Hello everyone! I have the N2 and I’m studying to take the N1 of the JLPT but I’m a little scared because many people fail several times until they pass. I feel that the real exams are more difficult than the textbooks or the model exams offered by the official website.
What do you guys recommend me to pass the exam? What do the JLPT exercises tend to focus on? Are there any patterns or preferred topics? Also, are there any strategies to improve time?
Any advice is very welcome. I’m a little frustrated because I feel like I’m always walking the line between passing and failing. Thanks for reading me.
4 comments
It has been many years now but as I recall you had listening comp, reading comp, grammar, and vocab.
Listening comp is easy as hell if you’ve been in Japan for a while… if not I’ve heard people struggle. Don’t have advice on that one.
Reading comp I did very well with. My secret was I used to try and read the newspaper daily in Japan. Not that I’d be able to work my way through the whole thing, but at least a few articles. Wide range of vocabulary, comfort with some different kinds of writing about different topics.
Grammar is one of the easiest to study for because there are comparatively few grammar constructs, so I consider this one of the highest-return subjects for study and would recommend just going through a Kanzen Master/whatever book.
Vocabulary is the hardest because you just need to know a lot of words and characters. But there is a bit of a heuristic in that you can often guess kanji readings by their elements. A good JLPT prep book will give you some rules of thumb to follow for that. I just scraped by on this part though. Depending on how much time you have, obviously good old-fashioned vocab study will also help, but the number of words they could choose from is nearly limitless, so the return isn’t as good.
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I passed first time and there wasn’t a clear change in difficulty based on the practice tests available! In my case vocab did seem a lil harder than usual but they also adjust the scoring system to match the difficulty.
In the end overthinking this stuff won’t help, prepare for the worst and see how it goes 👍
Why don’t you try looking up old N1 tests online? If you do well on old tests from previous years then you’re gonna do great in your test.