JLPT Anxiety and Second Guessing

5 comments

1. What’s the rush for? There will always be jobs available. Have you visited Japan? I’d prioritise making sure getting a job there is the right choice for you by doing so first, personally.

   These aren’t answers to your questions but are more important imo. In terms of gauging your level, there are online past papers to see this.

   Though I think that this mindset is really just going to limit you. Ironically just chilling out and consuming Japanese media whilst doing some study in your free time on grammar structure is probably going to get you the higher level without meaning to.

2. You say you’ve learned Japanese at university – not sure what kind of course that was? Your teacher should be able to give you an idea of more or less what level your course would have taken you to. Eg I studied Japanese as part of my undergraduate degree, and I knew going in that it was meant to take me more or less to N2 level. So I sat, and passed, N2 halfway through my final year, with minimal N2 specific studying, other than of course the general Japanese lessons I was doing every week anyway (though granted, that was just 6 months after returning from my year abroad in Japan). Of course, it also depends how long ago university was for you – in my case, about 10 years ago, and I don’t feel like I’m N2 anymore…..

3. I got some good advice from a friend of mine when i asked her how to learn a new language. She is french but she spent a long time in Italy and also learned English from nannies as a child. I asked “how do i learn all of this and understand it?” And she just said, “lap it up”
   Just lap it up

4. Out of curiosity, what job prospects are you thinking N2 will open up over N3?

5. If you can’t pass N2 you are not ready to work in a Japanese environment. That is fine, and there’s plenty of jobs these days for non-J speakers, but if you want to do that you should go for N2. Fuck N3.