Wow thank you for the practical reply :)) I’ve heard lots about Bunpro as a beginner so maybe it’s time to give it a try.
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I don’t know about that course in particular, but I have met some students at Japanese language school here in Japan who have become very very fluent in 12-months of intense Japanese only study environment. One of the girls I met was interviewing in Japanese for a job and was able to handle that. When I spoke with her, she said she’d been at the school for a year, 5 days a week, and between 1~3 classes a day. I only joined for a short-term over summer, but found that the classes are fairly comprehensive. Even though I was working and living in Japan at the time, my speaking ability and confidence skyrocketed even after such a short time. I’d love to spend another 6-months at language school if I had the time/could afford to do it without working. I think 2 years for N5 is maybe a bit excessive, perhaps 6-8 months of intensive language school study would be a more reasonable and achievable target from zero, (possibly N4 in that time given how fast the course is run).
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lol at the JLPT.
I used to think it was a standard in the first few months of starting Japanese, but now about 8 months in I realize it’s kinda of a joke in the Japanese learning community online…
I don’t know why anyone would take it unless they need to take it, or they are taking it purely for fun. And pretty sure no one needs to take anything lower than N2 (or maybe N3?).
I did do a N5 practice test 6months in and got 100% so I don’t even know why this “test” even exists…
heck even curedolly did video about how useless this test is.
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I agree. Sure, if you wanna do it for yourself, why not. But it is expensive and I can only recommend it to boost your CV. In this case though everything below JLPT 2 might not be of interest.
Oh well then that must mean it’s true.
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Ofc studying specifically for the JLPT isn’t an effective way to learn the language, but having benchmarks for self-studying people to work towards is good for motivation and is helpful for testing your own progress.
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2 years is a lot of time. If you work on Japanese a lot you could also get further than the N5 I think
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What? No! For most people even self study tend to get within passing range within a 4 months to 1 year depending on your pace. 2 years of study puts most people firmly in N4 or passable N3. That’s with a relaxed slow paced study. Hardcore study at school can put you between N2 and N1 within 2 years (with reasonable student effort)
(Years of continuous study and reasonable effort not accounting for large breaks )
I’d say since you are new to Japanese and may be still getting used to resources and methods of study I would do non test based goals until you have a better understanding of your study habits in regards to Japanese.
Isshou ni gambarimashou!
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honestly, i’ve heard japanese people say that Minna No Nihongo is outdated, inaccurate and provides an unrealistic way to speak japanese. im lucky because i study it at school but i feel like if you spend two years with this program and by the end you’re only N5, you’ll feel like you wasted your time. depends how much time you have though.
Yeah that’s waaaaay too long for N5.
Through self-study and starting at absolute zero, it only took four months to pass.
That being said, I did have the advantage of being in Japan, so it helped my listening for sure.
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iv been learning japanese for 38 days, and just a quck run through jlpt5 samples showed me that i knew more than half of grammar and vocabulary words. And i just did 2 chapters of genki 1, 56% of lingodeer 1, learned 400 words for jlpt 5 in toori srs, and you cann see my wanikani level.
if you can dedicate 2+ hours of your time regularly to japanese i think its counterproductive to join any classes.
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Ok, so here is what I’m going to plead to you:
The schedule you posted is ridiculous and a money scam. These schools intentionally impede your progress and stretch out the learning as long as possible in order to get as much money as they can.
I passed JLPT in three months of daily solo studying. All I knew beforehand was basic hiragana and a few words I picked up from watching anime as a kid.
JLPT 5 is VERY easy, if you
1: Don’t spend a lot of time on Kanji
2: Study N5-specific materials
3: Get your katakana down pat. It’s a weak spot for A LOT of early learners (me too) and there will be katakana reading questions on the test.
4: You need to be familiar with all of the basic Japanese phrases. じゃまた おつかれさまです さよなら いってきます ただいま おかえり いらっしゃいませ among others. There will be questions based on correct usage of these daily Japanese phrases.
5: Find practice tests and do them, do them, do them. I can give you a lot of links if you can’t find them on your own.
6: Take the test as soon as possible; there is nothing wrong with failing and because the actual act of taking the test is strange it is good to experience what it is like.
7: Be aware you only need a 45% to pass. Yes, a 45%. That’s what makes this test so easy. You need to get a certain amount of questions correct in each of the sections and total it has to add up to at least 80/180 points. Of course, you want as high a score as you can get, but more important is conquering N5 so you can move forward and actually learn the language. Passing the test is a HUGE motivator and I reccomend everyone do it.
8: Don’t take no for an answer. When I signed up for the test (and I had barely started studying) people laughed at me saying I would never pass it. One of my coworkers had been taking classes for over a year and she couldn’t pass it. If you focus and do your best you can do it.
Some things you should know:
There is virtually no kanji on the N5 test, so you should not be spending more effort than just doing your WK reviews. Stick with a normal use of WK and you can go harder on Kanji AFTER you pass N5.
N5 is very barebones and very easy if you prepare accordingly, but you have to know what kind of grammar to learn and the ‘basic’ vocabulary they expect. If you study Genki or Minna and don’t do any N5 specific materials you will be blind-sided by the questions and unsure as to what they are asking for or miss vocab or grammar points.
With that in mind, you need to know N5 vocabulary in hiragana, not kanji, meaning you need to be familiar with the actual word. I missed a question because I could not for the life of me figure out what きょうしつ was. This is a super easy word that I had learned in Kanji first, 教室, and seeing it in hiragana and not in kanji caused a stall in my brain. I hadn’t learned that word from an N5 book, but from my own Kanji study, and it hurt me on that test.
Remember: JLPT success is important but it does not mean you speak the language. In very Japanese style, you need to study to defeat the test, not to learn the language.
When I was studying for it I remember how I was ready to move forward because the material was too easy and it was all in hiragana, which annoyed me to no end. I didn’t move to N4 and stayed on N5 level stuff until the test, because I knew that moving forward would hurt me when I was still just a beginner and when the N5 test is so specific.
tl;dr: I wouldn’t waste money on a course that says 24 months is needed to pass N5. What I would do is study like a champ on your own, use that money on a bunch of N5 textbooks (plus a non-JLPT main textbook you can use as an anchor), and then hire a private tutor to meet with you at least once a week (over skype is cheaper) so you can review JLPT N5. Be VERY specific that this is your goal and tell him/her what you want to go over. I’ve been ‘tutored’ by people who barely knew what JLPT was, and they were only interested in teaching me what they thought was important. Be specific and if they deviate from what you need to review, tell them and/or sack them.
Classroom settings are among the worst places to learn a language, you don’t need to waste the money.
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I’ve heard the same thing about Minna and sometime my Japanese friends will laugh when I show them a chapter from it. I think it provides a good base, though, and the fact that it is all in Japanese I felt rocketed my reading way way ahead of any of my friends using Genki or other methods.
Well, your fractional point total doesn’t equate directly to a percentage of correct answers (questions are weighted and also some experimental questions are ungraded), but it’s true that the passing bar for N5 is pretty low.
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This is true, some questions are worth more or less overall, thank you for reminding me of that! But yes, the bar is low, indeed.
Yes I agree, I had a suspicion they were just trying to siphon money.
Would you be so kind as to point me to some?
Ps: Thank for your effort and insight, I’ve read everything.
This is what I hate about the official practice tests. Take the test, get a ~75% and think… ‘I have no idea if thats good or not’ Is that a 150/180, a 50/180, …? Who knows.
Be nice if they some sort of official grading cheatsheet or something, so we could know how we really did.
I got a ~70% on the N5 practice test, and a 78/180 on the real test, so… 
I think generally speaking if you got 75% correct, there’s really no way that you could fail any level, but it’s definitely not possible to say precisely what your score would be. The weighting is related to all those other people taking the test at the same time, so that’s why it’s not possible to do something like that for a practice test.
Well, that could be a number of things. If you got 70% on the real one I’d expect that would be a pass.
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