Eigo no Hanon Intermediate: The Book for Joining Sentences — Differences from Beginner, and Where People Stumble

As the Beginner article described, this series is a drill book for acquiring grammar as a mouth movement. The Intermediate volume continues it, published in December 2021, the same year as the Beginner. The authors are again Masahiko Yokoyama and Sachiko Nakamura. The binding and format match the Beginner volume — a satisfying pair on the shelf.

The shift in content is clear. The Beginner book was about “can you say one sentence accurately?”; the Intermediate is about “can you join sentence to sentence and say them?” This book calls the framework of these complex sentences “warp threads” (tateito), and the elements that add nuance to them “weft threads.”

Inside the Intermediate volume

Its fourteen units are divided into two parts.

Part 1 (Units 1–7) is the conjunction concentration zone. It starts with conjunctions that form adverbial clauses, then the points to watch with as, the different uses of that, that and whether/if introducing noun clauses, and appositive clauses. That half the book goes to conjunctions alone shows what this book believes: the natural feel of spoken language is actually decided by how things are connected.

Part 2 (Units 8–14) picks up the grammar left over from the Beginner volume — past perfect and future perfect, reported speech, interrogative clauses, three units of comparison (positive, comparative, superlative), and inversion — while adding fine nuance to sentences. The comparison Units 12 and 13, at 15 drills each, are also the largest single chunk in the book.

Differences from the Beginner volume

The difference from the Beginner volume is the amount you have to hold in your head during a drill. The running principle is the same as the Beginner book: book open to bind the forms, book closed until you can say them. One drill a day.

The Beginner transformations swapped subjects and tenses within a single sentence. In the Intermediate, you get scenes where you rework the contents of the subordinate clause while holding the shape of the main clause. Longer sentences mean more to think about during the pauses, so even the same “five sentences per drill” takes longer per round. Get greedy at the Beginner pace — “two drills today” — and the second one usually falls apart.

The other difference is how mistakes look. Beginner mistakes are mistakes of form — you notice them yourself. Intermediate mistakes are mistakes of connection choice: you can say it all the way through, yet the meaning shifts. On top of saying it smoothly with the book closed, the round trip of checking in the book whether the sentence you said means what you meant matters more than it did in the Beginner volume.

Entry conditions

The entry conditions are decided not by grammar knowledge but by your relation to the Beginner volume.

If you can run the Beginner volume with the book closed, you can go straight in. Going the other way — skipping the Beginner and starting from the Intermediate — is not recommended. The complex-sentence drills are designed on the assumption that single sentences come out automatically; without that base, the practice becomes memorization instead of holding practice.

If you have not done the Beginner volume but are confident with single sentences, try the Beginner's later units with the book closed. If they come out smoothly, starting from the Intermediate is fine. If not, going through the Beginner first is the faster route, however roundabout it looks.

Put in exam terms, the grammar handled is centered on the high-school range. But as the Beginner article also said, this series' difficulty is not knowledge but operation. Can you say, in one breath and with its conjunction attached, a sentence you understand when you read it? That is the yardstick of the Intermediate volume.

The next book

Beyond the Intermediate sits the Advanced volume. The Advanced is centered on a thorough campaign through relative clauses and more refined expressions, positioned as the summit of this series. Including the side volumes — the Phrase and Logic editions — each book's details get their own articles.

In short

The Intermediate volume is where Eigo no Hanon steps from “grammar drills” into “drills for speaking.” Join sentences with conjunctions, rework them while holding them. Once you can run the Beginner volume with the book closed, come here next without hesitation. Drop the pace below the Beginner's, and keep to one drill a day. That is how this book is run.

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