しあわせ

完全マスター３級日本語能力試験文法問題対策
Mie Shigeno, Kaoru Seki, Shizue Nishikimi (スリーエーネットワーク)

By the same publisher as Minna No Nihongo series, this is a fantastic little book. It is very well designed and laid out and easy to use.

It covers all the grammar needed for JLPT3. It is very hard to get hold of a list of what grammar is needed, unlike the lists of kanji you can find. This book has it. For that alone you should buy it. (It’s fairly cheap at 1200 円 )

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日本語能力試験試験問題と正解３・４級
(Japan Educational Exchanges and Services and The Japan Foundation)

Every year JEES and the Japan Foundation publish the previous December’s test papers. They come in 2 volumes. One with level 4 and 3, one with level 2 and 1. You can usually find some past years but they do go out of print. I wonder if I shouldn’t start buying level 2 test papers now, but it’ll be a few years before I’m ready for level 2.

Basically what you get is the test paper reproduced exactly; A CD of the listening section; the answers and marking scheme; transcripts of the listening dialogues and statistics on the years scores.

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あなたの弱点がわかる!日本語能力試験3級模試×2
(Unicom)

This book has 2 mock exam papers for JLPT level 3. Complete with sheets for you to mark answers on by filling in boxes just like the actual test and a CD for the listening portion.

Where it is better than the official past exam papers you can buy is the extras.

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The revised 3rd edition.

AJALT are slowly revising their series of textbooks. The 3rd edition is a major revision.
The revisions are completely modernising the texts that now have a slightly better flow based around practical topics such as shopping, and have a much clearer layout. Another large change is that there will no longer be romaji editions of level 2 and 3. (And I would encourge everyone to start using kana from the beginning; it’s really not that difficult.)
Unfortunatly Biji-san has gone and so has the gentle humour in the workbooks. I wish they could have kept him.

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This is a language school in Tokyo which quite generously makes a lot of materials available for free on it’s web site. Among these are a series of very short dialogues that are suitable for beginners through to intermediate learners. It’s very hard to find recordings that are suitable for learners so it’s great to have a large amount of recorded material that you might be able to completely understand.