Recently, I have been adding new grammar points at a rate of 4 per day, which gives me enough time to have all the N3 points as reviews before the upcoming JLPT N3 exam and some time to review and cram difficult points.
After that, I realize I can reduce that pace quite a lot. Even though my current pace is manageable, it’d be good to focus on vocab a bit more.
What I’m wondering about is if the N2 and N1 points will take me more time and be much more confusing to remember and write correctly.
Weirdly, I was having quite a few difficulties with many of the last N4 points, but the N3 points I’ve seen up until now have been easier.
I also regularly immerse and do Anki flashcards so I wonder if recognizing grammar points I may have seen before learning them on Bunpro helps.
If anyone who has finished Bunpro grammar could help that’d be great!
I haven’t finished Bunpro grammar (despite being by far the oldest rabbit on the platform), but I agree that the difficulty peaked somewhere in N4, when a lot of concepts were totally new.
By N2 and N1, I don’t think you’re learning radical or completely new things, but it’s more like refining what you already know with some additional expressions.
I didn’t find N2 too bad, but I thought N1 had some more difficult sections. For the other levels (besides N5 which is higher), I’m sitting around an 84-85% correct rate if I look at my stats screen, but N1 is at about 79%. It is worth noting that I did pass N2 years ago, but I forgot almost all grammar besides the most basic stuff since then, but I’m sure that still made a difference in how much effort it took me to learn those grammar points compared to the N1 ones.
I find n1 hard just because about half of grammar points I have never seen before (or after) in my immersion,so I forget them constantly. They’re never conceptually difficult, but if you only ever see them in the context of an SRS where the sentence changes every time you review the grammar point, that shit is going to be difficult
adding onto this, I find n5 and n4 to be like the fundamentals of grammar, while n3 and n2 (from my experience) seem to be additional flourishes. This makes them harder in a way tho because they tend to be things that come up less and less.
At least for first language English speakers, I think the early stages of very foreign grammar such as “these are particles”, “these are intransitive pairs”, “this is polite language but specifically used to show your humility, whereas that is specifically used to show your respect for the other person” or “this is the causative-passive tense” are incredibly conceptually difficult.
At this time, it’s likely that other beneficial vocabulary, kanji and even cultural knowledge is also at a low level – so your crutches for contextual understanding are also low. However, because these forms are so fundamental for the language if you immerse in just about anything, you’re going to get very familiar with them very quickly.
As you progress later on, you aren’t learning these challenging concepts but instead the function of set phrases and expressions and how they operate in a sentence. An analogue can be something like “not only… but also” in English. If you’re doing enough work around grammar studies, you will probably know some of the words that form the expressions already and can make pretty educated guesses on what’s going on from these words.
There will still be things you struggle with – for example, at N2 there are loads of patterns with もの in that I just cannot seem to internalise.
As someone else mentioned, you do start to encounter some slightly archaic patterns that seem to come up very rarely in at least the content I have been immersing with. As a result, you don’t get the constant reinforcement that you will with something initially challenging but frequently used like the causative-passive form.
I’ve had 0 problems past n4 grammar, really. especially after stepping away from grammar and just actually immersing in the culture, so far I’m reviewing after a 9 month break or so, and I’m hardly missing any grammar.
As other said after N3 especially, a lot of the grammar is just the same thing just in different orders. the meanings of the particles don’t really change, just the combined meaning of two particles can be difficult at times. If you pay attention to what’s really being said and the combination of particles, you can most likely figure out what is being said anyway, or at least get a good feel for what is being said if you read the whole sentences, like “what would make sense in this situation.”
Unrequested advice from me and I’m kicking myself now for not doing- make sure your vocab is at or a higher level than your grammar. As they say, “you can’t say much without grammar, but you can’t say anything without vocabulary.” It makes piecing together grammar much easier, and reading much more enjoyable.
IMO, the biggest issue is that you’ll have several patterns that mean the same thing (don’t get me started on all the ways to say “even though”) that have slight subtle differences in meaning. This doesn’t mean you can’t pass the test if you don’t fully get that nuance–I certainly did. But it means that learning it can be difficult because so many mean essentially the same things and determining which to use when can be difficult.
Reading a lot can help, and I recommend that more than anything else. Reading is the best way to improve your skills and vocab and see grammar used in a natural way. I’d recommend combining a mix of news articles (Todai Easy Japanese is a great starting point here) and short stories to give you a good mix of formal and non-formal Japanese. Murakami Haruki has short story collections that are great for when you’re bridging between picture books/manga and novels. They’re well-written and interesting and short enough to not be overwhelming.
My opinion is that each stage has easier and harder parts and the challenge of learning will change over time. By far the biggest challenge beyond N5/N4 is the amount of time it takes to correctly internalise nuances and, in many ways, you’ll be re-learning the N5/N4 basics all over again as you uncover more nuances at each level.
- N5 and N4: Difficult because you are learning the fundementals of how the grammar actually works, however “easy” insofar as the amount you need to learn is minimal and the grammar is so common that you will reinforce it by reading or listening to literally any Japanese.
- N3 and N2: Easier to grasp the rough meaning of grammar points but difficult due to having to actually grapple with the nuance of phrases and the context things are used in (on Bunpro, highly suggest relying less on the English sentence translations and focus on the nuance hints at this stage!).
- N1: Much easier to grasp what things mean and why but things become a lot more contextually sensitive and you may have to study patterns which you don’t come across in the media you regularly consume if you tend to stay in one lane (I’d suggest trying turning off all English during reviews and use the Japanese nuance hint during reviews at this point).
Keep in mind that as you reach higher levels the role of reading and listening practice increases dramatically. If you can connect what you’re seeing on Bunpro with things you’ve already seen or regularly see in the wild then you’ll be golden 
Yeah I agree, I do sentence mining and don’t really consider whether or not that vocabulary is particularly hard as ideally it will all end up in my deck one day.
Thanks, I’ll check out the short stories, I already use Todaii regularly and it works well for me.
Ah yeah I hadn’t considered turning off the English, that’s a daunting idea. I’ll try doing that thanks!
Thought N4 and N2 were hardest. N4 because of lots of new concepts, N2 because of similar grammar points and nuances. Almost done with N1, and it has been quite smooth. Lots of grammar points are immediately understood with short explanation due to being much more used to the language, and their nuances are generally apparent.
For me, N4 was by far the hardest. It still has the difficulty increase due to learning the basics of a language, but even if we ignore that, the grammar points are very difficult themselves I think. It’s because you need to learn so many conjugations (passive / causative forms, 3-4 ways to conjugate “must do”, sonkeigo / kenjougo, etc.).
There are a few tricky grammar points in N3 / N2, but in comparison to N4, many of their grammar points are rather just nuanced vocabulary.
Especially at N2, there are grammar points which you’d probably would have heard a lot during immersion (さすがに、おそらく, …)
Glad to hear a lot of people say that N4 is hard 
. I’ve finished the grammar and parked here while I try to catch up on vocab. Hopefully this gives me more time to internalize the different conjugation before moving on
Yeah, N4 is my level with the lowest correct percentage after N1.
this makes me feel better. I’m struggling myself through N4 grammar and I was really concerned “if N4 is this hard, then how will I feel about N3”
I didn’t know about Todai but I see it’s very useful to learn new vocab from articles. Thanks!