I tried to sign up to December's N2 exam to provide me with the incentive and pressure to make myself study but unfortunately you cannot sign up until August.

Getting to the point, how should I aim to prepare for this exam?

I feel I have the 1000 Kanji part covered so that is not an issue.

What scares me is the 6000 required vocab. At the moment, I know around 3000. A quick bit of maths tells me I need to learn around 18 new words every day until the day of the exam. Is this sustainable over 5/6 months?

Also I have around 3 hours a day I can allocate to Japanese (active and/or passive study). Is this sufficient?

Basically how should I be allocating my time to pass this exam? Seems there is a range of ways to attack it but not sure how to allocate my 3 hours daily?

[Zgarbas]

Make sure those 3 hours are mostly active and yes, it should be enough. Just focus on your weak points without neglecting to maintain your strong ones (kanji). Download the N2 sample from the jlpt website and some previous level 2 exams, but keep in mind that they are somewhat easier than the exam itself...but try to take them anyway because knowing the JLPT format is a great advantage. Practice your listening, attention span, etc. I had 10k words in anki when I took the N2 exam, but I didn't score high in 語彙 due to rush (I rushed so as to focus on 読解, which wasn't my strong point); someone with not as much vocab but more work on the details would have definitely scored higher. Don't neglect your grammar. Nor your listening. Practice taking notes while listening, as note-taking skills were decisive in the listening section.

But for the most part, yes, 3 hours/day should suffice . Really, almost anything you'd do for 3 hours/day would show good results by December.

Zgarbas Wrote:But for the most part, yes, 3 hours/day should suffice . Really, almost anything you'd do for 3 hours/day would show good results by December.

I'm not sure 3h/day is enough when aiming for N2 from OPs situation.

First of all, those magical 6000 vocab thing is completely untrue, you'd still find a lot of unknown words even if you're at 9000. Same thing goes for kanji. But the best thing is that's the easiest part

Now you're into grammar and general language knowledge of what's wrong or not with a particular grammar/sentence and why. That takes a lot of dedicated grammar study and experience. It's also harder to measure progress (compared to SRS vocab study).

Listening part is difficult too, it's one thing to cram thousands of vocab for the sole purpose of knowing which kanji it uses and what it means but its a completely different beast when you have to recognize that vocab instantly to understand a conversation exercise.

Now we're onto the really difficult thing and that's reading section. If you don't believe me, please oh please do this simple test: take some previous N2 exam, get a stopwatch and just go through the reading section with no brakes, pauses or dictionaries.
By the time you're done you would have realized what kind of task are we talking about here. We're not even testing if the answers are correct or put pressure and fatigue that will come at the real exam.

To sum up, I'm very skeptical N2 is the right goal for OP. With a lot of dedication N3 should be doable but still difficult enough. Anything higher and it could prove to be a disaster with severe hit to ones motivation.

thurd Wrote:Now we're onto the really difficult thing and that's reading section. If you don't believe me, please oh please do this simple test: take some previous N2 exam, get a stopwatch and just go through the reading section with no brakes, pauses or dictionaries.
By the time you're done you would have realized what kind of task are we talking about here. We're not even testing if the answers are correct or put pressure and fatigue that will come at the real exam.

Agreed 200%. The N2 読解 is a bitch. I went into N2 thinking it would be the "easiest" section (because I read every day), and failed this part miserably. When you're reading on your own, you have all the time in the world to deduce meanings, glean words from context, etc. Doing this under time pressure is a different beast altogether.

If you go for either N3 or N2, I highly suggest getting some study books to familiarize yourself with the exam format, and to learn some tips for answering questions quickly. 真完全マスター is great for this.

Thank you for your replies.

I am under no illusions as to the difficulty of N2 however N3 is simply not an option for me. 90% of the reason why I want to take N2 as I intend to use that 'pressure' of a difficult task to make me study. Otherwise I find it hard to really motivate myself. Therefore, pass or fail I am no bothered but in each case I will likely see a big improvement in my Japanese.

I had a look at the reading section, and yes, at the moment, I have absolutely no idea. Other than the obvious of reading lots of high grade native material, does anyone have a secret way to improve their reading ability?

saborio Wrote:Other than the obvious of reading lots of high grade native material, does anyone have a secret way to improve their reading ability?

One of my professors in college said this about the N1-- "The JLPT N1 doesn't ask you how many words you know or if you can readily explain grammar point A or kanji B. Of course all that is important, but what it does is it shows you natural Japanese and says, "Have you seen this enough times for it to make sense? Are these patterns burned into your brain as they would be in the brains of Japanese middle school kids?"" -- I've never taken the N2 but I assume it's close enough for this to apply and not be too extreme.

The only "secret" I can think of is to be constantly aware of what's going on in the language and of what you don't know so that you can better make connections and increase your overall understanding. With 3 hours per day I would allot most of that to reading and listening to "real" Japanese with a little time for reviewing using flash cards or Anki or whatever you use and a little time for studying a book or two on grammar.

That's how I passed the N1 and went on learning Japanese, anyhow. What I did was probably 85% reading and listening to the real deal, 5% learning new grammar (read: putting things into anki from textbooks/one JLPT N1 grammar guide) and 10% adding new cards and reviewing old cards in Anki.

I would say, that if you live in Japan, and spend a significant portion of your day anyway either listening to, or participating in, Japanese conversations, then don't spend much time practising the listening section of the N2 test.

saborio Wrote:Thank you for your replies.

I am under no illusions as to the difficulty of N2 however N3 is simply not an option for me. 90% of the reason why I want to take N2 as I intend to use that 'pressure' of a difficult task to make me study. Otherwise I find it hard to really motivate myself. Therefore, pass or fail I am no bothered but in each case I will likely see a big improvement in my Japanese.

I had a look at the reading section, and yes, at the moment, I have absolutely no idea. Other than the obvious of reading lots of high grade native material, does anyone have a secret way to improve their reading ability?

I think it's fine to shoot for N2. Like you say, it's a great forcing function.

No secret tricks. Read a lot. SRS a lot. Read the 真完全マスター N2 books (which are in Japanese) for some reading tips and tricks specific to the JLPT.

I'm reading a lot in Japanese (news, novels) and I still find the reading section of the JLPT a pain in the ass. Sometimes the answers presented are very vague. I think I suck at multiple-choice in general.

I would not say that "reading a lot and fast" is the key; I would rather say that getting used to the testing format is far more important, stupid as it sounds.. I'm reading novels in Japanese and understand what's going on, I get the character traits of the figures straight and so on.

I'm just very glad I am having a lot of 実戦練習 test sheets floating around now with answers (important). I will also test myself how I work on time (which I hate doing). I feel I will be totally depressed after taking the test on the 7th of July lol

Not to talk about the listening section. I still struggle immensely with that.
So yeah, kind of a "I won't pass" attitude before even taking the test-.-

[Zgarbas]

... I had little to no exposure to written native material when I took the N2 and the reading section was Ok. I scored little more than half, which is not that impressive, but still a pass. And I finished the entire section 20 mins early =/. And had gone from N4 to N2 in a year. Only encountered 1 unknown word in the entire written section (typically, that one was a question for 語彙）。Of course, I made mistakes related to rushing, occasionally not getting the point, those damn star questions and nuance-understanding issues, but still.

It is totally doable.

What I get from reading this thread: The difference between language learners is incredible and makes any direct advice next to impossible. Sharing experiences, however, is probably a good idea. 8)

I had barely any JLPT study (one practice test. one book on N1 grammar) in anki one month before the test. My main study had nothing to do with the JLPT and focused just on reading books and news and talking to people- making connections as I went.. and I was just fine. I also had 8 novels, who knows how many newspapers, and hours upon hours of listening (drama/anime/conversation).

.. but nothing I could call "JLPT study."

I believed, and still believe, the advice my professor gave concerning the N1 as I stated in my previous post. ><


Anyway- as far as the original poster is concerned- if you can find a method that works for you quick and get on it I don't see any reason why N2 should be impossible.

Those of you who have taken n2, what books would you recommend for studying grammar?

saborio Wrote:Those of you who have taken n2, what books would you recommend for studying grammar?

新完全マスター２級文法。 It's entirely in Japanese, and very good. I'm using it now for Round 2 of ２級 in December.

Also, A DICTIONARY OF INTERMEDIATE JAPANESE GRAMMAR. This and DoBJG should be on every English speaking language learner's shelf.

Gaiaslastlaugh is right that those 2 books are good, and I would recommend reading actual books in addition. When I took the N2 I found my huge issue was reading quick enough so that I didn't run out of time. I had guessed numerous questions on the reading section simply because I had no time to read an entire passage in Japanese.

TheVinster Wrote:Gaiaslastlaugh is right that those 2 books are good, and I would recommend reading actual books in addition. When I took the N2 I found my huge issue was reading quick enough so that I didn't run out of time. I had guessed numerous questions on the reading section simply because I had no time to read an entire passage in Japanese.

I second this. I had the exact same experience, except that Vinster passed and I failed. (His Japanese is better than mine. And I suspect that he's a superior guesser.)

My current study is a lot of reading, looking up 文法 in 新完全 for clarity, and a little study of 新完全2級読解 to learn some JLPT speed reading tips and tricks.

Okay, thank you.

The reading part shocked me first time around. So much to read and so little time.

drdunlap Wrote:

saborio Wrote:Other than the obvious of reading lots of high grade native material, does anyone have a secret way to improve their reading ability?

One of my professors in college said this about the N1-- "The JLPT N1 doesn't ask you how many words you know or if you can readily explain grammar point A or kanji B. Of course all that is important, but what it does is it shows you natural Japanese and says, "Have you seen this enough times for it to make sense? Are these patterns burned into your brain as they would be in the brains of Japanese middle school kids?"" -- I've never taken the N2 but I assume it's close enough for this to apply and not be too extreme.

The only "secret" I can think of is to be constantly aware of what's going on in the language and of what you don't know so that you can better make connections and increase your overall understanding. With 3 hours per day I would allot most of that to reading and listening to "real" Japanese with a little time for reviewing using flash cards or Anki or whatever you use and a little time for studying a book or two on grammar.

That's how I passed the N1 and went on learning Japanese, anyhow. What I did was probably 85% reading and listening to the real deal, 5% learning new grammar (read: putting things into anki from textbooks/one JLPT N1 grammar guide) and 10% adding new cards and reviewing old cards in Anki.

Always a pleasure reading your posts. I've found that people study for "tests" but not the language itself. During term-tests, lab quizes and mid-terms I would cram as much info in my head as I possibly could and actually got some good results (as well as bad ones).

In the case of N1 (failed it), I actually did bad on the things I thought I was good at. This tells me that preparing for the test but also preparing yourself for actual language use helps a lot for this one. I'm taking it again this winter but I'm spending more time on trying to use the language rather than worry about the test itself.

Preparation on the format, what types of questions and requirements does help tremendously but working on the language will help you overall as well.

Good luck!