Hi there, so i decided to take a bet and sign up for the jlpt n2 this december. I would say I am a solid n3 right now, and most of my friends that are my level are taking the n3.
I just finished creating some convulted study plan complete with exponential functions lol
glad i completed algebra 2
honestly though, i have serious doubts that i can make it in time no matter how many calculations i run out, even if i study for every free hour of my day i won’t even get to half of the recommended hours…
has anyone done anything similar?
if anyone has any tips i have about 3k vocab, 700ish kanji (although i guess you can see my level) and am basically done with n2 grammar on bunpro which is probably the only thing i’ll realistically get to n2 level in time haha
no harm in trying i guess
everyone who has/is going to sign up for the jlpt - good luck! hopefully you don’t need it as much as me lol
This is very ambitious! But not impossible if you have enough time and motivation. You’ll be looking at 4+ hours of learning/studying per day if you’re starting from N3. And honestly the final month should be exclusively for practice, no new learning, because your short-term memory won’t sustain everything on its own. So you’re really looking at 2 months to learn all the new vocab, kanji, and grammar you need and then 1 month to make sure it’s solid.
There’s no secret method other than brute force in this situation, so be ready to add 50-60 new vocab words to anki/torii/etc every day. For kanji, the focus will be on kanji pairs instead of individual characters, make sure not to get caught up in individual kanji when you should be focusing on combinations.
I said this recently in another JLPT reply, but reading and listening comprehension are not crammable skills. Be sure to do reading exercises every day, build the length and difficulty over the next two months and then start doing timed N2-difficulty drills in the final month. The series 新完全マスター and スピードマスター are both highly regarded for having the most exam-authentic reading passages. For listening (my nemesis category, since I don’t live in Japan) everyone generally agrees that the trick is to pack on tons of listening time with any content you can find. In 90 days at 2 hours of active listening per day, you can get 180 hours of intensive listening immersion before the test. Try to get more than that if you can, but don’t just give those 2 hours per day to anime – look for native-speed, everyday speaking videos with accurate Japanese subtitles (I recommend choosing at random from Volt’s playlist). Like reading, dedicate the final month to N2-difficulty listening comprehension practice, which you can find here.
And finally, start taking mock exams and identify your weak areas asap. I didn’t do this early enough for my last exam, so I gave all of my study time to test categories I was already super strong in, making my weak categories stay weak. You can find multiple free mock exams on Todaii and JLPT Sensei.
And lastly, join the N2 Thread and report back so you can tell everyone how your studying is going
Remember: you don’t need a 100% to pass the test. If all categories are cleared with the minimum score requirement, you really only need ~55% to get your N2 certificate
i’m doing N4 since it’s been 20yrs since i’ve even taken a test. I might be ok for N3 but i’m just not quite confident enough yet. if i do good on this i will reasses next summer and decide between N3-N2 as my next one.
wow thank you for all the feedback! I’ll definitely check out your recommendations. Your post for the n2 thread was also really helpful and informative, so thanks for taking the time to write that too!
