Hello, I’m fluent in spoken Japanese (born in Japan but moved away). my business/academic Japanese is lacking. I don’t know some of the grammar in JLPT 1. I’m trying to pass it soon.
I have a JLPT N2 and N1 book. Is it better to only study the N1 or will the N2 build up to N1 and share a bit of grammar with it? Thank you.
8 comments
N1 study material will expect you know N2 grammar and sentence patterns and won’t re-teach them
So the material is inclusive but the practice and educational material does not go back to force the issue on N2 points
Hello fluent in spoken Japanese. How’s your reading?
Listening should be easy for you if you speak it with your family and can watch the news or listen to talk radio with ease.
Reading may be hard if you’re up on your kanji and what not. I know a few Japanese-Americans who’ve moved to the states and didn’t keep up with kanji. While their speaking and listening are great, they can’t read more than a picture book.
To me, N2 reading had more business application – emails and memos were a part of it. Straight forward but some keigo knowledge was necessary.
N1 is a bit more esoteric. Think opinion pieces and academic thesises. You’ll need to pick up on what the authors might be saying while the don’t outright state it.
A lot of the grammar for N2 and N1 overlaps, at least for the expressions that show up within passages in the reading section. For the actual grammar section where you circle answers, both of them have a lot of keigo related questions, so you might want to review there as well. Good luck!
No, it doesn’t train you on speaking and writing at the level normal adults with a job are expected to be at.
I’d say just read lots and go over n1 grammar, which reading helps a lot with
I think you should study business Japanese separately. JLPT N1 is a good general start but it doesn’t cover business specific language or complicated topics. Imo if you need to do that in real life you want to immerse similiar material articles/reports/youtube 解説、etc.
If you’re already fluent in (spoken) Japanese honestly I recommend you to:
1) Study kanji like native speakers do, you can cram all joyo kanji relatively easily by doing 10 or so kanji a day in 6-7 months using [this anki deck](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1833474130). It’s what I did and I’m not a native speaker so I’m sure you’ll have even less trouble
2) Just read a lot. Start with stuff with things with furigana if you have trouble with kanji. You already know the words so you should have no trouble. Play a lot of VNs/games with voice acting, read a lot of manga with furigana (most are for younger teenagers but there’s a few manga for adults with furigana too that use a lot of trickier words if you’re worried about reading kid stuff [which you shouldn’t be anyway](https://morg.systems/Optimal-Reading-Immersion—Narrow-Reading))
Then honestly [just keep reading and reading and reading](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL1KoUxJ98M). You already have a good understanding of (spoken) Japanese and honestly I don’t think you should be wasting time on JLPT prepping material for Japanese learners. It’s mostly a waste of time. If you want to pass the N1 just read a lot. Read things you enjoy that interest you. Maybe spend some time reading news articles if you’re worried about news language, but evidence shows time and time again that people that just read a lot of enjoyable things (books, visual novels, manga, etc) have no problem passing the N1 even without touching N1 prep textbooks.