Is N1 doable in 7 months?

14 comments

1. Doable if you read novels or visual novels or smth similar for like 6+ hrs every day with listening making up a good portion of your time. N1 from your level is speedrun territory

2. Unless you have no job, no studies, are able to dedicate 8+ hours a day to japanese alone, this is highly unrealistic.

   And even if you had that time you’d most likely burn yourself out at that pace and end up giving up on the language entirely after 2 weeks.

   Here’s my advice, don’t focus in “how long do i need to achieve N1”. Start learning evaluate your limits, try to get realistic goals.

   The amount of time you can dedicate a day to japanese will vary over time too. In the early days it’s complicated to do long hours, but when you understand more you will be able to spend more time with more ease

3. It has been shown to be possible to do, via this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/sedr0m/how_i_got_180180_on_n1_in_85_months/), which as far as I’m aware is the fastest 0 to N1 journey ever accomplished. If you improve at a similar pace, you could accomplish the same feat around the same time. There was considerable skepticism that he actually did this, but having done something similar (although not half as dedicated time-wise) over a time-span of two years, I believe his story completely. However, it is worth noting that he dedicated an average of 6.5 hours every day to reading VNs and listening. Before committing to this, seriously consider whether you can dedicate that amount of time.

4. More like 2 years would be advisable

5. The level you are at right now is not even N3. Mind that jumps between N-Levels are not linear but rather exponential. I took N2 after studying Japanese for 4 years of which I lived over 1 year in Japan and barely passed it. I had good control over ~1200 kanji and a pretty large vocabulary and grammar base. The tests can be really tricky. Listening is actually the easiest, but the essay section can be super tough as you must read the essay, understand exactly the details which appear in the questions and then hope you understand the questions as well. If not, congratulations – you just burned a couple of minutes without generating points!

6. If you have a life outside of learning japanese then no.

   I think if you are really good at learning languages and have a part time job it would still take around 1 or 2 years

7. Is your purpose to learn Japanese or to pass JLPT?

8. I’m here aiming to do N5 in the same period and you’re already going for N1 xD some of you people are crazy. Relax and enjoy your learning experience with less stress!

9. I passed N2 studying 2.5 years, never took any other exam. I think N1 is doable in a year but I don’t see the point. I studied maybe an average of 2 hours a day with some hefty breaks between and focused barely on the N2 itself, but speaking/listening.
   My advice is…. Start reading novels after you get your vocab up a bit from shows. tons of them… start with simpler books around 6th grade (this is still way too hard where you’re at) once you start reading if you read 3-4 hours a day, do flash cards, and study n2/1 grammar, a bit you might have a shot. You also need to listen a lot.

   I’d go for N2, nail down the grammar, (there’s only like 100 points) get the 800 most used N2 kanji and listen/read 2-3 hours a day, grammar/kanji 1 hour a day. If you dedicate 4 hours a day, you have a shot.
   It will still likely be hard. 6-8 hours a day… you’d probably have no problem, that’d be 6 hours x210days which is 1260 hours. I passed with about 900-1000hours which is about 2.5 hours a day over a year (no break) with pretty much anime/YouTube. The internet claims you need around 1500 hours but I don’t buy that, I think that’s bc they think of it as levels for studying.
   Big point is don’t give a fuck about anything besides understanding content for the next 5 months. If you study for “n3” using a textbook book all of that time could have been spent studying REAL Japanese (novels, Netflix,YouTube) which will have so much N2 grammar and kanji RIGHT AWAY because a lot is common. Then, the last month or two mostly study the specifics of the N2 problems/practice exams

10. Yes, it’s possible. Albeit, you’d have to dedicate a lot of hours per day to do it. Just read a lot of native material, and grab something like a reference book like shin kanzen master.

11. Maybe.

    If you quit thinking about it and start already.

    The more time you spend not learning, the less likely your success. N1 in 7 months means highest levels of dedications. Humans can achieve impossible seeming feats, we just need some good motivation and carry through with this.

    So switch to your learning, be as efficient as possible, try to avoid Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Gaming e.g. except for maybe immersion purpose and be on your way.

    Best of luck! 🙂

12. May I ask why would you even try to do this? Even if you are a genius this would take a lot of free time and dedication and chances are you will burnout or keep forgetting things. You say this is a fun Journey but if this is your goal you are risking to ruin it.

13. Is this like a sick joke how did you get a vocabulary of 2100 in two months!?

14. Take N3 at that time. Trust me.