I am in the process of getting my TEFL cert so that I will have the option of teaching English in Japan. I think this will also open up a huge opportunity to learn/practice any Japanese I learn. A couple of things I would like to accomplish with this thread are getting a recommendation or two for a solid beginner-intermediate level Japanese Grammar book and to answer a few grammar questions about Japanese usage. It had been years (more than a decade) since i had to diagram a sentence, or since i learned the differences between all of the tenses and finer grammar points so its been really interesting relearning it. What has been the most difficult part is getting through the differences in the way North Americans use English vs. the way British people use it. At times Brits use the past perfect tense when the past simple tense conveys (at least in North American English) a more accurate meaning. So I find myself "fixing" sentences that weren't wrong per se but were, for lack of a better term, more British. This can be a problem for a lot of reasons but thats a different conversation for a different day. Anyway, that all leads me to a question about Japanese grammar. Do they speak more in the simple or perfect tense? Do they have tenses that we don't have? If so, can someone drop some knowledge on me? I think it would be helpful to know this stuff now, while i am relearning it, so that I can put it into a context mentally and thereby be more prepared to teach to that demographic. If you catch my drift. The only thing I know about Japanese grammar is a bit of wisdom my Japanese prof in college gave me. If in doubt structure your sentence the way Yoda would say it and make all of the sentences very basic. Other than that i have forgotten everything i learned in Japanese class. Anyway, I appreciate any and all responses.
I've got the Genki level 1 and 2 books. They're decent books, and the descriptions of grammar contained within are pretty good. The first one is more toward the beginner side of the beginner/intermediate continuum, and the second one is more toward the intermediate side. I'm currently using them to relearn all the Japanese that I've forgotten since high school, and have been pleased with them. You can find 'em for about $30 a piece on Amazon.
Minna no Nihongo... there's different levels and an exercise and grammar book. That's the series they use for teaching at my university which is a university specialising in Asian languages. Main thing about Japanese grammar I found was getting use to particles and dropping lots of parts that are required in English when speaking. As you pointed out the fact that it is structured along the lines of subject object verb unlike English's subject verb object is extremely important as is the fact that the verbs can conjugate.
