Hi, i started learning japanese 2 months ago and i am at 1300 kanjis (ill finish the remaining kanji in 1 month) and recently finished genki 1 and im starting genki 2. Then ill go with an intermediate approach to japanese or whatever it is called (its like genki 3).
My question is, will that + inmersion be enough for N3 ? I want to take it this december, but i need to know if its possible and what you guys recommend.
Using ANKI Srs for kanji and sentences and attending classes too.
Thanks !

I like your attitude. I'm all for tough goals, and this is certainly a tough goal.

Will you pass? Maybe, maybe not. What's the worst that happens? You don't pass N3, but you get a sense of where your Japanese is after 7 months of hard study. If you get anywhere near passing, you'll have cause to be proud of what you've achieved.

I went for N2 last year after only starting in April and having taken 10 years off of Japanese study. I wound up 17 points shy of passing. Going back in December for round 2 with another year of study under my belt. Just keep plugging away. The more you study, the easier it gets.

Two caveats (updated from one):

(1) You won't have "finished" the 常用漢字 when you're through RTK. You'll have stories that allow you to produce the characters from keywords, which is a good start. You still need to learn on and kun readings, and the various shades of meaning that kanji take in context.

(2) Ditch immersion in favor of actual studying. Listening to Japanese when it sounds like gibberish doesn't do much in the long run. I personally recommend cramming vocab. For N3, I believe that means around 2,000-3,000 known words, but realistically, you'll ultimately need to know 10,000+ to listen to daily conversations and read books. Most folks use Anki to cram vocab; I prefer Skritter, as it incorporates a writing component.

Best of luck.

Yeah i´ll do my best to get as much grammar as possible, and i will just learn the readings the AJATT way, with SRS sentences rather than remembering them the boring way.
And i can probably get to that 2000-3000 mark by december, considering ill have more time to study vocabulary once i finish RTK.
Thanks

In the short term, grammar will probably be the "hardest" aspect, as even if you "get" a lot of it, it will probably take your brain a while to really get used to it. You could find out which structures/grammar points are covered in the N3 and systematically aim to study and review them, all the while of course hungering through vocabulary.

In terms of both of these aspects, something premade as the Core6k decks may be your best bet for relatively simple structures and commonly used words. Not sure exactly what sort of vocabulary is expected at the N3 level, but I may be safe to assume it is rather non-specific and general language, oft which is found within the Core series Anki decks.

Also, keep in mind that the N tests aren't just about Japanese: you may also have to "study how to study" for these tests, as with many exams, some of the difficulty comes not from the subject matter being tested, but the way in which the exam questions are structured and how they expect you to answer. You can find dummy tests online, which I suggest you do a few of those, just to get used to the formatting.


Good luck. Try not to take it too seriously.

Yeah maybe its too much, i mean i think i can do it but it will just be a bit boring to study to pass a test. The only reason im doing it is because i get to do an exchange for 1 month if i pass, but maybe i can do it next year ...
I'll just continue studying and decide whether i take it or not in a month or so.

thanks

ioalusss Wrote:Yeah maybe its too much, i mean i think i can do it but it will just be a bit boring to study to pass a test. The only reason im doing it is because i get to do an exchange for 1 month if i pass, but maybe i can do it next year ...
I'll just continue studying and decide whether i take it or not in a month or so.

thanks

Well... there's no harm in it either. For all you know you could take said test, do better than you think you would have, and find a new motivation to continue studying. Either way, regardless of what you do, knowledge is knowledge. Regardless of what purpose, you will be able to use the knowledge gained for many other things.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:(2) Ditch immersion in favor of actual studying. Listening to Japanese when it sounds like gibberish doesn't do much in the long run. I personally recommend cramming vocab. For N3, I believe that means around 2,000-3,000 known words, but realistically, you'll ultimately need to know 10,000+ to listen to daily conversations and read books. Most folks use Anki to cram vocab; I prefer Skritter, as it incorporates a writing component.

Best of luck.

I agree. It's fine to have background Japanese happening as much as possible, but it won't teach you much, unless you have perfect pitch for speaking patterns .
Have a gander at this shadowing method http://languagegeek.net/2009/04/22/shado...arguelles/ and this listening reading http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/L...ing_Method and take from those methods what makes sense to you and your resources. Actually, something like Assimil or the Shadowing book from White Rabbit Press or some of the Buonaparte audio lesson resources might be useful to prepare for the artificial way the voice actors speak on the recordings for the listening part of the test.
Get your reading up and practice skimming and testing your comprehension, as you might be asked to answer questions based on a reading passage. Have fun!

After all, I´m taking JLPT 3 this december.
After a little less than 4 months of study i scored 90 % in a JLPT 4 test, and my teacher told me to go directly to JLPT 3. I still have like 4 more months to study and i think I will reach the level required...
Anyone else preparing/prepared for JLPT 3 and has tips to share ??

[Zgarbas]

Erm, I'm sure you've already looked this up but it's best to check. You are aware that JLPT 3 is now N4, not N3, right? Careful not to sign up for the wrong one (Sorry if it seems redundant, but quite a few people are confused by the change)

Practice with past tests. Not for the test itself, but to work on your timing and (most importantly) attention span. You might find yourself fatigued during the listening section, which might have a poor tape-recorder, so try practicing listening under unideal conditions (listen with speakers instead of headphones). When it comes to the lower levels being used to the test-format and to japanese in itself is the deciding factor. If you scored so high on an N5 past test, you should be fine.

Yes, I'm aware that of that. I'm not taking N5 neither N4. The one I'll be taking is N3. And I scored 90 % in N4. I hope this clears things out
And about your advice, I was planning to do some tests to learn the vocabulary that appears more often, and then just continue with my anki and immersion normally.

It sounds like you have a really good plan, and I so no reason why you won't succeed other than maybe the test in December being more difficult than it should be. Sometimes the difficulty can vary a bit from test to test, but the funky grading system is trying to sort that out a bit.

You should look into doing drill books for the test in order to acclimate yourself. A lot of people have had good luck with the そうまとめ and Kanzen Master series. Those drill books will prep you a bit for the format and style of test questions.

The one major problem I think you might run into even with all your good study habits, though, is listening. Do you live in Japan? No matter how much practice or study we do as students there are certain things that just take time and exposure to sink in. You seem to be aware of that based on what you've said about doing audio immersion, but I just thought I'd remind you.

As well, even if you do actually have good listening skills for your level, it's still possible to run into more mundane issues of vocabulary and unnatural test-style conversations. So if you're short on money or something and really can only get one drill book for the December test, I would recommend it be a listening drill book.

Yeah, 聴解 looks like the scariest part, but i guess I'm working my best to at least get by. I'm actually listening japanese all day with my ipod, basically doramas and maybe an anime from time to time, and I'm noticing progress.
I'll check those books you mentioned later, thanks for the advice.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:(1) You won't have "finished" the 常用漢字 when you're through RTK. You'll have stories that allow you to produce the characters from keywords, which is a good start. You still need to learn on and kun readings, and the various shades of meaning that kanji take in context.

This is something I've been wondering for a while now... Since I'm studying kanji in context (sentences), does it matter at all if I'm aware of whether I'm learning on or kun? I assume it does not matter, but I could be wrong.

[Zgarbas]

It matters sometimes, but it's nothing you can't do without. By "sometimes" I mean it would give you hints regarding which reading is used in compounds, but it's nothing that you can't just pick up from context in time.

Zgarbas Wrote:It matters sometimes, but it's nothing you can't do without. By "sometimes" I mean it would give you hints regarding which reading is used in compounds, but it's nothing that you can't just pick up from context in time.

I thought so, but I just wanted to double check. Thanks!

Updating: I took the test yesterday, and Im quite possitive that I passed. Still have to wait for the results, but anyway, Im really really happy with my progress.
What I proved is that going from 0 japanese to N3 in 7 months is an ACHIEVABLE GOAL. Btw, thanks for the tips, some were very useful.

ioalusss Wrote:Updating: I took the test yesterday, and Im quite possitive that I passed. Still have to wait for the results, but anyway, Im really really happy with my progress.
What I proved is that going from 0 japanese to N3 in 7 months is an ACHIEVABLE GOAL. Btw, thanks for the tips, some were very useful.

May I ask what you did to get that far? I feel like I'm stuck at N4 since March and I can't get anywhere or use what I've learned. @@

I'm pretty impressed by this. Were you studying full time? Did you have a job or take other courses at the same time? And did you have a background in a related language like Chinese or Korean? Be sure to post when we get our results months from now... I took the test myself after almost 3 years studying on my own. I'm not very disciplined at studying though and mostly just cram vocabulary either from core or that I get from anime scripts. I don't do the textbooks that probably help tons.

Well i did stick to plan this months, which was
1- Learn Hiragana and Katakana
2- do rtk (2.5 months), download an anki deck for it and review it every day
3- work with textbooks, in this order Genki I, Genki II, An integrated approach to intermediate japanese (basically Genki III). I started Genki I around the same time as i picked up RTK, and each book took like 1.5 months aprox
4- Add sentences to Anki from this books, like 400 sentences from each, always adding new grammar or a new word/s. Of course review the cards everyday.
5- Watch doramas and anime, without subtitles even though i didnt understand anything. Eventually i started to understand more and more.
6- Put the audio files of every content of japanese that i watched to my ipod and just let it play all day. Literally, all day.
7- Once i finished textbooks i started to read some mangas and started to use a japanese-japanese dictionary for Anki (around the 1200 card mark). This was hard. Really hard. Eventually i got used to it.
8- Another big source of sentences and words for me is the yahoo online dictionary, just type a words and you have a lot of sample sentences. Really useful.

And, thats it, by the time of the exam i had apart from the RTK cards (around 2k) a bit less than 2500 cards of grammar and vocabulary.
My average study time per day was 4 hours.
I dont work, but Im a 3rd year student at my university, and also game a lot.

I do have more tips and all but for now Ill end it here... it got too long haha.
Ill post my results as soon as they come.
PD; i never studied another oriental language, but i studied English for a long time.