I’m getting cold feet abou N3. I almost wanna just do N4 and call it aday. lol
I’m going to take a practice test before deciding.
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Actually I wasn’t, I am not in Japan right now haha… After I finished work in the afternoon, I just wanted to update my registration info on the JLPT website, get the photo ready etc (ie to get ready for today to apply) and realised that I can just apply, so I did lol.
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okay I have officially signed up for JLPT N3. Now I’m even more anxious, I’ve never been good at language tests to begin with. lol.
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I’m in the same boat. I’m also bad at language tests lol. But it’s worth a try! I just signed up for round 2 of N4.
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I’ma be honest, I am skipping n4 because of the whole idea that it’s focused on specific grammar structures,whereas n3 is more focused on grammar phrases which i have a better grasp on figuring out. I struggle every chance i get when it comes to certain grammar points likeしなければならない or かもしれない but phrases like かというと or に相違ない make perfect sense to me.
Just from experience, you’ll only see each of the difficult grammar structures like once or twice on the whole exam.
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that’s good to know. Do you happen to know how the N3 deals with furigana? I’m quite confident in my kanji, but I worry if some common words that I see in kanji will be in hiragana and I just do nt recognize them.
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There could still be quite a few words written out in hiragana, but nowhere near as many as N4 or especially N5.
From what I can remember, I think it’s especially in the grammar section where I was trying to work out where the words start and end, I guess possibly because they believe the kanji vocabulary questions at the start of the paper are where they want to test kanji specifically.
But by N3, lack of kanji is usually much less of a problem 
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that sounds good. just as long as they don’t try to whole 本日 and 日本 style of tricking you with kanji. (if you aren’t paying full attention)
My biggest worry is honestly vocabulary. I feel like my vocabulary is quite lacking but at the same time I’m able to have conversations to a decent degree. i guess I should really hit the books.
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That’s almost certain to be in there somewhere! 
Sometimes it does seem like every single question is a trick question and makes you wonder why they can’t include just a few reasonable questions that aren’t designed specifically to trip you up and then laugh in your face as you walk straight into the next round of tripwire 
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reminds me of those old ACT prompts for english, it’s like what is the primary statement of this paragraph, then it’s like 4 very plausible answers.
But i guess they want you to understand te difference between
"汚水を飲まないでください。”
and "汚水を飲んでください。”
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They all seem very plausible until you see one of your answers from a couple of months or years before and you say “How could I be so stupid!” xD
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For a good idea of the difficulty of each level you can check out the eiken. It has some extra levels (pre-2, pre-1) but otherwise the difficulty and style of test is pretty similar (except the eiken has output). Depending on your outlook you may find it either an encouraging or sobering experience. Here is a link to some past questions you can check out.
@Rukifellth What’s your reading speed like? My strategy for the grammar and reading paper was to do the reading first, blast through it as quickly as possible to get extra time to spend on the grammar questions. It worked for me as I’d hit a few grammar questions that I’d dither over and waste time. Also I really struggle to do the star questions under pressure, so I wanted to feel 'okay, the rest of the remaining time is just to figure out these bad boys;
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Star questions are one of my few strengths generally.
my reading speed… I can read about 10 pages of a light novel in an hour. so less than ideal. I have been speeding up as of late since I started seriously reading a month ago (weening off manga, just picked up a few books from bookoff today) so I anticipate my reading speed shall improve slowly over the next couple months. I intend to use books for the bulk of my vocabulary study until the test.
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I guess it will vary by difficulty of novel, but that’s much quicker than me, good one!
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Vocabulary is actually the reason I’m retaking N4 instead of skipping to N3. I greatly overestimated how much I knew 
I want to try to get a pass under my belt to keep me motivated. Knowing me, possibly failing N3 would probably set me back in motivation. Good for you for going straight for it!
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Thanks. I mean I have a lot of practical experience in japanese. probably more than most people in this forum, however I am still hesitant about things. I’m very confident in grammar and listening and to an extent kanji. vocabulary I plan on reading all of 君の名は, ほっといてください, and this other isekai i found at book off called アラフォー賢者異世界生活日記. I hope these books will teach me at least enough to glide by a 60 grade. of course patching it with bunpro and jpdb.io will help.
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Also signed up for N2 today. I am going to work on wrapping up n2 here on Bunpro and then just read a lot before the exam. We shall see.
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It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it here but I signed up to take the N2 in July. I will also be trying the N1 in December, depending on how I do in July. I have never taken the JLPT before so I’m looking forward to it even though it’s mostly useless.
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