Studying Japanese - The Results

In this article I discuss how I achieved a JLPT N3 proficiency; it provides details of my methodologies and results.

Studying Japanese

The first part in this series examines the technical aspects I’ve used to achieve a JLPT N3 proficiency. Those aspects are grading and testing, textbooks, dictionaries, and statistical analysis of data. Additionally, there are 3 primary assumptions made that guided my studying.

These assumptions were made following the rational that Japanese is a voiced language, and it’s written language is intended to be voiced at some point. This may not always be true, but for the sake of studying the language I assume it always to be true.

The assumption of listening skills taking 5 years to develop was made by making the observation that speakers of second languages are often quite poor at speaking that language yet are essentially fluent in it. They lack vocabulary and grammatical skills as a result of not having studied the language thoroughly, and not living in a country where that language is primarily spoken. Therefore it can be inferred that fluency simply develops as a consequence of time passing.

The final assumption I’ve made is the result realizing that it’s actually quite difficult to use a Japanese dictionary. Being able to make use of a Japanese dictionary will require considered effort. In most cases it won’t be possible to use one without relying on a translation dictionary.

Testing

The first proficiency test I took was the italki Language Test on November 14th, 2023 which uses the TrueNorth scale to provide a CEFR grade level for speaking abilities. The score I received was a 2.9, thusly placing me at a JLPT N3 or a CEFR A2 proficiency. However, on June 27th, 2024 I received a score of 3.7 after retaking the test.

I also had the chance to take 3 lessons with 3 different people on italki. With the first tutor I spoke with it was revealed that conversational Japanese is beyond my skill level. The only conversational ability I had was understanding simply phrased questions, and responding with simply phrased replies.

The lesson I had with my second instructor was a review of a simple textbook scenario. The exercise was mostly quite easy. There were only a few words I had difficultly distinguishing in the audio. Everything else was certainly within my ability.

The last lesson I took with my final instructor was a review of a later chapter in Genki. I was able to demonstrate the ability to understand passages of text grammatically and semantically. However, my reading comprehension and my speaking abilities were poor and just barely acceptable.

I had requested a 1-12 level evaluation from the San Jose Learning Center which corresponds to their class offerings. I received a placement of 8-12. Which is approximately a JLPT N4 proficiency.

I passed both of Busuu’s CEFR A1 and CEFR A2 tests. This would be a JLPT N3 proficiency. However, after speaking with their support it was revealed that Busuu doesn’t actually teach or grade to a CEFR standard. Nonetheless it was a test I took, and a grade I received.

The final testing I’ve taken is from the kotoba discord bot which is essentially just an Anki frontend with carefully selected decks of flashcards. I consistently pass all aspects of N3 testing, however the vocabulary requirements of N2 testing are beyond my knowledge.

All testing implies that I’ve achieved a very strong JLPT N3 proficiency. There exist only a few outlier that imply otherwise. These grades are, in fact, precisely consistent with the learning materials I’ve chosen to use.

Textbooks

The textbooks I’ve chosen to use are GENKI: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, 3rd Edition and Quartet: Intermediate Japanese Across the Four Language Skills. Both textbooks are are quite popular for learning Japanese. One might even considered them standard.

I found Genki to be a very useful textbook to study with. It assumes no Japanese skills as a prerequisite, and provides authoritative explanations of most, but not all, grammar concepts. The authors have separated the book into two volumes. One volume teaches to a JLPT N5 standard, and the other teaches to a JLPT N4 standard. When studied together both books teach to a CEFR A1 proficiency.

Quartet provides a second course in Japanese for those who have finished Genki. Like Genki the book is separated into two volumes teaching to different standards of proficiency. The first volume teaches to a JLPT N3 standard, and the second volume teaches to a JLPT N2 standard. The authors believe that this correlates to a CEFR A2 and CEFR B1 proficiency.

Unlike Genki, however, Quartet’s focus is less on the essential aspects of the Japanese language. Instead it chooses to provide expository explanations and examples of grammatical patterns in the form of euphemistic phrases rather than as literal phrases with more subtle meaning. There’s also a shift in focus from providing the student with explanations of cultural aspects of everyday Japanese life to instilling more academically enriching concepts of Japanese life within the student.

Genki provides quite a bit of resources for free. Much more than I had known about before witting this article. In fact, the video dialogues provided in the resources are superior for beginners because the actors pause on particles when voicing the lines. This makes distinguishing words and phrases in the dialogue much easier compared to the audio recordings. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make good use of those resources nor the official apps while studying the book.

Likewise Quartet has resources that come for free with the book. I didn’t find these resources particularly helpful. Unlike Genki these resources are confusing, and appear to be for the use of a teacher organizing a lesson. I did, however, make use of the official apps which are reasonably priced compared to Genki’s apps. The apps available are a convenient way of memorizing the tested vocabulary and kanji although they provide nothing beyond this.

In actuality the expectation of learned vocabulary after completing Genki and Quartet is slightly higher than what they provide in the vocabulary listings. Genki provides 1,700 words and 317 kanji and Quartet has 1,600 and 657 kanji throughout the book. This gives someone a vocabulary of about 3,000 words and 1,000 kanji after completing the books.

I worked through Genki by reading all of the grammar explanations for the chapter I was on. Then I read the dialogues, and tried to correlate them to the provided translations. I did this for every chapter. I made an effort to memorize some of the vocabulary, but I mostly relied on Duolingo to provide the vocabulary and exercises that I’d need. I did the same with Quartet, but only read the grammar explanations leaving everything else as an exercise for after I finished the Duolingo course.

Dictionaries

The translation dictionaries I made extensive use of were jisho.org and the Nihongo app. Being translation dictionaries they have a limited usefulness, however they serve their purpose well. It’s also worth noting, although I personally didn’t make use of it, that the superior kenkyuusha translation dictionary is available for free.

The textbooks also provide a translation dictionary in the appendix. Unfortunately, the explanations are limited to the scope of the book, and the amount of words is also limited to the scope of the book which makes them unsuitable for a general dictionary.

Ultimately I rely on Japanese dictionaries for authoritative explanations. I’ve used daijisen and daijirin for this purpose. I’ve found the explanations in daijirin to be more straight-forward compared to daijisen, however both dictionaries provide about the same information.

All of the Japanese dictionaries are unsuitable for a beginner to use. None of them offer conjugation tables like jisho.org or the Nihongo app. None of them offer example sentences to the extent of those dictionaries. None of them offer the convenience of those dictionaries. All of the dictionaries include some sort of compromise in what can be hoped for.

Duolingo

Duolingo offers a Japanese course that teaches up to a JLPT N3 standard. The course has about 3,500 words, and contains almost all the grammar concepts discussed in Quartet 1. It was my primary means of skill building.

The course is organized into 221 units with each unit introducing about 10-20 new words. Grammar is very tersely explained in the beginning of the unit’s notes, and later units only offer key phrases in place of explanations. In this way the course acts as an excellent complement to the grammar explanation provided by textbooks.

I began studying Japanese on Duolingo in January 2021, and finished the entire course on July 2024. After this I shifted my focus to completing other areas of the textbooks not taught on Duolingo.

Completing Duolingo had given me enough vocabulary to easily complete Quartet 1. In any given chapter of the book there are only a few words I’m unfamiliar with, and no grammar usage I haven’t encountered. Quartet 2 is not the same situation. There are quite a few words I don’t know, and quite a bit of grammar I’ve only encountered in it’s pages.

There exists a ankideck for memorizing all of the textbook’s expected vocabulary. I found this quite useful to use after finishing Duolingo. There are about 500 words I’m unfamiliar with across both Genki and Quartet after completing Duolingo.

Achieving JLPT N3

Because I assumed the language was phonetic it allowed me to understand more plainly it’s inflections and morphemes without being bothered by details of it’s other representations. Because I assumed it would take 5 years to develop listening skills I was able to amortize studying sensibly and reasonably. Because I assumed using the dictionary was a good goal to achieve I was able to focus my time developing ability rather than qualifications.

The amount of words I’ve memorized is about 4000 lexemes. The amount of kanji I’ve memorized is about 1000 letterings. This was achieved in about 3 years, and placed me plainly at the JLPT N3 proficiency level which is the highest level of proficiency excepted of a temporary worker in Japan.

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