Dear all

After a few years focusing on my conversational ability, with little-no "formal study", I'm thinking of taking the N2 this December, mostly as a personal challenge, but also to help kickstart a movement towards a business level fluency. I took Lvl3 about 4 years ago and work for Japanese company, using the language regularly, so have a fair amount of accumulated exposure.

Would any other intermediate-advanced learners out there have a particular strategy to recommend (given the time scale)?

I'm thinking of picking up all of the 新完全マスター books...will this be worthwhile as a frame of reference to start from?

I think my biggest challenge will likely be Kanji - my reading is pretty good, but because I've learnt by picking up WORDS rather than learning kunyomi,onyomi, I'm worried I'll get caught out on the "spot the difference" questions etc. I kind of hate the flashcard thing....so boring and I struggle to keep it up!?

Cheers.
MR G

There are no questions in the JLPT that require you to distinguishing ON and kun readings. You only need to study them at all if that helps you with the correct pronunciation of words - as such personally I never try to 'memorize' a kanji's readings, but I do occasionally look up a kanji entry in a dictionary and look over the readings (especially if I encounter a kanji that I have a feeling I know from other words that I can't quite recall at the moment.)

You should be sure that you can correctly write the kana for words (including getting correct all the voiced/unvoiced/long-vowel/short-vowel/glottal-stop bits. I don't think there are many cases where getting the difference in spelling of identical long vowels matters　- that is, おう and おお, ええ and えい - but it'd be best to pay attention to that too. The reason being, while you are not asked to identify character readings you -are- asked to connect the reading of a -word- to its kanji, or the kanji of a word to its reading. There will be plenty of easy mistakes to make in that category as if you had, say, 時計 you'd have to pick among something like とけい、とうけ、とうけい、とっけい,
or given とうけい have to pick among　時計、当家、統計、 and 特恵.

I'd recommending taking the (free!) online practice test at least, and perhaps buying some full-length practice tests if you like . Be sure to time yourself too - whether you stick to the limit or not, know how much time you took. My persistent problem has been reading speed. It's hard to pass if you don't complete at least the majority of the questions in each section. Your weakness may be elsewhere, so ... practice tests are your friend there.

I haven't bought kanzen master or really done -any- deliberate study for the JLPT. Instead of buying practice tests, I just take the test and hope for the best. I came very close to passing N1 last year so I have high hopes for this year, but I can't really advise you on specific study materials.

I highly endorse 新完全マスター。 I've been working with these books all year. I study the grammar book with one of my iTalk teachers, who helps me understand some of the nuances of certain phrases that the book doesn't cover well.

Like SomeCallMeChris said, reading speed is a bitch. You have to be able to read and comprehend texts FAST in order to finish the entire 読解 section on time. Get the 新完全マスター読解 book, and work through it. Then, give yourself a few timed practice tests to get a feel for how much time you have to spend on each question.

In terms of reading, I work with a great teacher on iTalki who gives me a sample JLPT 読解 question every week. We work completely in Japanese: I read the passage, we discuss any of the trickier points of vocab or grammar, and she has me restate some of the harder passages in simple Japanese. She typically sends me these questions 5 minutes before the lesson so that I have practice in reading and answering JLPT questions quickly. LMK privately if you want a reference.

I second the Kanzen Master books. I completed the grammar and vocabulary one and blew past those sections on the test.

Like the poster before me said, the biggest challenge is reading and comprehending quickly. I wish I would have focused on that more. I only finished a quarter of the Kanzen reading book before the actual test.

I wrote up more on how I studied for N2 here, but in general Kanzen Master 2kyuu grammar (the N2 version wasn't out yet) helped me out a great deal. The only prep books I used were Kanzen Master 2kyuu grammar and a N2 mock test book. I also read at least a few pages of a novel each day. I passed N2 on my first try in part because the exam was much easier than the Japanese I was already reading daily. If you read a lot, N2 will be much easier.

Thanks all. I have the books winging their way to me now.