Fresh off of, "I probably failed that JLPT test I just took," many of you are reconsidering your study methods. What are your new/updated goals and how will you meet them? Might provide ideas to those who need them.

My greatest strength in Japanese is reading, followed by vocab, listening, and speaking. Listening/speaking has been my goal but I need to take a new look at how I approach it. First, I will make an effort to speak with at least 1 person in Japanese for 1-3 hours each weekend. Next, I will post at 2 or more times per week in my lang-8 journal. I will play purely Japanese podcasts (and sometimes music) during my commute, and make an active effort to listen and understand. I will consume media whenever possible, most notably watching/listening to news, dramas, or Japanese TV for at least 1 hour a day on weekdays, 2 on weekends. I don't want to focus on too many goals, but I'd also like to throw an objective of 50 pages read a week.

The most difficult part will be finding a speaking partner. Here's to wading through the crowd of "日本語が上手ですね" people again.

I'm still thinking about this myself. I want to make sure the next time I take N1, it's smooth like butter. So that means reading more difficult stuff, writing more often, and going back to Anki full time for vocab work. (I love my little Campus word list notebooks, but they're cumbersome and slow.) Writing... yeah, I should probably start reading hard books and writing about them. That would probably be really good practice. Time to raise the lit level, I guess.

And then there's cleaning up the "sketchy level" N1 grammar that I have a very loose hold on. Some of the N1 grammar, I have a nice tight grip on, but some of it is just sketchy as all hell, and it likes to go off and loiter in the parking lot and smoke when I need it the most. And when 4 sketchy level choices are all lined up together, I'm screwed.

So it's time to get out the Grammar Hammer and nail those little bastards down.

Speaking isn't really a problem for me. I have a tutor, and part of the work I do with her is a weekly 30-minute session of explaining stuff about the US. But the thing is, I never know what she wants me to explain until class starts. So I don't have any chance to prepare anything... which makes it really challenging, IMO.

If you want to find a good tutor/partner, try iTalki. I'm tempted to see if I can find someone to push me lit and writing-wise there.

In the end, though, the biggest thing to be careful of is not turning these study plans into something like New Year's Resolutions-- stuff we pledge to do, then give up after a month because it's too hard, or too much of a pain, or Reality disintegrates our plans with its evil Reality powers. Not really sure how to deal with that aspect, because Reality has a really nasty habit of screwing with my plans.

For me, I will focus on finishing the core 2k/6k/10k deck I have, and read, read, read native material. I have the read real Japanese books, I just haven't really done anything with them yet. I should get into light novels or something I suppose, so I will have to look up the old thread on here about them, and see if any look interesting. As an aside, what is the Japanese for light novel? I never heard of the term while I was over there. I do have one of the HP books in Japanese that I picked up cheap in a sale a few years ago, so I will definitely have to sit down with that at some point this year. My research is going to have to involve lots of native material anyway, so definitely before then I want to have core finished, and also brush up on my grammar too.

ktcgx Wrote:As an aside, what is the Japanese for light novel?

ライトノベル　although its sometimes shortened to ラノベ or ライノベ; former seems more common.

ie: Here's the light novel section on amazon jp, link

Gonna learn kanji. I've been procrastinating on it for the past few years, but this was a good shock to get me going. It was always the plan to learn the kanji after not knowing them became the bottleneck (as opposed to vocabulary), and I became aware of that happening a while back. I've started a new Anki deck for it. Didn't want to use Anki, but unfortunately it's the best way even while I secretly hate it.

I also revived my HabitRPG account. Mostly I just piss away my time, and having it for structure should be better than nothing. I think I stopped using it in the first place because I was ignoring it so much that it didn't matter. Better luck this time...

Grammar is a thing too. I did sign up for a grammar-a-day mailing list, so that's something. A very small something, but maybe sufficient. Not willing to invest much time in it though. What I have is sufficient for the vast majority of situations, but not tests.

My real priority is speaking. Or should be, anyway. Working with the assumption I failed N2, my speaking needs to be good enough to convince someone it doesn't matter. I want a new job and don't want to leave Japan, so it's kind-of the most important thing. My speaking is terrible though...

And unrelated to JLPT, but I'm going to start reading some more difficult books, because I can and they look interesting.

I'm good with a lot of my methods - SRS for vocab, iTalki lessons, reading, talking with friends. I want to spend more time writing and trying to push my output up to the next level. I also intend to ramp up my listening. I'm committing to myself to get through the NHK Journal podcast each day. (Well, okay - at least up until the Sports section.) I'll probably also work with one of my teachers on understanding some of the harder anime and drama I've tried to tackle.

The biggest change I'll make this year is not studying for the JLPT. I want to spend this next year building my skills and enjoying the language. I'm not going to let the specter of this test suck the joy out of the language for me.

Capt'n here!

I ended up taking the test here in Toronto (York University, N4), I'd have to say for the most part the test was generally easy...Until I got to the grammar/reading part of it.

I think adding variety and reading additional content from different perspectives would really help. I was only reading general sentences from the textbooks and maybe a few light novels here and there, but nothing really outside of that. I need to start to approach other types of content (news, children stories, hell even short advertisements?) to really get a feel on the grammar and speed up my reading comprehension.

Also, telling myself that I have an entire lifetime to learn the language - sometimes I burn myself out with 8 hour sessions sometimes stressing that I have a "time limit" to learn Japanese. I feel that with that mind set, it really limits my ability to really enjoy the content of the language.

TDLR; Read more, be happier.

Does the practice test count? 'Cause I bombed that and decided to wait until next year for the real deal (it'll cost a couple hundred dollars for me to take it).

Anyway, I decided to hire a tutor for in-person lessons; first lesson will be next week, so hopefully all goes well (she says that she should be able to help me with speaking and writing, and that she has N1 test-prep materials). It's hard to say how I plan to use these lessons until I actually have one, so all I've been doing is wondering if I should prepare tea...

For grammar, I'm going to try and read at least one lesson on Imabi every day. It probably won't happen, but I liked seeing that it should only take about 200 days. I'm sure I'll be working with my tutor on grammar as well (grammar is kind of important for effective communication).

Vocab... More of the same, really. Still working my way back through Core10k, but that should only occupy me for six more months ('new' cards) if I go at an easy pace of about 3000 left at 20 per day; that's including the time I'll take to finish going back through Core6k, which I predicted I could finish by the end of January through calculations that I've since forgotten (something about my retention rate for those cards being pretty consistent after the first thousand or so; though I expect the last 500-1000 cards won't have been retained at the same rate).
I'll probably get the Core supplement after I get through Core10k and add cards as needed (suspend all of them and un-suspend what's needed).

For listening, I'll stick with watching anime with subs (maybe I can cut the subs out at some point) and watching whatever happens to be playing on NHK教育 (via Niji) or the news. Oh yeah, and watching this guy's 書道 videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrMST-V...r8CNJHsbnQ)

About half-way through the year or so (maybe), I plan to start working more on test-prep than regular Japanese study. What kind of test prep? Mock tests, self-imposed vocab and grammar 'tests', etc. A lot of people don't realize just how much of a role familiarity and test taking strategy play in one's success on a standardized test.

I want to get through a couple novels as well, this year. It's amazing how much different it seems to read a block of text with a single picture and one without any pictures; it's only less by one picture, but it feels so much more 'difficult' not having that bit of context there.

Thanks for starting this thread!

I took N4 this year and might take N3 next year. Even if I don't, I think it would be fun to continue with Japanese for a bit. The JLPT is so widely used as a proxy for language ability in Japanese that it makes sense to use it to organize my studies even if I don't take the test.

The hardest part of the exam was grammar. I recently took my first classes at http://www.japonin.com/ and think that that's the easiest way for me to learn more grammar. It's really an amazing service and so cheap, so I'll probably continue to take at least a few more classes there.

In terms of vocabulary and grammar, I think that learning the N3 kanji via RtK lite before adding new vocabulary would be helpful. I'm most of the way there, so I can probably knock that out pretty soon.

There will be a lot of vocabulary, but I think that if I start early it shouldn't be too hard. japanonin.com uses Minna No Nihongo Chuukyuu I, and I already picked up that book, so the vocabulary in that text will be a good place to start.

After that, I think that focusing on specific exam stuff would be useful. Honestly, I was shocked by some of the types of questions they gave - for example, the "what is the 3rd word in the following 4 blanks" was something I had never encountered before. It reminded me of the SAT, where learning and practicing the types of questions they ask helps a lot.

I like the 書道 videos. Nice find.

In the next few days, I'm going to start going through all of my giant word lists, and start figuring out what I really know/don't know, then I guess it's Anki time. (Yay for EPWING2Anki.)

And yeah, japonin.com is pretty cool. I need to figure out which of the flex classes I can use to further my goals, or if I'm going to have to go the private lesson route. (And if I do that, I'll look into iTalki, too, to be thorough.)

I think a really cool class for me would something like, "Here are a few essays. Read them, and answer these questions about them in a paragraph or two." That would be killer.

rich_f Wrote:I think a really cool class for me would something like, "Here are a few essays. Read them, and answer these questions about them in a paragraph or two." That would be killer.

Rinko-sensei and Kara-sensei on iTalki are both great for this. Rinko has been feeding me and quizzing me on JLPT reading questions for a year. Kara will send you articles and drill you on what they're saying. Both have very reasonable prices for private lessons ($15 a $17/hr.).

So, I've never studied for the JLPT. I took N2 and failed, a year later took N2 and passed, a year later took N1 and failed and now took N1 again and don't know. I just study what I need to better understand manga, anime, and ラノベ (there is btw an app on the iphone by that title now that has a -ton- of material to read for free. Quality varies, but much of it is good enough that I would buy an actual book by the same author if I find one.) Ahem.

So the JLPT is just to benchmark myself, but if you really want to -pass- the test (at the N2 and N1 level) you need to make a point of covering two thing - reading speed and quick comprehension.

For reading, you have to read a -lot-. And you shouldn't read* manga (almost entirely dialogue!) or even ラノベ ... everything in the JLPT is non-fiction, mostly essays with the odd set of instructions thrown in (business memo, city notification, etc.). I know hundreds of adjectives and dozens of descriptive four-character sayings that are never going to be on the JLPT, but struggle a little with these kinds of things. (That said, the afterword in a fiction book is -exactly- the kind of thing that is on the JLPT.)

*(By "shouldn't read" I mean "shouldn't read as a means to study for the JLPT." By all means read them for leisure!)

For listening comprehension, you need to be able to understand -perfectly- moderately paced, standard (NHK and Tokyo classroom) Japanese. I'm glad I can understand what that Yakuza's guttural threat is actually saying and at least make out most of what the token Kansai or Okinawa character is saying... but again, this isn't going to appear on the JLPT. Erin's Challenge, NHK news, NHK 高校講座 are all available for free and provide plenty of practice with the right kind of material (although Erin's Challenge will -not- take you to N2, the simultaneous subtitles are really useful for bringing listening comprehension up to par if you have a tolerance for rewatching cute but slightly banal skits until you understand every word.)

Anyway, I got so focused on reading speed (and I completed 90% of the written section questions this time and have a high confidence in my answers so I should have passed that! Last year I might have answered 70% of the questions or less, but managed to squeak by in listening comprehension). However, I was shocked at how easily one or two missed words could leave me doubting the correct answer in the audio section .... especially if I understood the dialogue perfectly but wasn't sure what the verbally given answer choices were, or worst of all in one case I didn't understand the question!

Not sure if I just spaced out a little and missed a word, misheard a word, or simply didn't know a word but ultimately it doesn't matter. In English I can listen to an entire sentence, not process it consciously at all, and yet when prompted to answer 'replay' it in my head and figure out what was just said. I recommend aiming for that in Japanese if you don't want to sweat during the oral section.

Finally, the number one thing that I'm sure would have made the test easier that I didn't do ... practice tests!

I had no idea that my reading level was good enough to make the written section almost easy but that my listening was so poor still. I assumed that my anime and dorama watching would have kept up my listening, but there simply isn't enough of the right kind of material in fiction! (I perhaps should have spent more time with NHK news and 高校講座).

Even if the dialogues were all vocabulary I know (which they most likely were, the level in general didn't seem that difficult), it doesn't matter if I'm only familiar with them in writing. There's simply no time to think for a second or two and connect the spoken word to a written word you know because there's no pause, rewind, or repeat. You don't need to be able to understand at all fast speaking, difficult accents, dialects, or obscure words - but you need to -perfectly- understand average speed, average conversations from business and academia. That does include informal student-student and coworker daily conversations, although the majority are boss/worker, teacher/student, club-president/club-member conversations were you have to be sure of the assignment given. Also, the -order- of the actions that need to be taken if the assignment has multiple steps. 「まずは」 prefixes a lot of the questions where I'm not sure I got the right answer. I'm sure a time relation was expressed in the dialogue somewhere, but it wasn't always as obvious as 「その前に」at the beginning of a sentence.

Anyway, the point is that you won't come into the test unaware of your own ability if you take practice tests (written and audio!) a few times a year. It might not have changed anything for me anyway since I was really enjoying reading much more than listening to podcasts or watching TV and the JLPT is secondary to enjoying my use of the language... but if you're prioritizing passing, practice tests will help keep you on track for balanced study.

Took N1. For the first section, I felt it was in my grasp had I studied a little bit more, but the listening was a disaster.

Points:
-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual.
-Grammar was okay. I need to get it solid, it's all in there kind of loose but not fixed. I think I can just review the same book I have and do the practice stuff.
-Listening... uh, hm. Considering picking up a tutor, as well as watching dramas without J-subs, or at least watching episodes twice, once with and once without subs.
-Sleep. I need proper sleep every day. 4 hours of sleep before the test was not good, let me fix my sleep schedule for all my days now instead of just fixing it the day before JLPT.

kainzero Wrote:-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual.

Add　天声人語 to your daily reading, there is a new one every day. I found these very challenging to read at N2-ish level and it made some the Japanese people that were helping me read them, pause when trying to explain it. The column may be a bit past N1 most of the time, but the vocabulary and grammar you'll see is often very literary so its worth the read I think.

kainzero Wrote:Points:
-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual..

Something I realized was that while I've read a lot of novels of the past 2 years of my studying, I'm still horrible at essays. A chunk of text that lacks an actual conversation. Anybody have good recommendations for something to read that is both interesting and will promote reading comprehension of essays?

TheVinster Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:Points:
-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual..

Something I realized was that while I've read a lot of novels of the past 2 years of my studying, I'm still horrible at essays. A chunk of text that lacks an actual conversation. Anybody have good recommendations for something to read that is both interesting and will promote reading comprehension of essays?

I haven't finished it yet, but 日本語根ほり葉ほり (an "innocent" book), and the first volume, 日本語表と裏, both by 森本哲郎 are both collections of essays, each on the writer's thoughts about a common Japanese word, and what it reveals about the Japanese language. The essays are fun to read, and he has a nice writing style.^^

What do you mean by "innocent"?

ktcgx Wrote:What do you mean by "innocent"?

Google koohii forum innocent books and you should find it.

Ah ok, I was worried it was sarcasm

vix86 Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual.

Add　天声人語 to your daily reading, there is a new one every day. I found these very challenging to read at N2-ish level and it made some the Japanese people that were helping me read them, pause when trying to explain it. The column may be a bit past N1 most of the time, but the vocabulary and grammar you'll see is often very literary so its worth the read I think.

Hey, thanks for the resource!

Yeah, I was thinking about how novels generally use different structures than the essays on N1. I don't think I had much problem with the vocab in the reading, more or less it was the way things were structured and written.

I've never read essays but I suspect the　天声人語 is more essay like than novel like; of course it'll depend on the column writer. The writers seem to change and sometimes one writer will have an easier column to read and then the next day it'll be filled with very literary passages. I still remember a column I read that was talking about the fact that back in the Edo era when Tokyo was mostly wooden houses, fires were really common so there were different words in Japanese to describe different kinds of fires, which I found interesting.

vix86 Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual.

Add　天声人語 to your daily reading, there is a new one every day. I found these very challenging to read at N2-ish level and it made some the Japanese people that were helping me read them, pause when trying to explain it. The column may be a bit past N1 most of the time, but the vocabulary and grammar you'll see is often very literary so its worth the read I think.

Thank you for this. I used today's not-so-hard column in a discussion with an iTalki community tutor, and it led to a 20 minute discussion about Japanese and American politics that really stretched my vocab recall. Good stuff!

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:

vix86 Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:-Read more. A lot of the vocabulary I got from more random sources rather than specific JLPT study material. Plus, I like reading. I've only read 2 Japanese novels to date, I should be reading one novel every 2-3 weeks. I'll also read a news article every day.
I do need to find some way to read essays. I might throw in some non-fiction in there. And I need to toss words / grammar structures from there into Anki as usual.

Add　天声人語 to your daily reading, there is a new one every day. I found these very challenging to read at N2-ish level and it made some the Japanese people that were helping me read them, pause when trying to explain it. The column may be a bit past N1 most of the time, but the vocabulary and grammar you'll see is often very literary so its worth the read I think.

Thank you for this. I used today's not-so-hard column in a discussion with an iTalki community tutor, and it led to a 20 minute discussion about Japanese and American politics that really stretched my vocab recall. Good stuff!

Thanks from I as well, vix86. I just read my first article from there and it was a more thoughtful entry than your standard news article, but still topical.

Gaiaslastlaugh, I always see you talking about italki. Is it that useful? I may be willing to now pay some money if it's cheap enough for proper listening opportunities. Trying to find Japanese people to actually speak with is rather annoying. At this point I just need to work on my speaking and listening no matter what. Speaking of which a site you all may be interested in is Moshimosh. There is no payment. You speak in English to learn credits, and can use those credits towards conversations in Japanese (or your language of choice). The problem is there aren't enough people right now, and the site is underdeveloped. Rather it's still being developed. Nonetheless it seems promising if you give it another year or so, I imagine.

One last question, is there an Economist equivalent of a Japanese magazine? Something you can pay a price for above-average news articles complete with audio files of them being read? I know you can say just go to any news site or whatever, but I feel your standard Japanese news site falls short. I mean because of the elections, my FNN feed on YouTube was just 15 videos in a row of different people yelling, "Bonzai!" for 15 seconds each. Why even bother posting this shit? And many of the articles aren't that interesting, regardless of if they're about Japan or not.

TheVinster - I use iTalki two hours a week. I find it incredibly useful. Even if you take some kind of structured lesson (e.g., studying N1 reading problems), you still get a ton of experience in communicating in japanese, on top of what the lesson teaches you. I am by no means fluent, but I'm comfortable communicating a lot of my thoughts in japanese, and I owe that to iTalki lessons.

Re: essays and whatnot, I find a lot of good material these days on Asahi Shinbun in general. Also, HuffPo Japan features a lot of challenging opinion pieces.

TheVinster Wrote:One last question, is there an Economist equivalent of a Japanese magazine? Something you can pay a price for above-average news articles complete with audio files of them being read? I know you can say just go to any news site or whatever, but I feel your standard Japanese news site falls short. I mean because of the elections, my FNN feed on YouTube was just 15 videos in a row of different people yelling, "Bonzai!" for 15 seconds each. Why even bother posting this shit? And many of the articles aren't that interesting, regardless of if they're about Japan or not.

The Asashi Weekly is the only thing I can think of that I'm pretty sure also includes an audio. My schools in Japan use to get it, but I don't believe its super advanced. I think if you are near N1 or passed N1, you will find it pretty boring.

Fake Edit to all the people I mentioned 天声人語 to: While trying to figure out if Asahi Weekly was what I thought it was, I stumbled across this. http://astand.asahi.com/asahieng/

It appears you can buy a subscription to a reduced everyday Asashi Newspaper but the thing I noticed is that it seems to be a billingual reader. In particular the 天声人語 section has a Japanese and an English part (Sample: http://astand.asahi.com/asahieng/sample/...ekiji.html ).