My Japanese learning path from Zero to JLPT N3

I’m writing to share my Japanese learning path last year, from Zero to JLPT N3. It’s achievable and practical.

My experience

2020 was, no doubt, a strange and challenging year for almost everyone, including me. From March we were cut off from the world, with almost no good news to be had: working from home, away from the office, colleagues and friends, and getting used to faces behind masks.

Bored with the daily routine of working from home, I found I had far more spare time on my hands, and because of my long-standing curiosity about Japan and Japanese, in May I decided to try learning the language and see how far I could go. The target I set myself was passing the December 2020 JLPT N3 exam (the July sitting had been cancelled).

My motivation to learn Japanese is relatively straightforward:

• It’s an influential language in the world, especially in Asia and Singapore.
• Learning a new language is always pretty cool, and it can equip me with a new angle on the world.
• It’s close to Chinese. The two languages are similar in lexical terms, and I can save some effort reading Kanji (but not their readings).
• Japanese culture is influential to almost everyone around me. I watched several Japanese dramas and movies, including Legal High, which I saw several times.
• If I have time, effort, and interest, why not?

After seven months of learning, I took the JLPT N3 in December 2020 at the Japanese Cultural Society of Singapore. Seven months of part-time study is not enough to master the language, and I ran into difficulties during the test. Luckily the result turned out well.

Learning path

I want to introduce my reference books, textbooks, exam books, and how I used them. I hope it can help somebody to start their journey of learning Japanese.

For reference books, I only bought two books, and these are more than enough for me.

• Random House Japanese-English Dictionary
• A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar, buy the Basic and Intermediate if you’re aiming for N3. It may seem a bit pricey, but worth every penny.

The only textbooks I used were the complete set of 『みんなの日本語初級』 including Textbook and several workbooks, as this link shows. As I’m studying part-time, I spent around 1-2 hours learning these textbooks every day.

My steps of using 『みんなの日本語初級』 are:

1. Read the words following recordings.
2. Memorise the words through anki iOS and Mac app. It is an excellent app for memorising Japanese words. I strongly recommend using it. We can easily find the vocabulary set of みんなの日本語 in shared decks.
3. Listen to the main text and shadow it. By shadow, I mean doing dictation as much as possible. I used my iPad Pro Notability app to write the texts down after repeating them several times. Of course, there would be words I don’t understand and Kanji I can’t remember. It’s totally fine.
4. Compare with the main text and correct my dictation.
5. Reread the text following the audio for pronunciation.
6. Read the grammar part. There are plenty of great YouTube videos explaining grammar in みんなの日本語. I attached my link in the next section.
7. Look up the grammar I don’t understand in ‘A dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar’, or search it online.
8. Finish all the exercises and workbooks. And then I’ll give myself some rewards after the hard work. No more practice is required as the workbooks contain reviewing sections already.

I think after finishing the 『みんなの日本語初級』 textbook, you can pass the JLPT N4 easily without anything else. However, I needed to fill in the gap, as I had signed up for the N3 exam.

By the time I finished the 『みんなの日本語初級』 textbook it was already October, two months before my JLPT N3 exam. In those two months I focused on only one set of books, the Nihongo So-Matome JLPT N3 Complete Set. One section a day across the five books matched the timeline well, and they helped me a great deal to bridge the gap between 『みんなの日本語初級』 and JLPT N3. Vocabulary, Grammar and Listening are the most critical parts, in my opinion, as test preparation requires specific techniques and experience. I certainly did not memorise everything, but completing the Nihongo So-Matome JLPT N3 Complete Set was enough to get me through the N3. Things turned out well.

Some useful online resources

1. Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide - Tofugu
2. 出口日語 【改訂版】大家的日本語文法解說 for grammar explanation
3. Online Japanese N3 Course(All 10 lessons) I think the series by Attain Corp. on Udemy are all well-made. You can buy all courses if you prefer learning through videos. It would take no less effort for sure. I think it can be a suitable supplemental material for 『みんなの日本語初級』.
4. Siri. I changed my Siri language settings to Japanese and talked to it sometimes. It’s pretty helpful to practice my Japanese communication, especially during the lockdown period.

I hope this post can assist some readers as a reference to reach the N3 level. I’m continuing my self-learning journey this year, and I hope I can share some N3 -> N2 experience some time.