I am studying for the JLPT N2 later this year in December I couldn't take the test last December cause of finals. I have been studying for about 2-3 weeks and am getting to the point where my mind not retaining the information. For example I will read a practice problem in the book know all the words in the sentence but I don't understand the meaning of the sentence. Just to give you some background I use anki and have completed RTK and I am using nihongo so matome series for N2. I feel that I have been stuck in a rut for a while and I am not sure what I need to do to get out of it. Its not that I find anki boring its just that I am not understanding some of the grammar points and how to use them. As well when I try practice problems that don't have a translation I don't know the meaning. Does this happen to anyone else? how do you overcome this problem. Thanks in advance.

I would set down the JLPT study book and just read real Japanese for a bit. Comics, news, whatever - you will get a more natural feel for the grammar and it won't be such a painful slog. Then when you come back to the study book you might go "oh that grammar point! I've seen it several times" and with that prior context will come Enlightenment.

Thank you for the post. I will try study more real Japanese. The reason I was studying for the books non stop is because most of my Japanese is self taught so I thought it would be better to learn in a structured way so I would do better on the JLPT test. But now I'm not so sure I haven't been doing as well as I would like to be on the practice problems.

It took me twice to pass N2 and (at least) twice to (hopefully) pass N1.
Each time my biggest challenge was not obscure grammar points, but reading speed. I'm sure it's helpful to go through guides and especially through practice tests - but if you are only looking at Japanese one example sentence, on grammar point at a time it's going to encourage a very slow, methodical, 'decoding' mentality. You really need to be able to read fluently to pass the test - understanding 99% of what you're reading and reading at a pretty decent pace.

(I'm tempted to say you need to read at 1/4-1/3rd of your first language reading speed for N2 and at least 1/2 of your first language reading speed for N1... but reading speed is incredibly variable that those numbers are kind of meaningless - my own native reading speed has varied widely over the years depending on how much reading I'm doing in any given period, never mind variation -between- people; still, I'll mention them parenthetically here anyway for the general 'feel' of it.)

Any-how, the only way I know of to increase reading speed is ... to read more. Full passages that you get fully immersed in, not individual senteneces. Infrequent or no interruption from dictionary lookups. Reading longer works or works by the same author can give you a chance to mix deep reading (looking up everything and expanding vocabulary) with broad reading (looking up as little as possible and increasing rate of reading); just think be sure about which you're doing at a given time and try to get a lot of broad reading in - there won't be any dictionaries with you at the JLPT site.

@SomeCallMeChris

Thanks for the help. Would you recommend to read a book all the way through and then look up the words I don't know or look up the words that I don't know as I read?

I think a compromise between those two is good. I've been marking words to look up later with sticky notes as I read then look them up later (usually the next day). Looking up as-you-go makes reading a chore but it's nice to be able to look things up before finishing because the same words quite often reappear. But if I had to choose either extreme, I'd go with reading all the way through first.

@Aikynaro Thank you I really like that idea. I think if I read every other day and the days I don't read add the new words to anki re-read what I the previous day that might him me. Also do you read out loud for in your head. The reason I ask I heard that reading out loud helps with reading more smoothly. Has anyone tried that and felt that it helped?