Passed in N2 in ~1 year: My experience and advice

Japanese
#27

Congrats! I also passed N2 in 300 days (562 hours).

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r/Anki - I passed JLPT N2 after learning Japanese for 300 days and 562 hours.|750xauto

r/Anki - I passed JLPT N2 after learning Japanese for 300 days and 562 hours.|596.2732919254659xauto

Here is a quick breakdown of how I spent my time before taking the N2 exam:

  • Watching Anime: 170 hours (35 shows, 421 episodes)

  • Reading Light novels: 103 hours (9 volumes, about 900,000 characters)

  • Memorizing Vocabulary and grammar: 283 hours (8,000 words, 538 grammar points)

  • Test prep: 6 hours (did 3 practice tests one month before the exam)

A total of about 562 hours of study over 300 days, averaging less than two hours a day, which is about the amount of time an office worker can carve out.

The method used was immersive language learning, with no textbooks and no online courses.

Btw, my FSRS desired retention is 70% now.

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#28

Congrats on great work!
Based on the name I assume you have Chinese or Korean background, correct? According to the internet that usually cuts the required work for N2 by half, but it’s still very impressive.

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#29

With this kind of achievement, I think you are both clearly very atypical human beings.
Congratulations.
Unfortunately I think that invalidates any “advice” or “tips” that you offer, as your success is down to amazing linguistic talent and genetics more than anything else.

If one has a photographic memory, reading a dictionary is probably a very reasonable approach to language learning as well I might imagine, but not a practical one for most people.

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#30

One of the most important points to pick up here is to do a lot of listening. Dxtee mentions his structured study habits, but also has a long list of Japanese podcast recommendations.

I have a friend in Japan, who has been paying for Japanese classes for two years who I don’t think could pass N4 unfortunately.

One of the main reasons is that he spends his media time with English media, when he could instead spend hours per day with Japanese media.

One of the best ways to learn a language is to watch the same movie over and over again until you can speak along with every line of dialogue. It’s a grind, but I’ve personally witnessed someone go from zero English to B2 level English in 2 years by doing this. He watched Zootopia around 300 times. Kids naturally do this kind of thing as part of the first language acquisition process.

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#31

I’m really curious if that would work like that!

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#32

That is awesome work, very impressive , seems like you’ve been dedicated and locked in since the start. Was N2 your end goal? Obviously not an ultimate end goal but more in the sense of the thing you were working towards as it was for me.

I must admit I have been a little slack in the time directly following after the test, but ramping up my efforts again now.

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#33

What a great and grounded post! Hope this will give some insights to other learners. :slight_smile:

Your journey and routine sounds almost exactly similar to my own, except I did N4-N3ish in just over a year. I should really rethink the amount of new vocab I do a day to increase my progress (it’s around 10-15 new cards a day now), since this is still a big hurdle when I read native content.

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#34

Thank you!

I think there is little harm in dipping your toes into slowly increasing it day by day, doing 20 new cards this week, trying 25 the next etc. When I was at my peak new card limit, there was obviously days where life took precedence and I knew I couldn’t commit to the full 50-60 new cards that day, so I would temporarily lower it (to 10 or so) so at least my reviews were getting done.

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#35

If only such a thing existed… (but how horrible it would be to remember everything in detail??)

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#36

It wouldn’t because there’s no such thing as a photographic memory unfortunately, though there is such a thing as eidetic memory, which allows you to hold a crisp picture of something in your mind for longer than the average person, but it’s still only a few minutes. I dont think it would help with long term memory sadly, especially because eidetic memory is apparently only found in young children. I guess kids just have more flexible memory in general.

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#37

Out of curiosity, and im sorry if I missed it, @Dxtee , but what motivated you to study japanese and to do it in a year?
Im also curious about your goals moving forward :slightly_smiling_face:

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#38

This is what piqued my interest–I personally have never used Anki (blasphemy, I know), but did you learn the terms and then have to review them the same day? That’s what I tend to do when I add new terms in Bunpro/WaniKani, but even with 25 new terms a day in Bunpro it was taking an hour+. Granted, it takes more time with Bunpro since there’s a bit of a “guess which word I’m thinking of” since it gives you the definition/sentence and you have to figure out which one it wants out of the synonyms you’ve learned, but even then learning that many terms from scratch and then reviewing them same day seems like it would take much longer.

#39

No worries. At the start I had no aims towards any JLPT level. It was really just wanting to learn it to be able to communicate and be better placed whenever I was in Japan. Maybe several months I had been presented the potential opportunity to move to Japan with work and I had looked into what getting a PR may entail. Through that saw that getting a minimum of N2 gets credit towards many pathways, and for me atleast there was no practical benefit of taking the lower levels of the JLPT. Based on that I would say the pursuit of a exciting change of country was the main motivator, and especially with the political climate surrounding immigration in Japan right now I did not want to delay this opportunity.

(Also the N2 was not held in my city was I had to fly and book accommodation so the $$ aspect was probably a good motivator too :joy::joy:)

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#40

Moving forward my main goal will be to heavily prioritise my output now, I have been doing italki lessons but I plan to ramp that up so my speaking is up to par with my other language skills.

I doubt I will plan for the N1 anytime soon as there’s no practical reason for me to do it anymore

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#41

Sort of, unlike Bunpro there is no “learn” queue and then review queue it’s all just in one. So when you sit down and do your Anki for the day it will be a mix of cards you have learned before and then the new ones will be scattered in and will use the same spaced repetition algorithm as everything else

#42

Gotcha. Currently wondering myself whether I should just treat Bunpro more as a grammar textbook going forward, because the Cloze style of reviews genuinely doesn’t seem like it’s all that effective. I’m in a similar situation to you, where I have a full time job and everything, but also generally have an hour in the mornings since I get up so early.
I’m going for N2 this December, but it’s taken me an entire 4 year degree and another 4 years living in Japan for me to get there lol

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#43

When I first started Bunpro I had the cloze setting on for my reviews, but quickly found it frustrating with higher level grammar. As a lot of grammar has overlapping or similar meanings, having to type out one of several possible options was not for me. Ever since changing my reviews to just the self assessment good/bad option style it has been a much smoother and enjoyable tool for me personally. I don’t know if that would apply to vocab as I don’t use bunpro for that, but I think it’s worth a shot trying for sure.

Best of luck in December, you’ve got this!

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#44

Yeah, I’ve literally had the experience of typing an answer, being told “more polite!” Typing something else, and then being told “less polite!”
Or, y’know, being told to conjugate it another way when it’s actually an entirely different grammar point, etc. There’s a whole thread for frustrating hints, after all.
But thank you; I already passed (or I did just by weighting every question equally) their official test booklet thingie, so I’m hoping I’ll be a-ok for the real thing! Still studying, though.

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#45

Most guides say to expect ~2000 cumulative hours to hit N2. So yeah, this claimed performance is 4x the average, which is simply insane. Whether it’s true or not, I agree with the sentiment shared above that using this as a frame of advice for new learners is probably a bad idea.

I’ve found the guides to be fairly accurate. I went for N4 last year with around 300 hours (I thought I’d get more hours in between registration and the test date), and I knew I was going to fail it, and I did fail it. This year I will try it again and I am almost positive I’ll pass. I have about 500 hours now and I think I could probably pass it today. With a few more months that will be a certainty.

And I don’t think genius has too much to do with learning languages. I’ve always been a star student in other areas of life (achieved 4.0 GPAs in two technical degrees both famous for being difficult, and have worked at two companies famous for being extremely difficult to get into). But my language learning process is… right at normal speeds. And I think this is because language is kind of orthogonal to all those technical pursuits. Also it’s probably because I’m getting old…

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#46

Congrats, very impressive! I have been traveling to Japan and studying Japanese as long as you have been alive; I wish I could learn that fast. Most of my learning has been through the school of hard knocks (aka 飲みニケーション) :rofl: :beers:

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