Hi, I didn’t find an N3 thread for the coming winter JLPT (Dec 2019) so thought I’d make one. Perhaps you can share things that you studied recently here like a diary entry. I’m hoping that by posting what I’ve been up to I can hold myself accountable to study regularly.
How prepared are you for the exam currently? I was actually originally planning on taking N4 this December but as I feel fairly confident that I would pass, I wanted to push myself more and try for N3. I’m not convinced I will pass but I’m feeling very motivated in my studies recently and want to see what my weak areas are.
What’s been your daily routine recently? Have you noticed any significant improvements from new resources you’ve used? Grammar points are sticking with me a lot more now that I’ve started watching Japanese Ammo. I’m also using the Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese textbook every day where possible and the reading sections of that are helping me pick up the pace with my reading speed.
Today’s entry - 21st August
Reached WaniKani Level 18 - according to my wkstats, if I level up as fast as I can I should have most of N3 kanji covered by December
Studied に当たる、のような、わける、つまり from textbook
Read a Watanoc N3 article and make some new AnkiApp entries
I just signed up for the December N3 as well. Kanji will be cutting it a little bit close, but I should be on around 80% kanji knowledge around the test and I DO know a bunch of other kanji already so that should be fine. Mostly worried about reading and listening comprehension.
N3 will be quite hard for me, but I’d rather challenge myself and have to redo it than have an easy time at N4 but not much to learn until December.
Quite a few:
To ease me in, I started listening to the Genki CDs, first with the transcript, then without. After getting a bit more comfortable, I moved onto Japanese podcasts.The NHK news podcast is really useful because it’s mainly polite Japanese, and you can pick up a lot of vocab. I slow it down to 0.75 speed, give it a listen, and then try again at full speed. I don’t understand all of it, so I note down vocab/grammar that is new as I listen on the slower speeds and just look it up. It’s not something you can really do while travelling, unfortunately. A few other podcasts include Small Talk in Japanese, Mook Study (history), and the old classic JapanesePod101 (the intermediate and advanced audio blogs - some good topics). I use the podcast addict app because it allows me to slow things down more finely than the itunes one.
I’ve also been watching a few episodes of Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories on repeat with and without subtitles to get a better ear for not-so-standard Japanese.
On top of this, I’m in a couple of language exchanges with Japanese native speakers trying to learn English. This has been really tough, because everyone speaks differently, and speaking is a whole other bag to listening. However, it’s been so useful in training me to understand real-time Japanese, and understanding the gist of phrases even if I don’t totally catch what people are saying. The app I use for this is called Tandem.
I feel you! I have such a hard time speaking to different kinds of Japanese people. The Japanese used by the university students sometimes feels like a completely other language compared to what we learn in in class. And then there all these different types of dialects…
I’ve picked up about a million and one new ways of combining sentence ending particles. Not to mention different ways in which men and women choose to speak, and then you’ve got slang! Hopefully it will get easier
Has anyone tried the 日本語の森 YouTube series? I started using it recently and I seem to get through grammar a lot quicker when it’s being explained to me like that, with the added bonus of the speaker using only Japanese. I like JapaneseAmmo but her videos are quite long and she uses predominantly English.
Also, I watched 天気の子 yesterday and it wasn’t impossible to understand - there seemed to be a lot of N3 grammar used in it that I picked up on. Plus it was fun to watch
I signed up for the December test to push myself as well, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to pass by self-studying
So far, I completed the Kanzen Master Grammar Book (I still need to review all the grammar points lol), I’m currently at the Chapter 5 of the Try! Book (I find it rlly useful because it helps me to refresh some of the KM grammar points and teaches me some new ones), finished the Sou Matome Vocabulary Book (still need to review), already read 50% of the Sou Matome Reading Book and memorized 35% of the kanji list.
Once I finish all of these, I’ll be totally focusing in listening that is the section that scares me the most
Sounds like you’ve got most of the grammar covered!
Listening wise, the ‘Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese’ textbook has a lot of listening material that pairs with the grammar sections so you can hear what you just learnt being used in action. Other than that I’ve been watching Terrace House, trying to have conversations in Japanese in real life using what I just learnt and also doing practice N3 listening tests from YouTube. Good to do and see where you’re at/what vocab areas are your weak spots. Now I know I need to go over keigo stuff.
