I am in my final year at university and I have three exams coming up:
* Speaking exam: 7-8 minutes presentation on a topic that we covered in our textbook this year, followed by 7-8 minutes of discussion on the topic (I need to make a presentation and a script for this)
* Listening exam: 1 hour, section 1 is news comprehension (news article), section 2 is dialogue comprehension (talking between two people), and section 3 is talk comprehension (as if someone is lecturing to a group of people)
* Written exam: 3 hours, section 1 is fill in the blank word, section 2 is write the correct reading for the kanji and vice versa, section 3 is English to Japanese translation and vice versa and the final section is a written composition task (600-700 words)
Because of the various components within each exam, I want to work on a lot of Japanese over the Easter break. I have five weeks off then I come back to university. My plan was to practice more for the written exam because it is 60% of my overall mark, whereas the listening and speaking are 20% each. I want to practice writing compositions for the writing exam (I need to spend about an hour and a half on the composition and I’m pretty slow right now), as well as translating from English to Japanese and vice versa. I recently did an exam and almost ran out of time because it took me so long.
However, based on the textbook that we have been using (manabou nihongo) I have to memorise 73 grammar points and 1812 vocabulary and god knows how many kanji.
I need to remain motivated for roughly ten weeks (my speaking exam is in the last week of April and I have the listening and written exam one day after each other in mid May).
Does this seem insurmountable? I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed right now. It probably also doesn’t help that I am putting pressure on myself to get a good grade so that I can get a good degree classification.
Any tips on how to maintain motivation during this period?
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by Stride101r