Are the N-Level Vocabulary Decks Accurate?

[catchingup]

So I’m preparing to take the N3 this December and up until now I have been using the vocabulary decks to study, but I have been encountering quiet a few inconsistencies that I am worried about for the test.

For example, this website and Jisho list 悪魔 (demon) as N3, but in Bunpro it is not even in any of the N decks. I have found a lot of words that do not match up with their Jisho ranking as well, but they are usually N2 or 1 on Jisho when they are N3 on Bunpro (for example 少なくとも).

Does anyone have experience using the decks solely to study for the exam? Just want to make sure I am concentrating my study efforts in the right place.

[stephane]

There is no official list so whether it is grammar or vocabulary you will constantly meet different rankings depending on the source.
I also noticed some bunpro N2 grammar points to be N1 on absolutely every other source I could find.

Now I would tend think N3/N2 vocab desks on bunpro are especially broad as they get much deeper in 音読み-type vocabulary which is by nature more specific, so the chances you meet such vocabulary at the test most likely get thinner.

It seems to me N5/N4 decks on the other hand have very few “superficial” content.

[catchingup]

Yeah, I mean I’m already this far in (done with N5/4 and 50% through N3) so not really looking to change my methods for December’s test. Guess I’ll just keep up the pace and hope for the best come test day that whatever scope it covered is enough!

[stephane]

I am in the same boat, I try do do as much as possible but I don’t stress too much about it either as I learn vocabulary from immersion only so I won’t learn it all anyway

[zerohbeat]

I would not worry about this.
The thing is that the JLPT exam is always changing. There are no official lists (supposedly there were for N5 and N4…) . The exam board always mixes it up. There are always all kinds of grammar points N4, N3, N2 and N1 on the JLPT N2 exam for example… Its the same with Vocab.

For N3, just just continue as you are doing and try to do as many practice tests / questions as you can before the exam. From experience, practice questions really help to get used to the exam format.

[veritas_nz]

From my experience, the stuff in our Decks is generally more inclusive/difficult than other sources, so N2 items can show up in N3 and so on.

So with that being said, I’d say if you do our N3 Deck, you should be more than well prepared for the test.

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I also really vouch for the Shin-Kanzen Master textbooks for being accurate in terms of difficulty to the actual JLPT.

Used them for N2 and N1 and they were perfect.

[Curnan2]

For what it’s worth, Jisho (which I think is a great resource) pulls the JLPT rankings from https://www.tanos.co.uk/, which, as far as I can gather, was the first widely popular web resource for JLPT materials. Many of the links on the website are now dead but the original vocab lists (which I think are based on the “old” JLPT, which did, I think, have actual official lists) are still there.

FWIW, I used that original Tanos N3 vocab list to prep for N3 just this past summer (I figured it’s as good as any list floating around out there), and it certainly covered the vast majority (but not all) vocab. Bunpro vocab decks, as mentioned already in this thread, are somewhat deliberately giving you more than you necessarily need to ensure you as prepared as possible.

[jrmr50]

But that appears to just be some guy’s website, so I wonder why it gets treated as some authoritative resource. Also it doesn’t appear to be updated in an age.
I could buy all the shin kanzen vocab books, harvest the words, spin up a website and put an api over the top… I think it would be as good, if not better resource.

[veritas_nz]

DO EEET

[Curnan2]

I honestly have no idea why Tanos is treated authoritatively (or why it once was), I’ve often wondered that myself.

As to your technical suggestion…hey Bunpro staff, what he said!

[jrmr50]

spend all my free time learning Japanese…

[CursedKitsune]

This guy has done a very nice job of putting all the SKM vocab into Anki decks, I assume manually. You could easily rip the information from those decks if you’re serious

[homa]

So true, Japanese takes all the time from programming