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新完全マスター文法 #1
New Kanzen Master Grammar Japanese Language Proficiency Test JLPT N1
The item is gently used. In very good condition.
180 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2011
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67 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 20, 2023
Compared to the reading practice book of the same series, the biggest disappointment of this one was that the answer key was bare bones, no explanation of why the wrong answers are wrong. For the problems where you have to arrange the words in the right order and pick the 3rd word, it doesn’t even write out where the rest of the words go. Not that it was too tough to figure out most of the time, but it’s still an odd decision.
With the large number of questions, I can understand why they didn’t do that, but, unlike with the reading book, I came away from at least a quarter of the practice questions I got wrong not really understanding why.
It’s a shame, because I thought the lesson content of the book was great. The first 20 chapters were grammar points grouped by theme (indicating contrast, indicating results counter to expectations, etc.). What made this book better than the others I’ve read is that it has explicitly stated usage points that go beyond the sorts of things you might pick up on intuitively.
For example, when using 〜なり to indicate “As soon as A, then B” the usage points let you know: both halves of the sentence have to have the same person doing the action, and it needs to be a 3rd person subject. Then in the practice questions, some of the questions would reinforce those specific details. This was a huge improvement over where I was coming in to the book, where I basically lumped 〜なり in with a bunch of other similar forms, and so having that level of detail alongside similarly detailed explanations of 〜や否や and 〜が早いか was really valuable.
As for the book being entirely in Japanese - if you’re at the point where you’re considering taking the N1 test, you should be able to get through this book without trouble. That said, some of the explanations of the grammar are pretty abstract, and there were a few places I found myself punching sentences into Google Translate to get a better feel for what it was really getting at.
For example, the explanation for 〜にしたところで was: 〜の場合でも無力だ・無意味だ。That’s all fine, but getting a nice English translation of the sample sentence (“My criticism was harsh, but it’s not like *I* have a better plan.”) went a long way to giving me a better feel for some of these forms.
So, in short: Good study guide, I expect I’ll do significantly better on the test from having gone through it, and I haven’t found anything better out there. But I don’t feel as confident as I think I would have with the same quality of answer key as the reading practice book from this series.
With the large number of questions, I can understand why they didn’t do that, but, unlike with the reading book, I came away from at least a quarter of the practice questions I got wrong not really understanding why.
It’s a shame, because I thought the lesson content of the book was great. The first 20 chapters were grammar points grouped by theme (indicating contrast, indicating results counter to expectations, etc.). What made this book better than the others I’ve read is that it has explicitly stated usage points that go beyond the sorts of things you might pick up on intuitively.
For example, when using 〜なり to indicate “As soon as A, then B” the usage points let you know: both halves of the sentence have to have the same person doing the action, and it needs to be a 3rd person subject. Then in the practice questions, some of the questions would reinforce those specific details. This was a huge improvement over where I was coming in to the book, where I basically lumped 〜なり in with a bunch of other similar forms, and so having that level of detail alongside similarly detailed explanations of 〜や否や and 〜が早いか was really valuable.
As for the book being entirely in Japanese - if you’re at the point where you’re considering taking the N1 test, you should be able to get through this book without trouble. That said, some of the explanations of the grammar are pretty abstract, and there were a few places I found myself punching sentences into Google Translate to get a better feel for what it was really getting at.
For example, the explanation for 〜にしたところで was: 〜の場合でも無力だ・無意味だ。That’s all fine, but getting a nice English translation of the sample sentence (“My criticism was harsh, but it’s not like *I* have a better plan.”) went a long way to giving me a better feel for some of these forms.
So, in short: Good study guide, I expect I’ll do significantly better on the test from having gone through it, and I haven’t found anything better out there. But I don’t feel as confident as I think I would have with the same quality of answer key as the reading practice book from this series.
November 11, 2021
"You suck at this," this book says, patting you firmly on the shoulder. "And there's no way you can absorb all of the material in the suggested timeframe. But we'll do our best, right?"
Consists of 20 straight grammar lessons with 4-6 points each, grouped by theme ("time-related," "condition," etc), that it recommends you spend two sessions of 50 minutes each on. Each grammar point comes with a simple explanation of its meaning, 3-4 example sentences, a breakdown of how to form it (does it modify a noun or a verb or whatever), and then an explanatory note on usage. The last one was particularly helpful because it included information like, "only use this when describing your own actions" or "typically only used with these four verbs." Each lesson has review questions; 3-4 questions for each grammar point that focus on formation, and a final section focusing on picking the right one depending on the sentence.
Then there's a sort of series tips-and-tricks lessons - 7 sections with subjects such as "using the verb to help figure out which you should pick" and "old-fashioned words that we still use in some cases."
Once you're through that, there are 12 review sections which look at high-level Japanese grammar from other perspectives: there's a review of the passive, causative, and passive-causative tenses, for example, as well as keeping POV and logical sentence-structure in mind.
Finally there are two grammar-specific practice exam sections.
This is written solely in Japanese, with no explanations in English, Chinese, or Korean. After looking up several important grammatical terms a few times, however, you realize that the explanations are written in plain, easily-decipherable language. The answer book provides no explanations, unfortunately, though having seen a number of answer books with explanations where the explanation is "the other choices are incorrect," well...
I do appreciate this exam-specific review books commitment to exam-style questions, which you would think would be the bare minimum.
Honestly, the grammar section of the exam is my worst section, even after all this review. But this book took me from "flipping a coin would be better" to "correct answers 30-40% of the time."
Consists of 20 straight grammar lessons with 4-6 points each, grouped by theme ("time-related," "condition," etc), that it recommends you spend two sessions of 50 minutes each on. Each grammar point comes with a simple explanation of its meaning, 3-4 example sentences, a breakdown of how to form it (does it modify a noun or a verb or whatever), and then an explanatory note on usage. The last one was particularly helpful because it included information like, "only use this when describing your own actions" or "typically only used with these four verbs." Each lesson has review questions; 3-4 questions for each grammar point that focus on formation, and a final section focusing on picking the right one depending on the sentence.
Then there's a sort of series tips-and-tricks lessons - 7 sections with subjects such as "using the verb to help figure out which you should pick" and "old-fashioned words that we still use in some cases."
Once you're through that, there are 12 review sections which look at high-level Japanese grammar from other perspectives: there's a review of the passive, causative, and passive-causative tenses, for example, as well as keeping POV and logical sentence-structure in mind.
Finally there are two grammar-specific practice exam sections.
This is written solely in Japanese, with no explanations in English, Chinese, or Korean. After looking up several important grammatical terms a few times, however, you realize that the explanations are written in plain, easily-decipherable language. The answer book provides no explanations, unfortunately, though having seen a number of answer books with explanations where the explanation is "the other choices are incorrect," well...
I do appreciate this exam-specific review books commitment to exam-style questions, which you would think would be the bare minimum.
Honestly, the grammar section of the exam is my worst section, even after all this review. But this book took me from "flipping a coin would be better" to "correct answers 30-40% of the time."
June 29, 2021
Example sentences were plentiful, but I found the book very hard to progress, even gradually. I attribute this difficulty to how little explanation there was, even in Japanese.
Similar expressions are grouped together, making them difficult to tell apart. Often, five consecutive grammatical expressions introduced together seem nearly identical, and it's up to the reader to check example sentences to distinguish their various nuances.
It would have been much better to have more extensive explanation listing (explicit bullet-pointing) the similarities and differences between otherwise indistinguishable expressions i.e. tell us which situations you use one, vs. another.
There are also no hard definitions of grammatical expressions, synonyms, or even translations into other languages.
Finally, the chapter-by-chapter tests are also too easy/straightforward compared to what you actually see on an N1 exam.
As a result, I quickly lost motivation and momentum going through the book. The other books in this series were much more impactful in studying for the N1 exam!
Similar expressions are grouped together, making them difficult to tell apart. Often, five consecutive grammatical expressions introduced together seem nearly identical, and it's up to the reader to check example sentences to distinguish their various nuances.
It would have been much better to have more extensive explanation listing (explicit bullet-pointing) the similarities and differences between otherwise indistinguishable expressions i.e. tell us which situations you use one, vs. another.
There are also no hard definitions of grammatical expressions, synonyms, or even translations into other languages.
Finally, the chapter-by-chapter tests are also too easy/straightforward compared to what you actually see on an N1 exam.
As a result, I quickly lost motivation and momentum going through the book. The other books in this series were much more impactful in studying for the N1 exam!
September 17, 2015
A book explaining the grammar necessary for the JLPT N1. The explanations are good, as are the exercises. However, the exercises in this book are probably not enough to leave you feeling prepared for the test, so you might want to buy other exercise books to practice some more.
It took me almost a year to figure out the best way to deal with grammar - it's easy to learn vocab and kanji, but grammar... what I did in the end was enter all the explanations and sample sentences into Evernote. Now, when I do exercises it doesn't take me long to look up the grammar point in question. In theory I could even read up on my grammar while on the train and such *coughs*
The thing about the N1 is of course that the grammar is a bit.. well. ややこしい。面倒くさいといってもいいかもしれない。While studying the N2 grammar, pretty much everything was something I had encountered while reading before, and it wasn't like that with the N1 grammar. But that's why it's the N1, I guess. And as you progress, you do get better.
It took me almost a year to figure out the best way to deal with grammar - it's easy to learn vocab and kanji, but grammar... what I did in the end was enter all the explanations and sample sentences into Evernote. Now, when I do exercises it doesn't take me long to look up the grammar point in question. In theory I could even read up on my grammar while on the train and such *coughs*
The thing about the N1 is of course that the grammar is a bit.. well. ややこしい。面倒くさいといってもいいかもしれない。While studying the N2 grammar, pretty much everything was something I had encountered while reading before, and it wasn't like that with the N1 grammar. But that's why it's the N1, I guess. And as you progress, you do get better.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews