Whoa, thank you for the review! I’ve only ever interacted with 日本語の森 via youtube so I never really internalized the fact that they have a website haha. But as soon as I read your review I went over and made an account thanks again!
edit: I’m thinking of saving it for maybe October or November and then getting a 1-month pass to wrap up my personal studies. I love their setup, I’m so glad when I can find resources like this (it’s very similar to the website I used to study for the GRE, too, which is extra exciting lol)
I honestly mainly did the annual subscription because I couldn’t figure out how to do it monthly lol. I justify it though bc I can use it next year to study for the N1 until August 2024
I was kind of waffling on actually signing up for N2 after I got some news at the beginning of the month, but there were still a ton of N2 seats in seattle when I checked tonight, so now I’m officially signed up! Fingers crossed I can make it in time
Signed up for N2 with the hopes that it will motivate me. At my current rate I should be good on Kanji, but I’m new to using Bunpro and am struggling to study grammar. I have practice textbooks but they’re just sample questions, no grammar explanations. Certainly grappling with the possibility I fail. But some days are better than others ＾ー＾
Best of luck to everyone!
Sorry to dig up old post, but for some reason when I clicked on this thread this appeared
Its extremely exaggerated. 36,000ch/hr is the number often given (upper range of your number) for reading, but its kinda iffy honestly. Anyways even if we take the middle of the range thats 30,000ch/hr.
At the time I took N1, around 15,000ch/hr would have been good for me for the content on the test. Half of a native speed. But on the test weekend, I fell ill, causing me to not be able to really sleep the night before, and I went that day without coffee because I left my can in my bike basket.
Needless to say there is no chance I got close to my typical 15,000ch/hr that day (half of native). And yet, on the reading section I read through all the texts twice, once just for fun and one to go back and answer the questions. And after that I had 40 minutes left over which I gladly used to sleep.
Moral of the story, I was probably way less than half native and had 40 minutes left over. The idea that you need to read fast is a myth. I imagine its just that theres probably people who have trouble with the language knowledge section or reading section due to a lack of knowledge so it feels to them like they’re pressed for time. Be solid on your content and time shouldn’t be an issue for N1 or N2.
I don’t think it’s a myth – I think that reading speed and fluency is a big part of N2 and N1. But you don’t need to be able to read anywhere near native speeds, you just need to be as good as it as the average learner who’s put time into reading. Your learning journey was almost entirely reading, so of course you had no problems. The “you need to be able to read at reasonable speed” advice is aimed at people who’ve largely taken a textbook based route, maybe some manga, but haven’t yet done enough work on reading longer form written material, which is fine at N3 and below and definitely won’t work at N1, and the point is to say “do enough reading that you’re actually reading and not just wading slowly through the text”.
Yeah exactly. Read at a reasonable speed that isn’t a crawl through the text. Needing to read fast is 100% a myth. You can read at 25% the speed of a native and be fine I feel like. Its not a reading fast problem its a reading problem.
I feel like anytime the N1 or sometimes even N2 comes up theres always talk about how you gotta “gogogo”, “use these skimming strategies”, “practice reading fast”, etc. and I feel like it really gives the wrong impression to learners of what exactly is being required of them. It makes it seem like “speed” is the name of the game, whereas the real game is “comfort” and speed and comprehension is a natural symptom of that.
Lol, I just had a look at the bollocks I wrote at the time and in retrospect both you and @pm215 are right.
The last time (and first time in general) I took the N2, it was my first JLPT exam ever and because I poorly slept the night before, I really struggled to focus on the text to comprehend it.
I guess maybe now that I’ve spent extra time on reading the last couple of months I would do better, but whenever I do the Reading section exercises with my teacher I do poorly, because I find the answers to the questions somehow tricky and/or convoluted . Not sure how to work that out.
Anyone have a deck of N2 vocab that excludes Wk vocab and katakana words? Looks like Torii has something close but it’s a no go for me since doesn’t support iOS or have a web app so can’t do it on the go.
That’s probably the sort of thing you’re gonna need to make yourself, but it shouldn’t be toooo hard. Anki can build decks from a CSV file, so if you already have a deck for all of N2 and a deck for all of WK vocab you can write something quick to exclude any vocab that shows up in the WK list. Actually not sure how to filter katakana words, but maybe you could regex? either way there shouldn’t be that many, the n2 vocab list is only like 1800 words to begin with minus however many are on wk. can just scroll through quickly and manually delete the katakana ones.
Thanks! Any idea where I can find the full N2 vocab list and the WK list? I’ll post the final list here once I create it as I suspect it would be helpful to others
jpdb.io has a JLPT vocab deck, but you need to be a patreon to mark WaniKani vocab past level 3 as known. (It’s $5)
I think it’s made from the list that was published for the old JLPT, so before the 2010(?) revision of the test. As far as I know that’s the only official list out there and it’s the one people usually use, but personally I think it’s a bit outdated. Wouldn’t be surprised if 25% of the words on there are no longer relevant. JLPT prep books might have a better list if they compile it themselves from past tests.
There is no official list these days, as you say – the JLPT org feels free to use any word they think a level N2 student ought to know. There are also no official past papers, so any you see are obtained through dubious channels, and a legit prep book publisher might well deliberately avoid those.
I think if you have learnt roughly 5000 words in something roughly approximating a frequency order from a source that includes some non-fiction type writing that will be fine. Pure vocab size is not all that important in my experience – not knowing a particular word won’t lose you all that many marks, and if your overall grammar and comprehension skills are good you can make it up elsewhere.
Does anyone know if the verbal instructions for the test are given in Japanese? Specifically instructions from the proctor, not the tape for the listening section.
thanks again!
. Not sure how to work that out.
