Saw the recent post and figured I’d throw my hat in the ring and share my story.
言語知識 – 47/60
I’ve always hated textbooks and formal study so this was my obvious weak point. While I do use Anki I only have around ~10k cards mined which probably explains why vocab and grammar were my bottleneck.
読解 – 60/60
The section I was most confident on. I spent most of my time reading so I was sure I’d at least score in the high 50s.
聴解 – 60/60
I was expecting to score in the high 40s here. Came out of it 100% confident that I aced it.
Background:
I started back in August 2021 more or less, with kana knowledge and some basic points from watching anime with subs. I used the core6k anki deck with ~50 new cards per day. This was honestly mindnumbingly boring and a lot of the time it felt like I was bashing my head against a wall.
After this I set out to do what I learned this language for in the first place: reading visual novels. For the past 2 years I’ve been reading something in some capacity practically nonstop. This and gaming are my sole hobbies so all of my free time has been spent there. I hated all the “beginner” vns that were recommended, so I just went in and started with some more intermediate stuff. Again, this often felt like I was bashing my head against a wall.
I kept this up and eventually reading in jp became natural to me. There really is no shortcut for this but to spend an absurd amount of time in your target language. I estimate that since then I’ve read about 40m 文字 with around 5k hours spent.
Disadvantages:
-I sometimes feel like I have a less solid foundation due to never really picking up a textbook.
-Efficient as it is, I put less emphasis on anki because I’m lazy as fuck, resulting in somewhat of a bottleneck.
Advantages:
– Comfort. A lot of the test takers in my area were drained by the end of the first test and struggling with time management. As for me, I finished with close to an hour to spare, and honestly I wasn’t drained at all. I attribute this to the fact that I’ve gotten really comfortable with reading at high speeds for long periods. Fact of the matter is, most challenging native material is harder than anything on the N1.
– If you spend an absurd amount of time with native media, you will absolutely develop strong comprehension skills. This should be obvious considering the amount of time invested, and I think my score backs this up.
– Most importantly, it’s fun! Once I got past the initial hurdle that I mentioned earlier, I never once thought about giving up. I struggled a lot with advanced material, but the were some of the best experiences of my life. I don’t believe I could’ve invested so much into something I wasn’t actively passionate about.
Feel free to ask any questions.
Tl;dr – I read a shit ton and got a really good score on the N1 in <2.5 years.