A very comprehensive book which will help the student who has already learnt 500 characters learn another 240.
For many Japanese language students there are two aspects of the language which are especially tough to take on, grammar being one and kanji (characters that are derived from the Chinese language) being the other. As such it is an important topic to cover amongst anyone studying this language, and everyone is always looking for advice on how to learn hundreds, and thousands of kanji characters. Unfortunately, there is no short cut, there is no easy path, and there is definitely no magical secret which will allow someone to suddenly know how to read and write all of these characters. One can only learn the hard way, the time consuming way, and put the hours into study. One time tested way, which incidentally is the same way that Japanese children learn, is to write out the characters again and again, and to be tested on them. The Intermediate Kanji Book has been set out with this in mind; it is a very comprehensive book which will help the student who has already learnt 500 characters learn another 240. In this series there are four books in total which cover the first 1000 characters that school children normally learn.
"As such this book may come as bit of a shock to many students as it is simply not possible to drift unthinkingly through the book. Unless you sit down and engage with it, complete the exercises and follow everything to the end, then you won’t get very far."
The contents page is in both Japanese and English; it shows how the first few pages revise the first 500 kanji the student is already expected to know as well as the new kanji characters. The introduction goes on to explain how this book is a follow up to the previous beginner books which contained 500 characters and how this book together with the Intermediate Kanji Book 2 teaches another 500 characters. This total of 1000 characters correspond with the Japanese Ministry of Education’s official list of 1006 kanji to be taught in elementary school and it also correspond to the most frequently found characters in newspapers.
In each chapter there are five sections; a section where the characters are divided into groups such as: opposite meanings, verbs, adjectives and Kanji with the similar pronunciation. These are further split into subsections, such as shapes, meaning and usage. After this there is a review, followed by another five sections divided by the structure of kanji words, kanji verbs, and adjectives. The book ends with another review, kanji quizzes, a kanji pattern index and a kanji on-kun index. As one can see, the structure of each chapter is somewhat detailed and it’s a good idea for students to take their time on each lesson and not rush through the book.
In each chapter students can also expect to work on more detailed aspects of reading and writing. As the lessons continue, students will comes across reading activities, vocabulary lists/definitions, activities on stroke number and order, example sentences and plenty of writing practice. There are also symbols in each chapter to indicate whether a character is a verbs, noun, or adjective and there are also exercises to help with pronunciation and syllable stress.
Each lesson teaches new characters while also constantly reinforcing what the student should already know. There are many detailed exercises in this book and in contrast to the beginner books which mostly dealt with memorization and repetition, this book really keeps students on their toes and provides them with more information and challenging activities. As such this book may come as bit of a shock to many students as it is simply not possible to drift unthinkingly through the book. Unless you sit down and engage with it, complete the exercises and follow everything to the end, then you won’t get very far. It is a very work intensive, time consuming book, but in this regard it is perfect for strengthening the foundation of your Japanese knowledge.
