dekiru is a really good source of practice tests, but won't explain the answers, or expand any topics. But good for seeing your weak points or boosting your confidence that you know a topic.

The Test Content Specifications seem impossible to find. The official book is in Japanese. I haven't seen it but would expect it to be far beyond Level 3 's ability to understand. It's really meant for test setters and textbook authors.

Unicom, I have this but oddly didn't use it much, I preferred the master series book.
It's in Japanese. I think I'd say buy the supplementary translation if you're going to use it.


I liked Complete Master because it set out all the necessary grammar in a simple well designed fashion with examples and tests using JLPT target kanji and vocabulary.
It in essence gives the test content grammar specifications for JLPT3 and you can then read other in depth books to flesh out your understanding.
However, by itself I'm not sure if it's enough to learn how to use that grammar properly.

One thing I would say is practice listening. Everyone who doesn't live in Japan finds this the hardest part of the exam I think. (based on JLPT statistics and talking to friends who've sat JLPT tests) (and it's also much harder than actually having a conversation or real interaction with a Japanese person.)

What small wisdom / opinion I have about this I wrote about here: JLPT3 Roundup

[Taurus]

I'm just starting out, so I'm looking for advice too. I think I'm approximately JLPT Level 4. I'm thinking of diving straight into taking level 3, though. The Complete Master book seems excellent, but I was wondering if it's worth checking out the Unicom book too... Anybody got any advice (before I dive into Belton-san's blog)?

[hairlet]

Hmm. Resources are a tricky one.

I've been learning Japanese on-off for about 4 years. Although I am REALLY REALLY slack.
But over this time, I have acquired a few books.
Minna no Nihongo.
Japanese for Busy People.
Kanji Power...

but... my opinion is that learning from a book is something which requires alot of disipline. It requires motivation to actually go and open the book. And, with my methods of learning, it is not conducive to advancing my language skills.

There are SO MANY websites out there which can concentrate your skills in certain areas - some are good for Kanji, and some are good for vocabulary.

For example, I use a combination of 2 websites for learning my Kanji.
http://kanji.koohii.com
and
http://www.speedanki.com
These are both good for learning Kanji because they both easily let you review those that you really need help with, but they do so in completely different ways.
The longer that you persist with the two sites, the more they start to overlap in Kanji used. And when this happens I get a real sense of moving my learning forward. Its a great feeling.

So, to summarise, I have spent alot of money on various Nihongo books... but maybe this was a waste of time. Stick to the many Web resources and you'll be fine.

[huixi90]

Complete master is better for JLPT 3

I used that for my last 1 week before taking JLPT 3
(you have to practise the last combined section excercise)

I have read up about 70% of the book and when i self-test taking the JLPT for previous years,i found that most grammar type are covered by complete master..

u can try it yourself =)

[john10074]

Do you mean you'd like to apply for an actual fully-qualified teaching job as opposed to an assistant language position? If you do, I believe that you'd have to go through the Japanese system to obtain your qualifications - foreign qualifications (such as the English PGCE) won't be recognised. I think. Unfortunately it's difficult to find out because if you google it you just get back a load of results about teaching English (so forgive me if you subsequently find out that I'm talking rubbish - but hey, this is the internet, right?). If that's the case, I can maybe try to ask one of my Japanese colleagues if you like?Because if you mean that you'd like to apply for an English-teaching job over here, I think that the CELTA is enough to give you an edge. As far as I can tell (again, caveat about talking rubbish...), if you apply directly with an institution such as a school, many of them don't seem to require any qualifications, and I'm not sure how many of them would even understand your qualifications. It seems to be the third-parties such as Interac (who hire ALTs on behalf of schools and boards of education) who require/understand these qualifications.


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