Study method for N1

[silvermaple]

For starters I'd like to lay out for you what I've been doing so far to study for N1 (it's quite a ways away, but my job is seasonal, so I have time to fully devote to studying ^.^)

Kanji: I've taken the kanji lists from www.tanos.co.uk and looked them all up. I got a graph ruled composition notebook and looked up every kanji one-by-one in my Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary. This took me forever, but I think in the end it was worth it. I cross-referenced each kanji with the vocab list I also got from tantos.co.uk, and made two Anki decks, one for kanji and one for vocab. Now that I've finished my N1 deck, I'm using the same method to do N2 and then N3 kanji, because a cursory review of them told me I only know about 50% of them...no wonder I failed 2級 a couple years ago...

As a supplement I also frequent https://kanjibox.net/kb/, and have started keeping another notebook of kanji that are close and always trip me up ^.^

Vocab: The Anki deck I mentioned only contains only the vocab words that have the N1 kanji list in them, so it's far from complete. I found a shared Anki deck that I've started doing every day. I don't love learning the words out of context, but it's better than nothing, and if I do stumble across a vocab word doing reading I get a high and it's greatly reinforced

Listening: I love studying this section because it's suspiciously like slacking-off and watching TV. It's not, I promise! I may have failed 2級, but I passed the listening section with flying colors, and yet I did 0 practice runs with listening (well, maybe one or two...not enough to count). My classmates had the same outcome, and we chalked it up to watching too much Jdrama and anime. So, I'm taking the same approach, and I've started watching Drama without subtitles. I'm trying to do an episode or more a day but sometimes it ends up more (oops). (Although there is definitely a merit to watching with subtitles, as long as one is actively listening...going sub-less is to make it more challenging.) The key is actively listening, and picking out the important words to look up in my dictionary, not trying to figure out every single thing they say.

Reading: I found the online version of the local newspaper where I stayed during my year abroad in Japan (Yamaguchi Shimbun), and I've been reading an article a day (Rikaichan is a life-saver here). I read somewhere this was a good idea because the test writers like to put newspaper-like articles in the reading comprehension section. I'm getting used to certain ways newspapers word things and I think this is far and away one of the best practices I've adopted. I'm also reading a novel I picked up in Japan, and I've saved a whole bunch of interesting Wikipedia articles, but I'm not that diligent about reading those...

Grammar: Here's where I get stuck. I have several lists, in several different formats, of grammar points found on the N1 test (and N2, and even 2級)...but I'm not sure what my first step is going to be. I've started reading some of them...I made and started an Anki deck, but it was ineffective. I'd like to just absorb them by osmosis from reading materials, but I couldn't be sure that I was getting every point that I'd need. I have a plan to go through the grammar points, make example sentences and post them on lang-8 for some friendly correction. Le sigh. This is my weakest section and the hardest to study for.

And there you have it. If anyone has any pointers or comments or anything, that'd be awesome Mostly I just wanted to share in case anyone wants to try some of my methods for themselves!

頑張りましょう！！

edit: OH now it works! Ended up being something I did wrong with a link...I couldn't tell ya...

[SweetyPie]

How intertesting are you? Not very.

[silvermaple]

I know! It came out blank...I really did post something...I've been trying to fix it, but I don't even know what's wrong in the first place... It's quite long, is there perhaps a length limit?

EDIT: I fixed it. I'm not sure what happened, but it is now visable

[silvermaple]

Well, it's been a while, and my study methods have changed a bit, so I thought once again for posterity I'd share what I've been doing to prepare, as we come up to registration time for the December test

Kanji: I've actually stopped studying kanji specifically. I got far along on my Anki deck, and I started to realize that I didn't have the time for it, and that I was getting diminishing returns for the amount of time I was putting in. If I come across a kanji that I don't quite know, I'll look it up, and that works fine for me. Note, I had already looked up and seen for the first time every kanji for N1, so I'm not actually going in blind.

Vocab: I do my Anki deck every day (time permitting), and I've started doing a N2 deck as well. I've stopped looking at my deck that only has vocabulary that uses kanji on the (unofficial) N1 list. This is the section that I've worked the most on thus far, and I've seen a marked improvement in my practice test scores.

Listening: Same as before, I watch Japanese TV. I don't have a lot of time, so I don't watch a lot of it, but I try to when I can.

Reading: I haven't kept up on reading my Japanese news articles, though I wish I would be better about that. It really did help. I'm starting to go through a N1 reading workbook. "Learning Through Patterns: A Reading Workbook for Level 1 of the JLPT". I've only started, but I really like it.

Grammar: This is where I'm most proud of myself. I was so lost on how to study for grammar, but this is what I've been doing. I've found several lists of grammar points, and I have a notebook. I sit down, and for every point I scour the internet for study sites like rensyuu.org, J-Gram, etc, and books I have in print, and consolidate every piece of information on any given point. I've accumulated almost a full notebook of notes to study from, and I'm really pleased with it!

So anyway, that's what I've been doing. I've got some workbooks coming in the mail, and I plan on doing those, and also taking a couple practice tests a month until the big day.