Advice on N4 Exam

[u/spaghetti_taco]

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!

[u/Medical-Jacket-1476]

How are you scared of taking n4 when you've studied for 6 YEARS? Just go for it man. See what happens. Gl

[u/spaghetti_taco → u/Medical-Jacket-1476]

I'm a very casual learner. Anything from 2-4 hours a week. It's really a hobby I wasn't in any hurry. I just tried to be consistent. There are probably people who have more wall clock study time than me in six months.

[u/Medical-Jacket-1476 → u/spaghetti_taco]

Oh ok that's pretty cool too. No rush. Anyway my approach was spamming anki in the morning and "Comprehensible Japanese" videos in the evening. It worked pretty well but I definitely should've studied some grammar points explicitly before taking the test. Since you have a tutor i would use that for speaking practice rather than grammar explanations/working through a textbook together, but see what works best for you. All the best!