Context: I am a self-learner for Japanese so I don’t attend any classes nor do i have access to any formal Japanese language teachers for guidance.
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I’m sitting for the N4 this December and I have just completed studying the N5. One thing i’m struggling to understand is how do you go around memorizing the hundreds and even thousands of vocab words? I’ve tried looking up various “Vocab lists” but all of them give a different number of words and i’m worried if i might miss something in the exam if the word was not covered in the list (and i could not have studied on it)
Even after having familiarized myself with the vocab list for N5, i still find new words in my N5 practice exams! So, feeling hopeless I’m turning to the senseis of reddit. How do you learn as much vocab as you can without feeling like you are learning too much or if you are missing out on any important words?
Please feel free to share with me your favorite resources on JLPT learning too 🙂 TQIA!
3 comments
I wouldn’t recommend doing the N4 test if you’re struggling to remember the vocab but I do recommend is that you connect the vocab words with emotion or even use anki to remember. I personally like learning SOME vocab through music though and you could even read to learn new vocabulary
I don’t think there is an official list. Best thing I could think to do it just keep adding the words you seem on practice tests to an Anki deck.
You won’t find a “perfect vocab list” that you are looking for because they don’t publish those kinds of things and share less information now then in the past. So the materials you find may be good but are still estimates by the creators about the test materials.
I agree and recommend not doing the N4 test. The N4 test isn’t going to say qualify you for any job, it’s just going to take time, money, and maybe travel to just say whether you can pass the N4 level which you already know the answer to right now.
To improve to *get to N4 level* all you need is to continue study, reading, grammar, etc. as normal because the vocabulary that is on the N4 are things that will be covered in the normal Japanese that people will learn not for a specific test, but for just normal use.