This collection has 5 essays called The Train Door, Fried Rice, Time is Money, Habits and The Police Academy. Each is two pages long and suitable for learners preparing for the N5.
Author: ่ฅฟ้ ็ฑ็พ๏ผใซใใฎ ใใฟ๏ผ
Publisher: Japanese Language Park
Length: 72 pages (5 stories)
The concept of this essay collection seems to be identical to other graded reader series for Japanese such as Short Stories for Beginners by Lingo Mastery. Mostly because they also feature a vocabulary list for each essay, comprehension quizzes and a sentence by sentence translation into English at the end of each chapter.
I especially liked the essay on habits – obviously because the author writes about the habit of reading and I quite agree with her opinion. Not all essays are as strong unfortunately, but I also really enjoyed the very first story of the trip to Italy.
All essays have furigana on all kanji and only use grammar that is covered by the JLPT N5 level. I like the accessibility of the language and also the illustrations at the beginning of every essay. However, there being only one illustration at the very start means that readers don’t get any visual aids in reading the essays.
The vocabulary used in these essays is also quite broad. The author emphasizes the annotated vocabulary by making it bold, which makes them easy to look up. I did get the impression though, that these essays require more of an intensive reading approach with frequent lookups and more in-depth study of the vocabulary than what I usually recommend for N5 readers.
You can download this specific collection of five essays as a PDF for free simply by subscribing to the author’s newsletter. Just enter the name you want to be adressed with and your e-mail. I immediately received the free PDF and even an audio file after confirming the e-mail and found the process very straight forward.
The other volumes of the series are available e.g. through Amazon Japan.
dokushoclub.com 