Hello!
I’m trying to prepare for JLPT N1 in December. I know N1 is a behemoth regarding the amount of nouns, compound verbs (by this I mean verbs made of two kanji or more, for example), etc. that are needed to pass.
I’m most worried about missing info, so I’d like some feedback on good resources to study for N1.
What channels, podcasts, series, anime, etc. would you recommend to study for the listening part?
What type of texts, manga, etc would you recommend to study for the reading part?
What type of apps, training techniques, etc. would you recommend to maximize kanji and word learning?
What type of dictionaries, web dictionaries, etc. would you recommend to look up words?
Finally, what books would you recommend to specifically study JLPT N1 grammar and reading? Sou Matome? Shin Kanzen Master?
I have taken N5 and N3 in the past, but I know N1 is on a whole other level, so that’s why I’m asking for advice.
Sorry for all the questions and thank you for your time!
12 comments
>What type of texts, manga, etc would you recommend to study for the reading part?
Personal essays. Read 天声人語 online every day, plus get several books of personal essays by a number of different authors.
For me, it was Shin Kanzen Master plus a ton of reading.
If you are specifically looking to prepare for the exam then you should look in to the exam prep books. I haven’t used Shin Kanzen Master for N1, but they have been the highest quality exam prep books I’ve found for the other levels. I do like the actual set up of the Sou Matome books more with their study time lines, but that’s sort of personal preference.
Read. A lot. Novels, news, anything really.
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I recommend reading news and essays and learning using nihongonomori.com + bunpro
I found Shin Kanzen N1 Reading to be really useful.
The book assumed you can read everything in it and doesn’t teach vocab or grammar (It does point out some rare words or idioms but nothing you’d consider standard)
Instead, it’s all about strategies for isolating the important points in different types of questions as fast as possible.
Based off the N1 practice tests I’ve taken (still preparing for the exam myself), there isn’t a whole lot of fiction, and definitely not genre fiction. I think therefore the very common “read books” advice can be misleading. Reading fantasy novels won’t necessarily prepare you for the dense social critiques in the N1. Reading novels is of course good for building your overall reading/Japanese skills, but not necessarily the best prep for this exam. I think using some of the personal essay resources that others suggested is the best bet for the reading section!
日本語の森, 三本塾, and 出口日語on YouTube are good for covering grammar.
You should definitely read two articles in the Yomiurishibun 読売新聞 everyday. They have an internet site as well. If you do this and write down all the words and phrases that you don’t understand you will pass with flying colors! Best of luck to you!!
It sounds silly, but any time you go to Google something try looking for it in Japanese first – you’ll get lots of chiebukuro threads, Wikipedia articles, and blog posts about topics you’re interested in written in natural Japanese. I found this way easier than trying to specifically locate the Platonic ideal essays that would serve as the perfect reading materials for the test.
Some of the readings for N1 do tend to go for a slightly more literary nonfiction style, but I felt that the Shin Kanzen grammar book covered the types of particles that are specific to that type of writing fairly well.
I watch live news on youtube
For practice with news:
[https://easyjapanese.net/](https://easyjapanese.net/)
I like the app version better though:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.eup.jpnews&hl=en&gl=US](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.eup.jpnews&hl=en&gl=US)