Dear all, I am studying for the N3 exam and I can’t really say if the situation is good or bad. I have two japanese exams lining up soon: one on 27/6 for the MEXT scholarship in Rome and the JLPT N3 on the 3/7 in London. By the former I mean something like this: https://www.studyinjapan.go.jp/ja/_mt/2021/06/2020_ke_ja.pdf .
I have realised I’m spending much of my days basically revising vocabulary on Torii. Because I had a very bad study plan until February/March I ended up having to study 30 words every day (60 cards, JP->EN and EN->JP) starting in late February to get to the 3k words landmark for the N3 exam. I have curbed down the rhythm but now I have to face ~300 reviews every day and I have personally burned out (also, I started suspecting I have ADHD which makes it very hard to focus for longer than 20 reviews in a row).
Besides, I realised that the annotated cards from Tanos do not overlap very well with other word lists (eg. 総まとめ、扉、新完全マスター), thus I am really questioning if I really am prepared for the exam. I have tried japanesetests4you and the vocabulary section felt brutal for me.
To make things worse, like many people here I have a full time job and lately it has become very demanding. I also ran out of days off for the whole summer.
Here are some stats:
– levelled up to 27 on Wanikani, then put it on hold months ago to focus on the JLPT. Studied some extra kanji outside of WK by JLPT tag. Which means, I know ~800 kanji.
– learnt the first 3.1k words on Core10k via Torii. Read up to ~60 episodes on Satori Reader and, aside from vocabulary, the grammar was quite straightforward.
– Completed 新完全マスターN3文法.
– Listened to a few postcasts (15/20 episodes of YuYuの日本語ポッドキャスト), anime (watched all of けいおん and just started 日常, plus some drama tv shows).
– I stuck to 2h of speaking conversation a week. I still feel like my speaking skills are terribly lagging behind – which could be an issue for the oral examination for MEXT but well, I didn’t manage to become friends with japanese people.
Here are my questions:
1. what do I miss? What should I focus on? Are those numbers “enough” to comfortably pass?
2. if I am applying for a PhD in a STEM subject does the score for the Japanese section in the MEXT paper matter that much? I’ll do my best but there’s no way I can do the advanced section. I heard showing an elementary level knowledge of the language is enough, but I am not sure. What are your thoughts?
PS: Yes my study habits were not great. I learnt this the hard way.
1 comment
Take some practice tests to see how you do. There are free ones on the official JLPT site. Ideally you want to deduct 20% from your score on the practice test (anticipating running out of time or making a bad guess). If you’re still passing, you’re good to go.