Taking the N3 December 2025

Japanese
#1

Hi everyone! Self-explanatory title.

I haven’t taken the JLPT proper, I’ve only taken practice tests thus far and have scored 112/180 on both the N5 and N4 pratice exams on Todaii.

I’m on Level 12 of WaniKani, and I have completed both Genki I and II for a total of six semesters of formal Japanese study. I’ve also recently started studying N3 grammar here on Bunpro and am debating whether I should study N3 grammar on here too or if that’s overkill.

Some of my classmates took the N3 last December so I wanted to take it too, but I’m worried that I might be in over my head.

Is this a realistic expectation? If so, how can I make the most of my time before December, or am I just cooked :smiley:

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#2

Just in case you didn’t see the notification, we actually just released full practice tests of our own, including audio and everything you would expect in the official exam. Completely free too in case you’re not currently an active member!

Can be accessed here!

With the information you’ve given, it’s a little bit hard to say whether you are in over your head or not, and I am not sure how difficult Todaii’s practice exams are. If you keep slowly progressing through the grammar points in N3 and doing enough reviews to internalize them/are getting a fair bit of immersion, I think that it could totally be possible.

If I were you and your goal is purely passing the test rather than actually improving your Japanese in a more rounded sense, I would be looking at as many past tests as possible and prioritizing vocabulary and grammar patterns that come up in those regularly, as the JLPT’s do rotate their questions between the years and only alter some of them slightly.

In any case I wish you the best of luck! :grin:

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#3

I think it is possible. I was about level 12 on WK too when I passed N3. Having good foundations counts for a lot at the n3 level. Theres about 70 days to go, so I would recommend doing the n3 practice tests and brushing up on n3 points as much as possible.

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#4

Thank you! I would like to improve my Japanese level overall, the JLPT is more of a motivator to that end. I could stand to do some more immersion though :sweat_smile:

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#5

Gotcha! I’ll be sure to look at the practice tests on here some more then. Thanks a ton!

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#6

I took the N3 last July. I missed it by 5 points so a maybe 2-3 questions, after about 2 year of studying. I spent the last year in Japan so that probably speed up my learning but as far as preparation I was around level 12 on Wani Kani and completed the Grammar Deck N5, N4, N3 and Vocab N5, N4 + about a third of N3.

So I believe you are more prepared than I was. My advice would be to continue with WanaKani and Bunpro at your pace and do some official practice test. (You can find some on the JLPT website) The point is to get use to the excercise so you don’t lose time reading and understanding the instruction.
Don’t forget to practice reading and listening too.
You also generally have an exercise where you need to find information from a poster or another kind of pictorial resource. So you my want to get use to it (they often contract word and remove kanas to got save space)

Good luck

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#7

When i took the N3 last year my biggest problem by far was reading speed. If you don’t train that somehow no matter how good your vocab and grammar is you will fall behind in the test! If you can’t read everything fast enough, how are you going to answer properly??

You should just read as much as you learn vocab and grammar. Even if you don’t understand what you are reading now just bring yourself up to speed as much as possible.

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#8

At N3 level, there should be plenty understandable material to read. I’m totally with you, that reading a lot is important, but at N3 I would really try to make the effort of finding something you can actually understand :sweat_smile: The benefits are way bigger if you understand what you’re reading :sweat_smile: (and it’s probably more enjoyable, too).

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#9

Small question but you seem to be hesitating to even take it, have you signed up? It can fill up in certain places so be wary.

I’m in a similar situation, from mock tests I’ve done, my issue seems to be grammar and reading and understanding text.
I haven’t even finished N3 grammar on Bunpro but I have time to do so and cram the points that are still complicated before the test.
If you have a daily routine it should really be doable, especially if you incorporate listening, reading… I was also scoring 125 in N4 about a month ago and I’m barely passing N3 now (so I’ve got time to improve)

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#10

Yeah, probably, but the whole thing “there might be something out there” thing blocks a lot of people, since now you gotta search for it, verify it’s for your level, and so on. I literally mean that people should just read Japanese with lots of furigana, just for the sake of reading speed.

I know all of this is boring, and it’s the reason I am building a reading app with full furigana support and instant lookups so I can read whatever the hell I want.

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#11

Good luck with your app, then :slight_smile: Will it come for lower levels, too? Or will it just be adding furigana? Not sure what kind of app you have in mind, but as far as reading apps go, satori reader is probably already the most popular. Not sure how well it works for lower levels, though. I deinstalled it after reading the thing that happened in the mouse story :sob:

I still think that at N3 level, though, it’s almost a little late to jump into native materials, and with all those bookclubs and sites like natively going around, it shouldn’t be too hard to find achievable materials. But I’m team “immersion”, so my opinion is probably pretty biased :sweat_smile:

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#12

I too am team immersion :smiley:

The app will basically allow you to upload any Japanese epub you have lying around. So the level depends on what you upload, but with full furigana support + instead lookups + translations, it does not matter that much for reading practice itself + you can read whatever you are interested in.

I used Satori Reader too, but it was just tooo boring. The news app was not much of a help either. But that’s on me, I should have read anyway, but I just did not, and failed the N3 because of it.

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