GENKI: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese Workbook I [Second Edition] 初級日本語 げんき ワークブック I [第2版] の感想

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Let me start out by saying that I love the Genki coursebooks, and I’m using them as guides religiously to learn basic Japanese grammar.

Honestly, I was disappointed with Genki’s workbooks. As someone planning on taking the JLPT soon, the exercises were not very good for this purpose.

Frequently, the workbook will ask you to translate entire English sentences into Japanese, write out full answers to questions in Japanese, or even complete entire verb conjugation tables. This doesn’t interest me very much, because 1) it’s boring, and 2) these questions are not in JLPT style. I found these exercises challenging & offputing when I started learning Japanese, so I quickly moved on to other material to practice Japanese grammar.

I strongly recommend working through both Genki’s coursebooks for N5 & N4, however I encourage you to invest in the Try! series workbooks for grammar practice. For me, it was like a breath of fresh air working through them compared to

The content is arranged in a way that the exercises were meant to be submitted, perforated and all. If you have the textbook, there are plenty of exercises there so it’s really not worth the money.