I know many people use these vocabulary books already, but if you don’t know about them, then this is for you. They have N4-N5, N2, and N1 versions as well.
Ease of Use: Easy. It comes with a red sheet to cover the terms, but personally I don’t really use it because I remember faster through flashcards. I do wish the furigana font was bigger though.
Content: Very good. I like the way it’s divided by topics and though it doesn’t contain “2000” words, it’s still a huge number of words (that you are glad it stops around 1,500).
The best part about their choice of words is how relevant they are to daily life. Like you are a lot more likely to hear them vs a specific medical term. My copy has both English and Vietnamese translations.
Structure: It is broken into 12 chapters and subdivided into 5 sections per chapter, resulting in 120 -170 words a chapter.
The chapters/sections are divided by topics such as the bank, job, hospital, home appliances, etc.
There are additional words, synonyms, and antonyms beneath a lot of the terms. They have a sample sentence on the right side.
Finally there’s additional sections at the end of some of the chapters that are not part of the main terms. These are like idiomatic expressions, negative expressions, etc. There are some repeated words with the main section, but not too many.
Interactive: Not really. There is the red sheet to cover the term, so you can test yourself, but not much besides that.
Overall: I actually think it’s very useful surprisingly. I think it’s better to have a physical copy vs finding the terms online. I like how you can see all the words in a list and quickly look up a word compared to only flashcards.
I was hesitant to buy it to be honest because it’s so expensive and it’s just a massive list of words, but I think it’s worth it now (and I always feel more motivated with a physical book).
framed in beige 