173 days for N1 - Should I increase my daily vocab count?

[Minh_Nguyen]

I am sorry for this mediocre question, but I kind of need some advices.

So, I am currently done with all N1 and below grammars. And begin to work on N1 vocab on the night on Jan 1st (new year resolution).

I am currently at 20 new vocab/day. With n1 vocab about 277 done /2974 total, my daily review is around 120-200 per day. At this pace, I should be done before N1 exam day on July 2026 with 38 days left to spare. My retention rate for very new card is 80% and should be 90%+ for thing after beginner (1st tier).

So, my question is, should I push for 25-30 words/daily? So that I can have around 2 months for mock tests and letting time for those last N1 words to sink in. Any if anyone here adding more than 20 words daily, what is your average review count? I want some reference point too.

Thank all.

[genjibear]

I think it depends mostly on if it’s sustainable for you. You could try it? Also, I would recommend working on mock tests even when you don’t have all the vocabulary just to get more practice with it, and reading practices will help with the vocabulary as well.

Personally, I would keep the lower level, read more, and start mock test questions sooner and work on things like reading speed. I also think it’s valuable to have to use context clues when you don’t know all the words. You’ll still have time to work on vocab you aren’t comfortable with, but you’ll be improving your test taking skills and reinforcing the vocabulary in a more meaningful way, IMO.

[travv0]

I agree with @genjibear that it’d be better to go ahead and start doing mock tests alongside learning vocab. It’s also worth remembering that they’ll put plenty of words on the test that won’t be in any N1 vocab list/deck (unless there’s one with an absurd number of words I don’t know about), so it’s not like you’ll finish the Bunpro deck and then suddenly know all the words that you’ll see on mock tests. I think figuring out words from context and kanji is something they deliberately try to test, though obviously there are some footnotes for especially rare ones.

[homa]

I’m gonna punch my method I guess.
What if, for each new word with a kanji you are not sure you know (reading and other words that use that kanji) you add that kanji as a separate entity in Anki or just in notebook, then you just review it trying to recall the word it uses (also you can pay attention to sound component, other words, compare to similar kanji).

Also you can add hiragana > writing in kanji.
If you can recall the writing of a word you can recall it.

If you know where the kanji is coming from you can deduce it’s reading and sound every time, which makes learning words 10 times more enjoyable (it feels to me like that). You basically see the roots kind of.

So ye, I’m saying that slower is better. If you go deep and make more connections with what you already know, or creating new ones would be deep from the start.

The problem with srs that I’ve faced is that I’ve learned a bunch of words without connecting them (not even just srs, learning words without trying to see how they connected with other words I know) so when I started connecting them, even without learning anything new, I’ve done like a 4 month progress in one. It felt really good.

[Rukifellth]

Let me preface this to say take my advice with a grain of salt.

The goal is to pass, yes? even if you don’t know all the words, even if it’s 80% retention rate, that is still good enough. (unless you’re exceedingly unlucky on the test and they happen to mostly focus on words you don’t know) I used to do thirty words per day, however I didn’t do it for long due to other things getting in the way and vocab study is intensely boring for me, but during that time I was getting about 75% retention rate consistently. Now when I’ve returned to vocab study from books like kanji in context using other apps for study I’m hitting 95+% retention. sometimes it takes time for words to sink in, and if you’re doing N1, you should know how you learn anyway.

I’d say go for 25-30 a day, so long as it doesn’t burn you out. you’ll eventually catch on even if your retention is lower now, it should improve. that or keep trucking on as you are.

[cafelatte]

I think your retention rate will also get higher if you add words to your queue as you hear them or read them in media you are consuming! I added three n1 words today from a podcast alone. Where/how you first are exposed to a word has a big impact on retaining it after.

[Sean]

Depends if you have other weaknesses you should be focusing on.

Kanji knowledge and doing the 新完全マスター 解読 basically carried me through the Reading section. I feel like regardless of how much you study there will be words you don’t know.

Maybe take some mocks to see where you struggle first?

[Hairymini]

My 2 cents. I’m in a similar position, combined ~2000 words on N1 and N2 lists. I tried going up to 40 words a day from 20 a day and got burned out quickly. Maybe 30 is the sweet spot, but I’m still feeling the effects of getting burned out.

I do the reading mode which is faster too, but at a fairly strict standard (kanji readings must be correct and translation must be accurate.) My accuracy rate hovers around 75%, but that’s factoring in many sentences containing words I’ve not seen before. Fortunately that helps acclimatise to the real experience of words I don’t see often too.

In my experience slow and steady wins the race and although it’s fun to get obsessed with metrics and numbers going up, immersion and native content is very valuable to do in parallel.

[Minh_Nguyen]

Hmm, how many reviews do you have when you added 40 new daily words? It seems like from my own experience, the total review varies, but stay about 7-9 times of the daily added items (ofc depend on accuracy as well). I have almost finish my N1 anki deck, so I might increase my pace just a bit to 25 words per day and see from there)

Beside, for some reasons, I found that N1 vocab deck should not contain many easier words, although I have just only complete about 15%+, but anyhow I dont thing word like けど、始め should be in N1 deck.

[Hairymini]

At 40 words per day, within like 2 weeks I was up to 220-240, with a trajectory of that number steadily increasing. Currently I can do 1.5 hours of reviews and I get 150-180 reviews with 20 new words a day.

It’s not impossible or unreasonable to do if you have the energy to sprint through it, but it does have risk.

[Hairymini]

Also yes, doing the N2 and N1 decks in parallel the N2 deck has some really hard words whilst N1 has some simple words. It might be biased by the way I sorted which words I already knew, though.