Our community (TheMoeWay discord) regularly compiles JLPT results from our members and sister communities. We have a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aZng554OXZycCV52aOU2EqPPki8qDLI6XUr7UnWdHwA/edit#gid=545271476) spanning about 2 years of data across 70 members who have given detailed score breakdown, years of study, cumulative hours of study, distribution of study, and any tips/comments.
[Here’s a screenshot of what the spreadsheet looks like](https://i.imgur.com/V5QwS1Q.png).
Some observations:
– It takes most immersion-based learners anywhere between 1.5-5 years and 1500-3500 cumulative hours to pass the JLPT N1.
– High scorers tend to be reading heavy, but there are also a lot of high scorers who are listening heavy. There’s a lot debate over what type of immersion is better but both are viable paths.
– Those who started with non-immersion based learning (e.g. classes) did extract benefits from their experience, requiring less immersion time to pass the JLPT.
Even if you don’t think you’re as talented [Jazzy](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/sedr0m/how_i_got_180180_on_n1_in_85_months/) (180/180 in 8.5 months) or [Doth ](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/l51r3d/my_500_day_journey_to_a_160180_n1_score_w_tips/) (160/180 in 500 days), I hope this spreadsheet helps shed some light on the japanese learning journey and convince those who are skeptical of immersion-based learning to consider adding more immersion into your Japanese study routine. It works! And it’s much more enjoyable than grinding textbooks for hundreds of hours.
For those curious on what an immersion-based approach would look like, I recommend reading [TheMoeWay’s guide](https://learnjapanese.moe/) or [Refold’s guide](https://refold.la/simplified). There’s even a [30 day quick start guide](https://learnjapanese.moe/routine/) on TMW. If you’re interested in joining our Discord community, you can join [here](https://learnjapanese.moe/join/). We have a [JLPT study group](https://discord.com/channels/617136488840429598/909236557595156500) as well as a bunch of other channels (help channels, book clubs, etc) to help you in your Japanese learning journey.
edit: updated screenshot to remove problematic cell content
18 comments
Insane !
>grug read book and beat off to smut
“You can’t learn Japanese with hentai bro”
“Grug read book and beat off to smut”
How many of these guys already knew a Asian language before Japanese?
Were they using comprehensible input or comprehensible input?
I feel obligated to repost former-mod /u/NukeMarine’s warning every time we get one of these monthly advertising posts:
>Seems to be a lot of /r/LearnJapanese posts recently linking to 4chan DJT based websites like “anacreondjt.gitlab.io”, “learnjapanese.moe”, “animecards.site”, “rentry.co”, etc. by relatively new (or with months/years of downtime). This post falls under that as well. User Premiere-anon is the most blatant at this though.
>I seriously doubt the LJ mods in the change up since my removal have opted to allow linking to websites that share copyrighted material or unsolicited spamming of personal (or proxy) websites with funding links. Likely, they’re just not noticing the pattern.
>The 4chan DJT guys are a different group than what JCJ usually deal with. The DJT group pushes the reading of sexual visual novels or light novels, and don’t care about moving to Japan as some assistant tape recorder/see and say. It is sort of a competition for them that they take seriously. There’s just a small group that now are using them to fund site linked patreon or fill a discord server to then push the patreon.
What/who is DJT?
I had a read about the 30 day quick start guide and I love it, but I am already begintermediate. Is there something like this on a bigger scale? Like a 1 year challenge or something?
>1488 hours since discovering nukige
Seems like a real nice… community
Grug does not fuck around
Notice that almost no one did 100% immersion approach. Majority of people used at least Anki and textbooks/mock tests were rather frequent too. I did purely immersion approach and can say that it doesn’t fit JLPT perfectly, or better to say it depends on what exactly you read and how well it covers JLPT vocabulary. If JLPT vocabulary appears in 10-100 times less often than other words, you will need more time.
Interesting data! We probably need to keep survivorship and selection biases in mind when interpreting it.
Holy shit I can’t believe this thread has been up for 4 hours without the “Ackshully what you’re referring to is input based learning. Immersion means going to japan instead of watching anime in your underpants.”
Curious at their respective ages
I would recommend people look at the whole chart rather than just the top outliers. It’s also a limited sample of mostly dedicated learners with survivorship bias. But anyways the point is immersion has worked for a lot of people, and collectively their advice is going to be closer to the mark than some random armchair theorists.
Seeing this kind of survey data-driven reports is always nice, and there’s plenty of evidence that “just reading” clearly works, even in the context of stuff like standardized exams. Having more and more points obviously helps. There’s unfortunately too many people who think to pass a language exam you need to study the language exam itself rather than just… learning the language. Plenty of very striking evidence even in academia among SLA research shows that reading **a lot** of books has a very clear direct correlation with language exam scores, and people who read a certain amount of hours seem to do as well as, if not better than, people who just study textbooks (at least past the beginner stage). Yet, too many people seem to not believe this, sadly.
I’d love to add my name to the list as well but (un?)fortunately I’m never planning to take the JLPT so… I’ll just keep reading.
The “extra notes” section got me laughing
“LMAO N1 is piss easy”
p i s s e a s y
Sounds about right. It took me 3 times to pass N2 and I was in Language School. My first two scores weren’t even close to passing. grinding grammar rules and vocabulary was tiresome. After the second failure, all I did was increase how much manga I read (most importantly the ones I wanted to read ) and how much music, podcasts , japanese tv shows & anime I consumed. Think it was around 3hrs a day on top of studying at language school.
> thread about people successfully having learned japanese
> /r/LearnJapanese mods: can’t be having that now *removed*