Product Description

"Schaum's Outline of Japanese Grammar" covers the sequential treatment of the essentials of Japanese grammar, from simpler concepts to more complex, makes learning and reviewing easy. It features: concrete examples following coverage of grammar functions promote students, understanding of material; practice exercises use meaningful, practical contexts to develop students, mastery of grammatical elements; and, chapter-ending summary exercises let students practice all functions learned in each section.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311133 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

From the Back Cover

Master Japanese Grammar with Schaum's - the high-erofrmance study guide! It will help you learn correct pronunciation, cut study time, and achieve your personal best on exams.

Students love Schaum's Outlines because they produce results. Each year hundreds of thousands of student's improve their test scores and final grades with these

About the Author

Keiko Uesawa Chevray is Director of the Japanese Language Program at Columbia University in New York and full time Senior Lecturer in Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Tomiko Kuwahira is Lecturer in Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.

Customer Reviews

Great for intermediate learners and as a revision tool
Like the other reviewer mentioned, this book is definitely not suitable for beginners, as there is no vocabulary given in the exercises, and sometimes a knowledge of grammar that has not been covered in the book yet is required.
If you are an intermediate-level learner, however, and you can look past the small editorial mistakes (like spelling and formatting errors- there is at least one every double page) then this is a very useful book for revision of core grammar, and the exercises are great for consolidating the content of the chapter, or just for doing by themselves.
Definitely buy it if you want practice and a brushing up of grammar you have already learned; look somewhere else if you need a detailed explanation for the first time.

only for intermediate learners
This is not for beginners, you should have completed a basic course/book before attempting this one.
If you are a complete beginner you will gain nothing from this book.

The structure of the book is this:
1. the grammar is explained in English and with romanization
2. followed by example sentences in script, romanization and English
3. after this comes exercises such as put the "wa" or "ga" in the correct place
4. review-exercises written ONLY in script and romanization
5. review-exercises where you translate from English into either romanization or script

So why is it not good for beginners ?:

1. There are no vocabulary listings in each chapter, so if you don't know any Japanese you can't tell what the romanized words actually mean

2. There are too many words in each chapter to make vocabulary memorization realistic: it is too time-consuming if you have to look up words all the time in your dictionary - this is supposed to be a grammar book, and not a vocabulary book

3. In many exercises no English translations are given at all! Just the script and romanization...again, if you know any Japanese beforehand...

This is a good book for intermediate learners who need some reference or revision-book.
But for beginner's this is a very poor choice.

If you are a beginner, I can recommend this book instead for you,Japanese Grammar (Barron's Grammar Series), which is written entirely in romanization and explains the grammar very clearly.

Schaum's Japanese Grammar
It is a very good book, it explains counters, joshi (particles) and doushi (verbs) very well. Though the cover 'All the essentials of Japanese grammar in easy to understand form' is a bit of false advertising. Though it does give you the characters, it assumes that you already know complex linguistic terminology. Other then that I would recommend it to anyone who is getting ready to do some form of Japanese course. I would also use it in combination with other books and other resources as well.