I’m hoping to take the JLPT N1 in December and I’m wondering if my pace/plan is realistic for my skill level.
First some background on my timeline, I just recently graduated university so I have some time before I start work in September. I’ll be relatively busy from mid July to the end of August with travel plans but until then I’m pretty much completely free so I have around 30-40 days to prep heavily before starting my job in September and moving to lighter prep before the test.
Some idea about my skill level:
* From a “self-assesssed” (笑) position, I think I am around N2, and would probably pass it handily with just a minimal amount of study. I was going to do the N2 last year, but it was cancelled, and I have some time this year so I thought I would aim high and go for the N1 with some grinding.
* I attended and passed the highest level Japanese courses offered at my University with an A- (80/100) average about 2 years ago. The materials used were around a high N3/low N2 level, and as part of the course we had to write a short informative essay on climate change, and translate a short story into English and do a presentation (for me it was Murakami Haruki’s かえるくん、東京を救う).
* Since my formal study, I have not been doing any studying outside of immersive learning (reading, watching anime). I can pick up around 95% of conversation in most slice-of-life anime and don’t watch with subtitles but for other genres with more 中二 or カタカナ語 I tend to keep them on.
* I’m currently reading 推しの子 and am finding that I need to do word (not 漢字 necessarily) lookups every 2 or 3 pages for complete comprehension. I can brush over the dialogue and get the meaning from the characters but I need to look up the word to know the reading. This is also pretty common with other materials that I read. Oftentimes I find that I know the word but not the 漢字 to write it. The frequent lookups probably have something to do with it, but this means my reading pace is slow. It takes me around 8 hours to finish one manga volume. If I skimmed over, it would probably be faster but for study purposes I am forcing myself to look up every word I can’t read.
* I can hold a casual conversation but it begins to breaks down when the conversation dives into more technical subjects.
* I also studied Classical Japanese formally in University. We did a lot of 品詞分解 with the assistance of a 古語辞典, and as part of coursework I provided a novel translation of a **very** short section of Arakida Rei’s 飛頭蛮 into English and Modern Japanese with the help of a 古語辞典.
* I also audited a Classical Chinese class where I used a combination of my own knowledge of Chinese (I’m a heritage Cantonese speaker but the class was held in Mandarin which I do not speak) and 書き下し to help understand passages and provide an English translation, but since I did not do any of the coursework I don’t know how useful this was.
Given my current skill level, this is my current plan:
* 1 lesson a day from 新完全マスター 文法 from now until mid July, up to the point where I finish the book.
* I have a period of about 20 days in August to speedrun through 新完全マスター 読解 before travelling again and returning home in September.
* After starting my job in September, I plan to do one lesson a day of 日本語総まとめN1 聴解 which will take 5 weeks.
* The alternative is I have around a week at the beginning of September. If I do 1 *chapter* a day, I will ‘complete’ the book in 5 days.
* From October until the test, do vocabulary Anki cards for 漢字 in combination with light immersive learning (reading).
I’m not sure how busy I’ll be I get started with my job but I won’t be able to dedicate whole days to studying around that point, so I’m delegating the lighter parts of test prep until after the summer.
4 comments
You sound like you have a decent amount of reading experience, but keep in mind that reading is only 33% of the actual exam. Reading helps with the language knowledge section, but it may not be sufficient (case and point: I just took an (untimed) N1 practice test and got 80% on reading and 30% on Language Knowledge lmao). Have you flipped through an N1 prep book? How much of the grammar would you say you already know? Do you think 1.5 months will be enough to learn all the new grammar?
The listening section is more an exercise in note taking and short term memory than actual auditory comprehension. I just recommend doing lots of practice tests.
I mean if you can understand 95% of actual Japanese and look up a word every 2-3 pages, you can probably pass N1 now with no study.
I’d take an N2 practice test or two just to make sure, but assuming that it’s easy for you, when I tried for N1:
Nihongo Somatome N1, kanji vocab and grammar for 8 weeks.
Somatome reading and listening for 6 weeks.
Kanzen master Kanji, N1 Speed Master grammar and listening, Hitsyo Pattern Listening, Drill and Mock test characters, vocab and grammar. I did some combination of these books leading up to the test.
I also used Japan Times’ JLPT Best (5-tests of questions and the 3 mock test books) series in the month leading up to the JLPT.
I would load vocabulary and grammar into my flashcard app and study that daily too.
If you have a good memory, the N1 grammar is doable to learn in a short period of time. (of course, if you already studied N3 and N2 grammar…)
Since seems like you already have a good knowledge of the basic meanings of 常用漢字 the biggest hardship I think will be vocabulary, since to pass JLPT N1 you will need to know about 10,000 words total.
You can check how many words you already know by doing a small test. Google “Japanese Vocab Test”, it should show you a site that gives you a rough estimate of how many words you already know in a relatively short time.
In order to get a better approximation of how many words you actually know, I recommend changing **”advanced test settings”**
・”Wikipedia (43000 words)” ⇒ “core 10k( 9400 words)”
・increase words in step 1 and 2 (the more the better, but test will take longer…)
Good luck