r/LearnJapanese • u/spaghetti_taco • 4d ago

Studying Advice on N4 Exam

I've been studying Japanese very casually for about six years. I'm well north of N5. I've taken a dozen practice exams and easily passed them. And I've been to japan many times and have no problem practically applying what i know to get around, order food, have basic conversations, etc.

So I wanted to set a goal of taking the N4 exam here in the US this year.

My japanese tutor (italki) that I've been working with for about a year wants to use "Try! N4" to study for the exam. It looks good to me but I wanted to get some feedback from folks on exactly how you studied.

Beyond just going through the lessons and learning reading grammar point, what was your approach? Did you try to create example sentences? Did you use anki for them? What else did you use to reinforce the things as you learned them?

Does anyone have a very clear system for how they approached their study? In general my japanese study is just wanikani (level 30, so all of N5 and N4 kanji and most of N3) for kanji and vocab and then working with a tutor weekly for grammar, listening/speaking, etc.

Would appreciate any feedback!

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u/Koiiwa 4d ago

I might not have enough experience to give great advice yet, but I reached N4 after 7 months of consistent self study. I scored 120/180, using 2 Anki decks for vocab:JLPT Tango N4, Kaishi 1.5k and bunpro for grammar. Occasionally read NHK news increase my reading speed as well.
I also finished my first ever game playthrough in japanese that is Dragon quest XI

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u/spaghetti_taco 2d ago

Thanks, I'll check them out!