I was taking an N3 practice test on the official site, but I am struggling with these kind of questions. Please anywhere where I can practice the hell out of these types of questions? I am struggling with knowing the order of where to place the Japanese at the designated spot that its telling me. I have a lot of N3 books is it in there?
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Shinkanzen Master and past papers online. I also struggle with these, but the more I listen and read, the more improvements I see.
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Ohh okay! perfect I have 新完全マスター thank you so much!!
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A (not so helpful) tip: you kinda just have to read all your options, plug them in such a way that makes grammatical sense. I don’t think there’s a systematic way to approach these question directly. The best you can do to prepare for these is to learn the grammar and read/write a lot to the point where you get the intuition that a sentence makes sense.
As for more practice on these directly, 「日本語総まとめ」 grammar books come to mind. It won’t teach you how to approach these questions, but there’s a ton of practice for these.
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You’re absolutely right. Thank you so much!! Will just drill it into my head with those grammar books for N3 then!
I know this answer is not exactly helpful for short-term test-taking purposes, but in the long run you will benefit enormously from reading books (that is, novels or the like, i.e. not manga) because you just get a ton of exposure to sentences of all sorts, which helps a lot to get the grammar sorted in your head.
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What @NicoleIsEnough said about reading is right, and also it looks like focusing on the particles and how the grammar functions will help.
Like, in the example they give, you wouldn’t say じじょを日本語の行きました買いに to make a complete sentence, it just doesn’t make sense. You know a noun will probably come after 日本語の, because it’s modifying something, you know a verb will come after じじょを because it’s a direct object due to the を , and you know that it’ll end with 行きました because the verb is conjugated in the ます form and would be at the end of the sentence.
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There are some apps and sites to specifically drill old JLPT questions. Although I don’t really have a favorite one to recommend.
Systematically, it helps to eliminate some possibilities so you have fewer potential sentences to consider. It’s probably easier to start from the end of the gap due to how Japanese grammar works.
For example in your screenshot, you might notice that neither 1 nor 2 can go in the final position (ばかりのから、レストランがから are impossible constructions), and so you have only two options for the final spot. Then you can consider what could potentially go into ☆ and two other positions in each of those scenarios, and hopefully have only 1 grammatically sound option left.
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This might be excessive but the Dictionary of Beginner Japanese Grammar might be what you’re looking for. Page 297 “に⁵”.
But the general idea is you are going to do something in order to do something.
I’m going to buy. = 買いに行く
Examples from the book:
学生が質問をしに来た。
A student came to ask questions.
そこへ何をしに行くんですか？
(Lit. To do what are you going there? (=For what are you going there?))
村井さんは昼ご飯を食べに家へ帰った。
Mr. Murai went home to eat his lunch.
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The 買いに part is an example, isn’t it?
EDIT: Specifically an N5 example
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I struggle with these types the most too. It’s good to look at particle patterns and being well versed in grammar. I agree with Wanitsunami mentioning a review of に and then for the example sentence with 先週~~~から、行ってみませんか, it’s good to know what particles go with what.
Breakdown of my thought process and conclusion of how I got to my answer for this question
So for this sentence, the first thing I saw was at the end of 2 there is a が and 4 is just ある this tells me that no matter what happens, that が has to go before ある so somewhere in the sentence it will have the order of 2, 4. Then I looked at the の at the end of 1 which usually comes before a noun/name. this leads me to believe the order of words would be 1,2,4. All that’s left is knowing where 3 would go, but there’s only two choices left. Being familiar with the ばかりの grammar point, I know it follows after verbs. Knowing that it follows a verb, with the current order of 1,2,4, something has to be before 1, so the final order turns into
3,1,2,4 making the sentence:
先週オーペンしたばかりのレストランがあるから、行ってみませんか。
As for studying for these questions…
Reading more and being more exposed to how the patterns usually follow is a great way to study for this, but it really comes down to very base common grammar points. Idk about a book, but if you have bunpro (or wanna sign up for it! It’s an SRS grammar site similar to wanikani but has different approaches to it) the cram section has a spot that has jlpt N1-5 grammar structures of which you can choose what pack you’d like to study. When I took the JLPT N3, I crammed those grammar points over and over and over via reading sentences and doing personal input. I highly recommend the reading style over the input as there are lots of similar grammar parts that just become frustrating. If you’re reading sentences, you just read the Japanese, check the English translation, and rate it on how well you understood it and continue to the next question.
You should still have at least a little over a month to study for the test if you’re taking it in December, so there’s plenty of time! Try to add some reading into your studies and you’ll feel much better going into the test! Good luck!
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Ah sorry. I was half paying attention when I read the question, I thought they were having issues with the grammar point not the question type.
These question type I found you just need to know where and why things go where for N3 and below. Which comes from reading and listening to a lot. However like others said a lot of it just looking at the patterns, and particles are the biggest give-aways.
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I don’t know if it’s available in your country, but I used the Migii JLPT app for when I was practicing N4 and will be using it again for N3.
You can specifically choose the exact question type you’re after, and then just practice them one after the other.
I just checked and for N3 they have 204 practice questions for the Sentence Composition type question that you’re asking about.
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