I feel like 10,000 is no where near enough. I read a lot and I’ve been studying Japanese for a very long time now using the i+1 method. I have over 12,000 i+1 sentence cards at around 92% retention rate on my mature cards. I don’t count verb inflections in my vocabulary number.
So give and take, I have a passive vocabulary at around 10-11k. All of my vocabulary has come from kanzen master N3-N1 books, manga, light novels, video games, etc.
Yet…. I’m literally running into so many unknown words in the N1 reading section and it’s absolutely ruining my focus and motivation. Like how many words do I need to know to barely run into unknowns? 15,000? 17,500? 20,000? I don’t even know over 15k words in English probably.
“Use context” I do, but whenever I do so and add on top of that is a long and boring sentence I don’t want to read, I end up taking too long or just get completely out of it and lose focus 😞
I’m sorry for the rant. But really. Isn’t the “you need to know around 10,000 words for the N1” overly underestimated?
9 comments
What’s the i+1 method?
Can you post some of the sentences or some of the words that you dont know?
I don’t think I had 10k known words when passing N1. If you want to ace the test then maybe you want to push well past that but..
I sentence mined approx 5-10 cards a day, while reading the first two harry potter books and listened to the audio books of all the books. It took me from around N3 to passing N1 in about a year.
Also studied at a university at the time but, I think it was the reading/listening that did 70% of the work for me.
I don’t think I had 10k known words when passing N1. If you want to ace the test then maybe you want to push well past that but..
In Anki at that time I had around 3k kanji learned and somewhere between 3-5k sentence cards.
I sentence mined approx 5-10 cards a day, while reading the first two harry potter books and listened to the audio books of all the books. It took me from around N3 to passing N1 in about a year.
Also studied at a university at the time but, I think it was the reading/listening that did 70% of the work for me.
Read something you want to read, and listen to things you want to understand. Try to be okay with not understanding things. You will get used to it, and pick up on words and patterns even though you don’t realize it, and when you read the next book, everything will be easier to understand.
I passed N1 like 3 years ago, still using japanese almost every day and I still come across a lot of words I don’t understand, and I think that’s ok.
If I had to guess (as I don’t study specifically for the JLPT), it probably also has to do with the areas in which your vocab is relevant. Like, if someone put in the hours to learn enough vocab to deal with fantasy LNs as if it were written in their native language, and yet they still can’t keep up with the news just because their fantasy literature vocab isn’t relevant, then the numbers don’t matter as much, or at least don’t “add up” in a way, so to speak.
I probably knew around 10,000 when I passed N1, maybe a tiny bit more. I think my vocab is around 15,000 now, and I passed a few years ago.
If you’re a native English speaker, you probably do now more than 15,000 words! I’m in my early thirties and last time I tested myself it estimated I knew 28,000 or something (age is relevant, even natives learn a certain number of new words each year on average, education will also have an influence). I think there was a study that found average was 20,000 to 30,000.
I don’t really know what advice I can give, since it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the issue is. Perhaps more focus on JLPT vocab? You mention you know about 10,000, but that that number includes words from video games, light novels, and manga. The words you get from those sources aren’t going to be the kind of words on the JLPT. The JLPT is more business/adult life orientated, so maybe try to focus on news articles rather than pop culture (EDIT: if you care about passing the test. If not, keep on keeping on with how you’re doing it)?
I heard such idea that modern N1 is actually 15k words. 10k number was circulating for previous JLPT format (until 2009), but modern Kanzen series teaches 15k words. Anyway, I’ve tested several novels and 15k vocabulary gives around 98% coverage. It’s enough to understand unknown words from context, but still around 5-6 on every paper book’s page. Overall vocabulary looks closer to 30-40k and more if we dig into something very specific.
From the front of my Shin Kanzen Master vocabulary book (published in 2011):
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> 新しい「日本語能力試験」では、語彙に関して、まず、以下の3点が、今までの試験と大きく変わりました。
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> 1. 試験の出題範囲となる語が約10,000語から約15,000語に増えた。
> * どの語が試験に出題されるかを示す語彙リストがすべて非公開となった。
> * 日本語を学ぶ人が、どのような状況（目標言語使用領域）で、何のために(課題）、日本語を使うかという観点から、試験に出題される語彙の選び直しが行われた。
The official vocabulary list (words that can and will appear on the exam) are not disclosed to the public, there are 15,000 covered on the N1 exam, and the official vocab list was determined by the target language use domains and the purpose/tasks that people learning Japanese are expected to carry out.
I’m not sure N1 expects you to fully understand every sentence of the reading sections. I definitely didn’t, and I was able to pass just fine. It’s more about understanding the key points of each passage, and if you try to scrutinize every sentence to figure out what it means, you’ll very quickly run out of time. Of course, you’ll have a much *easier* time if you know what every single word in the passage means, but it’s not strictly necessary. If you come across a part you don’t understand, skip over it and move on to the parts of the passage you *do* understand. Or, if the part you don’t get seems to be crucial to answering a question, do your best to use the context surrounding it to take an educated guess. I think the “10000 words” is probably the recommended number for *passing* the test, not getting a perfect score. More vocab will definitely help, but it should still be possible to do it with the recommended amount.