How does one study Japanese? Through these blog posts and previous videos I offer many sources you can use to practice your reading, writing, speaking in Japanese. One common question I get asked is, “Do you recommend to consume native materials, particularly kids’ books and school worksheets?”.
My short answer is yes, try and consume any and all Japanese you can get your hands on. But just as you cannot learn Japanese by watching Japanese TV a few hours a day, you won’t get a lot out of materials which are way above your level.
The reality is that school worksheets meant for natives are going to be challenging. I was browsing through https://happylilac.net/ and found a wide variety of printable worksheets that contain extremely complex grammar and vocabulary which I think many people below JLPT N2 would struggle to parse, and many more that N1+ people would struggle with. Some of the kanji worksheets were ridiculously difficult as they contained exercises requiring you to write the proper nouns for place names in Japan such as 長崎 and 佐賀, and to know words such as 干潟
干潟 ひがた (n) tidal flat; tideland
However, there are many short paragraphs of Japanese text, instructions and diagrams which contain a lot of excellent practice. Let’s look at the bottom of one of the sheets and work out what is going on. I’d recommend you get a variation of rikai chan to help read the Japanese text in this blog post.
First off in blue, it says Ｚ会ｘちびむすドリル.
Generally when you see 会 on the end of something, it’s some kind of organisation/group etc. ちびむす is the name of the website (run by パディンハウス PadinHouse, Inc). ドリル is drill, which is what worksheets like this called. So there two organisations are working together to produce this.
In green, 考える楽しさを体験しよう！
考える is being used to modify 楽しさ, ‘the fun of thinking’. 体験 is a type of experience with しよう being the plain form volitional of する. Something like “Let’s experience the fun of thinking/learning”.
In pink, 一年間の総復習でスムーズに進級を
復習 is revision, with the 総 prefix having the meaning of whole; all; general; gross; entire; overall. You can see it written on the books. で is a particle which is “by means of” with に being used on スムーズ to turn it into an adverb (generally just add -ly, -er, -cal to make an adverb) of “smoothly”. 進級 means to “advance levels or grades”, basically to go from Year 1 to Year 2 etc. “Advance grades smoothly with 1 years’ worth of general revision books”.
The search bar says Ｚ会の本 which will just send you to their homepage for these revision books, with the text くわしくはこちら！
くわしく means “details” and こちら is another way to say “here”. Of course, the here being the above mentioned website.
