Marumori Question

Japanese Language Resources
1

Hi all,

Curious to hear other’s experience with Marumori. I did a little bit of it in the past and really liked it but haven’t touched it (or Japanese) in ages, but I am hoping to seriously get back into it soon. Would you say that Marumori keeps its promise that if you finish all their material for, say N5 or N4, you should be able to pass N4 or N5. Is all the material you need to pass those levels there, like they promise?

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2

I’m giving N3

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3

@MinaCaesar ?

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4

Hai douzo

I’ve never taken the tests so I don’t know about passing, but they say N3 is complete right now, and they’re adding N2 stuff

Since all the material for the tests is publicly available, I figure they’re telling the truth

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5

I started MaruMori in April, so still relatively new, but I have lots of prior experience from other sites.

As review (and also as a way to see what the lower levels are like so I know whether to recommend it to my husband and friends who are considering learning Japanese), I’m actually doing all of the stuff below my real level. So I’ve done all of Intro, N5 and about half of N4 so far.

And yes, going through N5 it seemed to have everything needed to pass:

  • Kanji
  • Grammar lessons that are pretty fun, with loads of example sentences.
  • Vocab
  • Reading exercises
  • A good TTS (I believe real voices are being added to some sections in Intro)
  • Grammar SRS (similar to BunPro, which I didn’t like because I felt the hints weren’t helpful enough to tell different similar grammar points apart, but in MM I haven’t had that issue so far)
  • And a mock exam, though the mock exam does not have a listening section yet. But it does have kanji/vocab and grammar sections and if you get an answer wrong it’ll give you a summary of which lessons match what you should review, which is really neat.

The N5 section actually teaches some higher level kanji as well, because it tries to do a similar thing to WK of building up elements for kanji mnemonics. So if anything you might be a bit over prepared if you do the whole N5 course and N5 additional study decks that are available in the Study Lists section. Same with N4.

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6

I’ll add on to @Squintina’s post and say that it definitely seems like a great resource for preparation for the JLPT (and arguably more importantly, learning the language in general). I actually just finished the N5 region but I’m way behind on vocab, since for a while I thought I’d just stick with WK for the vocab - turns out that WaniKani is great for kanji and exposing some vocabulary, but mostly as reinforcement for the kanji.

With that said, so far I haven’t really been impressed with the vocabulary side of MM - there’s a lot of it, but it could definitely do with integrating more mnemonics like WK has. They do have an option to add your own reading and meaning hints, or to use community-sourced ones, but it pales compared WK having a consistent, curated set of mnemonics - even if some are wacky.

That said, I would definitely recommend it as a good, comprehensive resource for the foundational knowledge needed in grammar and vocab to learn the language.

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