Study plans and JLPT
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
Study plans and JLPT · Page 21
The Gap Between JLPT N3 and N2, and How to Cross It
N2 is not simply N3 with more vocabulary. It asks you to do different work with Japanese, and knowing which five things change makes the gap crossable.
13 min readJLPT Vocabulary Strategy for Every Level
The JLPT vocabulary section does not reward the size of your word list. It rewards knowing what each word does inside a sentence.
13 min readWhat to Study After Passing JLPT N1
N1 is the top of the exam ladder, not the top of the language. The useful question is which of the three remaining directions you need most, and what your first project in it will be.
13 min readJLPT Level Versus Real Japanese Ability
A certificate and a conversation are two different achievements. Knowing exactly which parts of your Japanese the exam measured, and which it never looked at, tells you what to practise next.
12 min readHow to Learn Japanese from Manga Without Bad Habits
Manga lets you read Japanese above your grammar level because the pictures carry half the meaning and many titles print furigana over the kanji. The risk is copying speech that no one would use with a stranger.
11 min readLearning Japanese with Japanese Drama and Film
Live-action drama is the closest thing to a recording of the conversations you are training for. The trick is to study two minutes of it properly rather than watching ten hours of it hopefully.
11 min readHow to Learn Japanese with Music and Song Lyrics
A song can give you hours of willing listening practice and a chorus you will never forget. It can also teach you sentence habits that sound strange the moment you speak them.
14 min readLearning Japanese by Playing Video Games in Japanese
A game will keep you reading Japanese for hours that a textbook could never buy. The danger is finishing a hundred-hour story with a large vocabulary and no ability to say anything.
14 min readJapanese Subtitles: How to Use Them Without Cheating
Subtitles are not the enemy of listening practice. Reading them at the same moment you are supposed to be listening is. The fix is a sequence, not a ban.
14 min readHow to Start Reading Japanese News as a Learner
Japanese news looks like the hardest reading available, and it is in fact the most learnable, because the same structures and the same few hundred words come back every single day.
14 min readHow to Read Your First Book in Japanese
Finishing a whole book in Japanese is less about your level than about choosing the right book and agreeing with yourself in advance how much you are allowed not to understand.
15 min readLearning Japanese from YouTube and Vlogs
A video you enjoy and a video you learn from are rarely the same video. The difference is not the topic; it is whether one person is speaking clearly enough for you to take a sentence away with you.
13 min readPractical guides
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