Issatry's Road to JLPT N2

[issatry]

I don't know how to start a log haha.

Name: Issatry
Age: 25+
Languages: Filipino (Tagalog), English
Short Term Goal (within the next 12 months): Pass N3
Long Term Goal (before I reach 30 years old): Pass N2

I have never tried taking the JLPT so I'm not really sure if I can pass the N3 on December 2021, if that pushes through.

What I've finished:

a. Genki 1 and 2 (Textbook and Workbook) - didn't focus on the audio exercises because they were too slow, didn't memorize the vocab lists in each chapter because most of the words are too specific and I didn't have any use of them at the time

b. Shin Kanzen Master N4 (Grammar only)

c. Nihongo no Mori N3 Vocab and Grammar playlists - will go through these again 3 months before the JLPT

d. Tobira (Textbook and Workbook)

e. Tadoku Reader - I got the PDF which had 600+ pages

f. A small novel I found in Google Books - this had around 70 pages

What I am currently finishing:

a. 超怖－ホラー小説集 - 202/241 pages

b. Kanji Recognition Deck (WK style) - unseen as of March 31, 2021 is 1,646 out of 4096 cards

My current study plan:

a. immerse in listening, watching and reading in JP from April to September 2021 - just immerse. I tried sentence mining before, but I focused too much on Anki and used it as an excuse to not do any immersion.

b. October to JLPT December 2021 - Shin Kanzen Master N3 (Grammar and Reading), re-watch all N3 Nihongo no Mori videos

c. go through Core10k at 30 words a day - I did this once but I deleted the deck when I was around 2-3k ish. Since I'm not too confident in retaining the vocab that I will be looking up while immersing, I decided to start this from scratch again.

Language Learning History:

I dabbled a lot since I was young. The other languages that I took seriously but then dropped:

a. Korean - I can read the basic conversations in webtoons. Dropped after I grew out of my K-POP phase.

b. Mandarin - got HSK 2 and HSK 3 certificates. This just shows that just because you can pass a test doesn't mean that you can use it in real life. Dropped because it was so difficult to find content that I enjoy.

c. Japanese - first language I dabbled in and interestingly, the language I finally chose as my official third language.

Here's to hoping I can log thousands of hours in immersion time by December 2021!

[kelvin921019]

Welcome to this forum.
I am also preparing for JLPT N2 coming July. I think if you have completed Tobira you should be able to pass N3 exam coming July (I guess the enrollment period has passed). I am going through New Kanzen Master N3 and about 70% of its content has already been covered in Tobira.

You can try the practice paper here
https://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/sampleindex.html
and you can find past listening papers on youtube (just search "JLPT [level] [year]")

[issatry]

@kelvin921019: Oh, good to know that SKM works well with Tobira. I checked the sample exam and I think the grammar section would be my weakest area, especially the Sentence Composition. I am hoping immersion would fix that.

Anyway, Day 1!

Start time: 00:00:00
End Time: 03:11:26 (listening and watching)

Anki: 352 cards in 00:23:00
Reading: 2 Business articles from NHK JP and 9 pages from the Horror novel

Listening and Watching:

お悩み相談 videos
CulTV videos
悠遠かなた's だぁ～れも知らない怖い話 series - I really like this series. The host takes in calls from random people who would then talk about their own supernatural stories.
4989 American Life

Reading:

I was only able to read 2 articles from the regular NHK news site but it took me an hour to finish. I can get the gist of the news for the most part but I still have a lot of difficulty understanding long sentences. Example from the 電力需給 来年2月 東京電力～九州電力管内でひっ迫の可能性も article:

全国の電力需給を調整している「電力広域的運営推進機関」は大規模なトラブルなどで需給がひっ迫する可能性も否定できないとして、火力発電所の補修時期をずらすなどの対応を各社に求めています。

I understood it but at the same I didn't. So, I used Deep L Translator just to check if I got the general meaning right. I probably shouldn't relay on this site too much though.

Also, I realized how effective studying Kanji is even in isolation. I had a few cards come up in my deck and I had no idea how to use them like 補 and 廃. When I read the above article, I then saw 補修 and 廃止. I have never encountered those words before but I was able to read them and guess what they meant just because I saw them in Anki.

Other things that crossed my mind today:

a. I miss sentence mining. I think I read the phrase 気が狂う at least 5 times in the novel but I had to look up the reading every single time. If I had mined this, I would have probably been able to memorize this faster. I still won't go back to sentence mining though haha. I want to try just doing immersion for a few months and if it doesn't really work for me, Anki will still be there.

b. I miss my community tutor in iTalki but money is currently tight and I'm starting to believe that you can't say something naturally in your target language if you haven't heard it before.

That's it for today. I wanted to immerse some more but I didn't want to risk burning out. I still have 3 free days and the holidays would be over.

[issatry]

Listening and Watching

Previous Time: 03:11:26
End Time: 10:43:35

I was able to watch a lot of videos from the CUL channel in Youtube. CUL stands for See You Later and is mainly about 6 teenagers(?) doing random videos.

What I've Learned:

I need to re-think my strategy for these two areas. The speed and slang used in the CUL videos made it hard for me to actually comprehend the dialogue and use it to increase my vocabulary and recognize grammar patterns. I need a more comprehensible input. I wanted to get used to the normal speed people use when talking because in real life, I can't ask them to slow down and repeat their words every 5 seconds. But, I guess I shouldn't take any shortcuts and do this slowly but surely.

Speaking

I know! I said I won't be doing any output for now, however, I've decided to take a 30 minutes class with a community tutor in iTalki at least once a week. They did say that if you wanted to learn how to speak, you actually have to speak. As long as I have the extra money, why not?

Reading and Anki

超怖－ホラー小説集 - 226/241
NHK News - 1 Business, 1 Society, 1 Politics
Anki: 01:31:00

This has been going pretty well. I'm thinking of finishing the horror novel within the day. There are words that stick and there are words that don't. After this, I was thinking of getting either a new ebook or reading my hard copies of "I Want To Eat Your Pancreas" and "Your Name". I'm leaning towards the former though, since it's hard to look up words without the copy-paste tool.

All in all, I think I was able to make the most out of the holidays.

Note: Sorry if my English is pretty bad. I have no idea how I got a C1 in the IELTS and it has gotten worse when I started focusing on Japanese content