掲示板 Forums - Advice to study?

5 months (between June and December) * ~30 days/month = 150 days

30 words/day * 150 days = 4500 words studied

4500/1900 ~= 2.37 times / word

I think memorizing a word sufficiently for an exam after studying it less than 3 times would be quite difficult.

As far as I know, the JLPT exams don't require you to write sentences, so if my goal was solely to pass the exam within this short time frame (I'm not saying that this would be a good goal), I'd focus on reading, rather than writing which is a different skill.

I realize that you only need to study 1900 words. I just did the math on how many words you'd be able to study with the time given and the rate you are studying at. Given the time and rate, you'd only be able to study each word 3 times or less. I'd suggest that, it would be very difficult, for most people, to remember a word after seeing it only 3 times (or less).

I didn't suggest reading sentences containing those words, but it probably would be helpful.

Unless you have a terrific memory, I'd suggest that, you'll probably want to study each of those words more than 3 times each if you need to memorize them for an exam. Either you need to increase the rate at which you study, or increase the amount of time until you are tested on them.

You can write sentences, just don't do it by hand. I write exclusively on PC (IME) and it helps with memorising vocab and grammar (it's nice to have someone who can check for mistakes though).

As for JLPT, you don't need to write anything at all. It's entirely (as far as I'm aware) multiple-choice. I've heard that reading speed is important, so some reading practice would be nice.

In my opinion studying vocab out of context is very inefficient, you need to actually read full sentences and maybe write a few of your own. Instead of increasing repetitions, you can add a sentence or two for each term you study.

There's lots of words I might not recognise in isolation, but do recognise with context (in a full sentence).

I have Japanese installed on my PC, so I can write wherever. I'm not using anything specific.

I've been writing a lot of Word Gardens (here on Renshuu) and that's been a lot of fun. You could try those, see if you like them. Or just take a word you're studying and write one or two short sentences.

Let's say I'm learning 胃, I might write a couple sentences using it:

昨日からちょっと胃が痛いです。何か腐った物を食べたかもしれません。

胃が痛いなら必ず医者に相談してください！

Took me about 1-2 minutes, for 10 words that wouldn't take too long. If you keep sentence short and simple you could probably do it faster. It helps reinforce meaning and usage in context and can be quite fun.

By the way, when you say "take notes" do you mean writing (Japanese) or just in general? If you have any apps you like the look of you can just use those. You just need to install an IME (Japanese input) for Windows (assuming that's what you're on).

For Word Gardens, you go to "Community" (to the right of "Games") -> "Word Gardens". You're basically just writing sentences, but you're given a couple words ("seeds") that you must use in your sentence. It can be a short story, doesn't have to be a single sentence. There's a bunch of different gardens you can pick from on the right. I like it and the leaderboard tickles my gamer brain.

For reading, make sure you have a pop-up dictionary (Yomichan, Rikaikun, etc. for PC and whatever's best for mobile). I have mine set to ALT. Makes it a lot less painful to read texts with words you don't know.

As for content, I can't really think of anything other than Graded Readers and stuff like NHK News (easy news). I'm at the point where I just read whatever native level content I feel like and add any words I don't know to a schedule (not everything of course).

I'll let you know if I think of something. In the meantime you can make a separate thread asking for JLPT N3 specific reading recommendations (if you want to that is).