Should I take N2 after failing N3?

Japanese Language
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I know based on the title it’s a no-brainer to think I shouldn’t try for N2 in December but read below to get an idea of where I’m coming from. I could use the advice cause I feel lost with Japanese right now and am not sure what to do.

I took the N3 exam in July and missed passing by just a few points.

My goal was to secure a job either here or back home in 2025, with hopes of obtaining the N2 certification after taking it in December. However, I’m now uncertain if this plan is still feasible.

I began studying Japanese full-time in January with no prior knowledge. Currently, I’m in a slower N2 class at my language school. While I understand much of the material, I’m concerned that the N2 level may be overwhelming.

I don’t want to give up, but I’m unsure if I need to adjust my study habits or if I’m simply experiencing burnout. I studied hard for the N3 exam ( I think), using Tango decks and an N3 kanji and vocab deck, and had language classes from 9 am to 1 pm, followed by an hour of additional review or random Japanese study at home.

I haven’t been incorporating much anime or manga into my studies—perhaps I should? I need to find a more enjoyable way to study so it doesn’t feel like a chore.

Going into the test, I expected kanji and vocabulary to be my strongest areas, but they ended up being the most challenging. I encountered many unfamiliar words and kanji I hadn’t seen before, despite completing several study decks with thousands of vocab and kanji.

My parents suggest studying for 8 hours a day, treating it like a full-time job. While I understand their perspective, my brain struggles with that. I hate the idea.

Its hard for most or anyone to get meaningful input from just 2-3 hours let alone 8. Even reading posts from people who passed n1 or n2 in a significantly short period seemed to average 4-5 hours a day not 8.
Continuous textbook or vocab study feels overwhelming. However, I feel even now I wonder if I’m learning anything at all. I feel I’m kinda falling apart here thinking about N2 and how to prepare.

I want to pass the N2 in December!!
Do you have any tips or new study habits that could help? Are there more enjoyable ways to engage with the language? (I really haven’t watched a lot of anime or read manga). Im up for it but might be slow to get into.

I appreciate you all and thanks for reading this. I will try and find the motivation to succeed.

Cheers

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That sounds like a great way to get a burn-out. If you consider doing fun things in Japanese as studying I might see it working, but glueing yourself to the books for 8 hours a day isn’t going to work.

There’s a limit to how much information you can take in in a given time as well, and your brain needs time to process the stuff you’re exposed to. As they say here:

Not all studying is equal. You will accomplish more if you study intensively. Intensive study sessions are short and will allow you to get work done with minimal wasted effort. Shorter, intensive study times are more effective than drawn out studying.

You’ll have noticed that after some time you’re having trouble concentrating, you’re more easily distracted, and stuff gets harder to remember. This is normal. Concentration and/or willpower are resources, at least in the sense that you can ‘use them up’. Some name 4 hours of concentration per day as the maximum.

I think at your level manga and reading books that you might enjoy will be very effective. You’ll see the words as they are used in their ‘natural’ setting, get a better feeling for context, and reinforce your knowledge of the words you’ve learnt. If it feels as entertainment and relaxation to you while you’re doing that, then even better!

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I appreciate the response a lot. So much nice people here than lets say on reddit or something.
I generally thought I was doing a decent amount of study before but what my parents are suggesting is just insane to me. I dont wanna treat this like a job. I wanna use it to get one sure but 8 hours of study doesn’t sound effective.

I do agree. I need more of a natural way I’m sure to absorb and enjoy and maybe some shows and books will be good for me. I really want to pass n2.

Do you think after my class- get home and review- do flashcards then just watch or read something interesting is the best idea?
Should I be going all out on everything I miss on a JLPT mock exam?

I am just worried since now I know reading is harder in mangas and VN I wont understand much so it’ll feel like a chore to make it fun. I know its the only way though. to just read

Thank you so much for the tips thus far

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Speaking as somebody with a full time job, it doesn’t involve eight hours of concentrated mental work a day :slight_smile: It has periods of that, but also periods of doing stuff that’s necessary but doesn’t require concentration, and also a certain amount of standing around by the proverbial coffee machine or water cooler…

For N2, this is where the reading section requirements really start to bite. You will need to get up to a decent reading speed and level of comfort with reading and comprehending texts without doing vocab or kanji lookups even if you don’t know every word and kanji. This means you need to start getting the reading hours in – just whatever reading you do in your class hours is unlikely to be sufficient. It doesn’t matter so much what you read, so pick whatever you can read and enjoy. If you’re not sure what might or might not be at a plausible difficulty level, the gradings at https://learnnatively.com/ might help (though bear in mind that your first book is always going to be difficult even if the grading says it’s “easy”). I gather you’re in Japan, which makes picking up reading material like manga a low cost low risk proposition – head into your local Book-off and pick up something second hand. If it turns out to be too hard or too dull, put it on your bookshelf to come back to later.

PS: getting from absolute zero in January up to nearly-N3 in July is a significant achievement, so you must be doing something right. Getting to N2 level in a single year from zero was always going to be a tough goal.

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I was doing similar, in that I’m not working so I should consider studying to be my job and therefore I must study for 6 hours every day. I have hit that goal a grand total of 3 times this year and have been beating myself up almost every day that I’ve not made it. So this idea that that isn’t actually a feasible goal has been helpful, thank you.

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I’m a firm believer in that anything can be done if you want it enough, but it doesn’t really sound like theres much I could tell you that would make you want it more.

Your best bet if you want to improve your speed is hands down to spend as much time with the language, though, so your only other option really is to just make studying more enjoyable/less painful. Luckily, thats a lot easier to exert control over than just “wanting it more” and it can have just as much effect.

I’ll give a few suggestions, but they will get more and more serious as the list goes on. All of them helped me, but you can pick how dedicated you want to be at this and draw the line where you deem personally fit for yourself. I’m not gonna try to convince you to do more than you want to do.

  1. Set a routine: Real basic, set aside a time and preferably a place where you study. If possible, use that place just to study and don’t bring your phone there or anything. Essentially you want to limit distractions so you’re not using (as much) willpower to focus and have a set time that you study so it becomes a habit .
  2. Fitting in with 1, consider using pomodoro or just taking regular breaks in between certain activities. Like maybe be like ok, imma knock out all my reviews in 20 minutes of focused effort, then take a break for 5 minutes. A very important point here imo is that don’t use your break to just go on your phone. Stop, maybe drink some water, go use the bathroom, stretch, or even just meditate (I personally like this one) for your 5 minutes.
  3. Spend more time with native content after your more focused studying. Make an active effort to actually look for content you want to consume rather than just sitting around waiting for it to fall from the sky. If you do and it feels a little bit too hard, maybe go through it once in english first and then in japanese, making sure to look up stuff and check your comprehension as you go. Or just get over it and bang your head against a wall anyways. It works for those with more drive, so maybe just give it a try. If you can’t handle it, no shame in going back to stuff that you’ve read once in english or stuff that is generally lower level.
  4. take a real hard look at what you’re actually doing with your time that you aren’t spending on japanese. Usually, I find that when I’m having difficulty with japanese youtube and kinda wanna stop and watch english youtube, its not the difficulty of japanese that is pushing me away. Its the ease of english pulling me in. My brain, and probably everyone elses, is very good at comparing what I have to that shiny thing over there that I don’t have. The times I feel less motivated to study japanese are the times I feel more drawn towards some other thing. But I think the cause and effect relationship is “other appealing activity making it hard to focus” and not “hard to focus so other activity is appealing” primarily. That is to say, by getting rid of as many “fun distractions” as possible, studying actually becomes more enjoyable. So turning off youtube recommendation, or creating a new japanese only account so I only get japanese video recommendations. Maybe lowering the time I spend playing video games or reducing it to 0 all together. Less or no time watching english netflix. Less or no time watching tiktok or scrolling through social media.
  5. Get your life more in order, generally. Maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but it applied to me and I know it applies to a lot of people reading this. Before my sleep schedule was all over the place. I kinda ate like shit, didn’t work out, and had highly variant energy levels. How far you take it is up to you, but I would at least highly recommend getting ample sleep every night (paying attention to quality) and go to bed and wake up at the same time every day if you can. Obviously its good to be as healthy as you can be, but the single largest factor for me was sleep. Rather or not I had a good nights sleep not only has material effect on my language ability, but it has massive implications for how motivated I am and how hard studying feels. When I feel great, it truly feels good to use my brain and study. When im tired, it actually feels like it hurts my head to have to think. Sleep habits are a big part of study habits.

Maybe theres some more I can add but none of it comes to mind at the moment. Hopefully its not too preachy, but take it as far as you’re willing. You don’t have to do it all at once either. Starting by just going to bed at a certain time tonight is something. You definitely are learning and if you stick with it I promise you’ll get better. I’ve been at this for awhile and am fluent, but even I have times where I feel like I’m not getting anywhere. Its normal and realization of progress usually comes in bursts. Keep at it and you’ll achieve your goals. You just gotta do it every day.

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Honestly, reading your response makes me a little teary eyed. Its well put and motivating.
So a big thank you.

Do you think listening to my favorite songs and reading and following the lyrics would help a bit?
Also any recommendations for an N2 Kanji deck and prep book for the N2?

I can buy anything here in Japan needed for help. I am just terrible at making a long term study habit or studying for such long hours a day.

I really appreciate your comment pm215. seriously. thank you.

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I totally agree. I really dont think its feasible unless its so fun that you barely notice it or that its so different from the regular way of book study.
Even after reading the incredible reddit posts of people making it past n1 in 8 months to a year they were averaging 4-6 hours a day of serious immersion and study. They are freaks of nature and treat it like a job. So i think we need to not beat ourselves up and consider that (1.01)^365 = 37.7 vs (1.00)^365 = 1. Meaning Doing even small amounts every day adds up.

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I cannot tell you how much I enjoy this comment.
I really appreciate it.

Im really not good at structuring my study at all. Im not a schedule type of person. So sitting down for hours is unmotivating but at the same time i realize I’m gonna have to make some sacrifice to make this happen.

I will start with the sleep idea. I should also probably hop off youtube as much as I am.

Based on my position do you have an recommended study materials or methods for study?

I know i didn’t pass the N3 but do i need to review it all again? Any recommended N2 vocab list or sites you found helpful to really bridge your gap in understanding?

Anything really.

Ill need it all if I’m gonna do this and I need to build my motivation too.

I really cant thank you enough. Great reply. !!

Thank you

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I’d suggest openly lying to your parents and telling them from now on cheerfully how you’re studying 9 hours a day or something. Honestly I’d do anything to have them out of my business. They surely mean well but tips like that surely come from someone that forgot what studying feels like and since they’re parents they’d surely go on about that in case you failed. You sound like it’s you that wants to really improve your Japanese so your main goal aligns with theirs anyway and as long as you’re doing your best in your own way (even if it means not doing anything or whatever you’ll end up deciding on eventually) it’s just fair to take the pressure from your parents expectation out of the equation.

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Parental Rant

When I was doing my degree (during lockdown) I was really struggling to maintain focus. To the point where I was a couple weeks into the last term of the last year and I realised I would fail if I couldn’t motivate myself. So, I asked my dad for advice.

What followed was a schedule of 10-12 hour days, not including breaks for food or other responsibilities like supervising my sister while she showers to make sure she doesn’t drown, and monetary consequences if I failed to keep to the schedule (£15 for the first hour I missed and doubling). He offloaded most of my chores to my sisters, so they hated me.

I lied. A lot. I watched a lot of YouTube with my hand ready to alttab at a moments notice. I did study some, but nowhere near as much as I was supposed to. But enough that I passed well. (Not well enough for my dad, never enough for my dad). And I was good enough at lying that I only had to pay my dad £15 once.

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Thank you for the time to reply. I agree. I need to get that part out of the equation and focus on myself and how I can reach my goal. Your reply really helps me realistically. Thank you so much. I wish you the best wherever you are.

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So, to be honest I don’t think that song lyrics are all that useful for learning, except in that if it’s something you enjoy the occasional “oh, I understand that now” moment can be motivating. Basically song lyrics are poetry, and that means they are often difficult to understand, use odd word orders or sentence fragments for the sake of rhythm or for effect, and there’s not much text there when you write it down. You aren’t going to get that much “progress towards N2” out of listening to music.

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I recalled posts like this

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Ah ok understood! Thank you

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@FlamySerpent
Honestly, what would you do in my situation above?
I have read your post on your N2 achievement (CONGRATZ) Do you think this N2 is possible?

How could I go about making it happen. Im so bad at planning my studies out. Any decks for Kanji/Vocab? Where to learn my grammar? Ill do more reading and I’m gonna buy the shinzen series.

Or anyone can recommend something.

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I don’t have any recommendations for the specifics of how you go about your studies, no. I learned japanese for the sole purpose of consuming content I wanted to consume, and I didn’t spend time working through a textbook really or learning the traditional way. I did wanikani, read, and did flashcards, and when I finished wanikani I just made reading and flashcards my entire study time basically. Then, once I moved to japan I just signed up for N1 to get the piece of paper in case I needed it.

It sounds like for you, the primary goal is actually getting the piece of paper as fast as possible. If thats the case, my gut tells me that you shouldn’t really try to emulate my study method. I would suggest reading reddit posts and stuff of people who passed n2 in similar timeframes to what you’re looking for and trying to emulate what they did. If you’re trying to get to n2 in a year, I would say anyone who has passed either n2 in about a year or n1 in about 2 years is a good data point for how to go about your studies. Maybe give less attention to people who already knew chinese coming into japanese.

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I appreciate your response and honesty.
My goal from the on set was to live and work here. Now that I’m in Japan (I’m really enjoying it) I wanted to start and look for work. However failing the N3 and feeling like it might not be possible to find a good job by January without an N2 certification hurts me because then Id have to leave. So many jobs need that little certification and I feel so stressed about it.

Ive made a schedule for words and immersion and JLPT books until the exam just unsure of what to do.
Did you ever have any N3 or N2 vocab/kanji decks? I have a good setup for immersion but the problem is how would I know those words Im immersing in are even for N2 or input +1. I want to make sure Im super prepared for N2.

Sorry for the long response. just giving my worries/details.

I appreciate everything, Thank you.

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I did maybe 1000 or 2000 words (cant remember at this point) words from a core 10k deck but I wouldn’t recommend it.

One resource I can point you towards is jpdb.io. If you are consuming a piece of content that is on there, you can see how many times a word appears in the work. It’s not going to tell you exactly what will appear on the N2, but word frequency and chance of appearing will be strongly correlated. Most things that appear say…3 times in a single book are going to be good to know for the N2. Exceptions include things that are just very specific to the context of the book and happen to appear a lot, but knowing those will be helpful for reading the book anyways. There are also frequency dictionaries that you could utilize to tell you how often a word is use in some medium whenever you look it up on yomichan. But again, this is frequency which is just correlated with what will appear on the n2. There is no actual set n2 list word list.

Theres also the route of doing a lot of grammar practice questions and learning words that you don’t know from there. For example, looking at kotoba bot’s n2 grammar quiz, all the words used are ones that I would expect someone who’s n2 to know

– 本日はお忙しい中、お越し（ ）、ありがとうございます。 (1, いただきまして)
– たとえ忙しい（ ）、たまにはあいさつに来るべきだ。 (4, にせよ)
– あの時のことをいくら（ ）としても、どうしても思い出せない。 (2, 思い出そう)
– 木の葉もようやく色づいて（ ）ました。お変わりございませんか。 (2, まいり)
– 都会の生活（ ）、地方の暮しはのんびりできていいという人が多い。 (1, に比べて)
– この学校ではそれぞれの能力に（ ）クラスを分けている。 (1, 応じて)
– たとえお金が（ ）、健康でなければ幸せとは言えない。 (1, あっても)
– 来月から、試験の成績によってクラス分けをする（ ）になったそうだ。 (2, こと)
– 最初は心配だったが、同じ練習をくりかえす（ ）、少しずつ自信がついてきた。 (4, にしたがって)
– 彼はみんなに会うのをとても楽しみにしていたのだから、（ ）。 (3, 必ず来ますよ)
– 無理、無理。そんなこと、あいつに（ ）。 (3, できっこない)
– 時がたつにつれて、（ ）。 (1, 二人の関係は冷めていった)
– 書類は送ってもらえばいいんです。取りに行く（ ）。 (2, ことはありません)

But again, there are already a decent amount of posts online about people who have achieved what you want to achieve. I think you should read those and try to emulate them to some degree. It’s a much more reliable way to go about things than asking people who haven’t actually done what you’re trying to do. I took the n1 after several years and by the time I did, there was no vocabulary or grammar I wasn’t familiar with so I was able to get a perfect score on that section without much issue. What you should be shooting for is the opposite. You really just need to be able to pass, even if girigiri, in the smallest timeframe. Since there is no word list, again I would just focus on making sure your method of learning vocab is similar to other people who quickly learned vocab and managed to do fine in that regard on the n2 in a small timeframe. If they managed to pass by only learning X subset of words and grammar, it stands to reason that if you learn a similar subset of words then you will do fine.

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Your detail is impeccable. I really appreciate it. I will look up some other posts based on that.
Again, great comment. Thank you.
Might not hear from you again so wishing you the best in life. will update this forum probably if I pass (or even fail) haha.