I signed up for a Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT N4) in December! It's been a good motivation to put more time into learning vocabulary and grammar!

I found a neat resource to practice reading: Tadoku, a collection of ~100 free picture books of varying difficulty, released under Creative Commons licenses (BY-NC-ND), some with audio!

Especially the lower-level books are really motivating, because I can actually read them without a dictionary!

https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/

#jlpt #japanese

6 weeks to go until my #Japanese test (#JLPT N4)!

I try to practice every day! For motivation, I made this big chart where I can tick off five boxes per day:

1. Vocabulary (using Anki, a Core 2K deck)
2. Grammar (using the TRY! grammar book + Anki)
3. Listening comprehension (wild mix, often "Comprehensible Japanese" or the Benjiro interviews on YT)
4. Reading (Yotsuba! or Flying Witch mangas; tadoku.org books)
5. Drilling (going through old JLPT tests)

This way, I often put in 1-1.5 h/day.

I did the mock test from https://jlptsensei.com/downloads/jlpt-n4-practice-test/ last week, and scored

61% in the vocabulary section
54% in the grammar section and
64% in the listening section.

Around "half of the score" is required to pass, but these are scaled scores… So it's hard to tell whether I would've passed.

But I'm quite happy nevertheless, because in 2021, I had the following scores in a mock test:

37% vocab
38% grammar
50% listening

So there's definitely some progress! ^_^

I have a long history of learning Japanese, on and off. Started around 2010, and had a couple of more or less intense learning phases.

But it's good to see that some things always seem to stick from the previous phases. :)

This time, in preparation for the N4 test, I feel like I'm always learning at the edge of my abilities, which is sometimes exhausting… but it's very satisfying when I hear a piece of conversation and *just understand it*! ✨