Hello everyone! I wanted to submit my Japanese progress over the last 5 years, so that people can compare, and maybe get a visualization of what to expect? Plus it just looks cool.
In my first couple of years, progress was very very slow. It took me a little over 2 years to learn 1000 words. I regret my usage of time very much here, but also I think it's normal in a way. It's not easy to pick up a language and just learn it, especially without any second language experience.
At this point, I though I was a Japanese master (see Dunning-Kruger effect). After taking the N3 in 2022, I was very humbled. Close score, but not quite a pass. After that, I decided I was going to really study hard. One year later, I passed the N3 with flying colours. This was also the year I read my first manga (事情を知らない転校生がグイグイくる), at a known word count of 2268 words. What a crawl that was. Sometimes I see people saying that 1000 words is enough to start reading, but that's only the case if you're ready to look up every single word. If so, totally fine, but don't expect to fly through anything at that level (and that's okay).
After passing n3, I finally felt like I was making progress. Like the work I had done up to this point meant something. That was enough to give me a huge kick to work hard, and you can see a sudden increase in my vocabulary learning after that point, as well as a huge increase in manga read. I passed the summer 2024 n2 somewhat safely, though on the lower side of things after that. I passed without having read a single novel.
Next was the n1, the big last challenge so they say. I took it just 6 months later, and to say I was under prepared was an understatement; I still had not properly studied n2 grammar, I only knew 8000 words, and 1034 kanji. I failed miserably to say the least. But that was a good kick to tell me I needed to work harder. I had only read one novel before I took the n1 (また、同じ夢を見ていた), and I realized that novels are pretty important for a test like this; reading comprehension is more important than anything. You may know the words, but when assembled together, the meaning can become very fuzzy.
From there, I read a bunch more manga, two more novels, studied the rest of the joyou kanji, and studied more than half of the n2 grammar. I just took the n1 (at 10600 words) the other day again, and although I'm not sure how well I did yet, I'm certain I did better than last time. But I still have a long way to go.
As for how much I can understand:
I can read manga with little difficulty (depending on the topic! Daily life is fine, but I wouldn't be able to read something that's outside of my comfort zone without a dictionary).
I can live and thrive in Japan (I spent two months there at a language school leading up to the n2. I had no difficulties communicating with friends, clerks, station staff, etc)
Anything daily life is fine.
I can speak pretty well. I spent most of my studying by just talking with friends, so my speaking level is fairly strong.
I can talk about my hobbies very well.
What I can't do:
I cannot write kanji above an n5 or n4 level yet. I just never studied writing much.
I cannot always figure out what a reading might be for a new word, even for kanji I know, especially if it's a longer one (4-6 kanji)
I cannot talk about things outside of my comfort zone (no politics, philosophy, etc.
I cannot always express myself as fluidly as I'd like to, sometimes talking about things in a roundabout way.
Where I'll go from here:
I plan on finishing the rest of the n2 grammar and some of the n1 grammar before the next test session. I will only take it if I fail the n1 this year, but I think I may pass. My end goal (for the time being) is to reach 25,000 vocab, and a solid 3,000 kanji.
Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my progress. I'm not sure if it's of any use to anyone else, but if anyone has any questions, I'd love to get back to you!
PS. other than those two months, all of my study is self-study.
EDIT for a little more context:
Total manga read: 56
Total novels read: 3
by Fantastic-Limit5667
12 comments
Thanks for sharing.
What about listening and speaking? It seems like you mostly did a lot of reading from what you described.
When I read the title I was not expecting this to be useful, but I was wrong. I think that showing how learning hits certain plateaus is useful as when you first hit a plateau it feels like you have reached a limit and it can be quite demotivating. Showing that it might take years of seemingly little progress also gives me a bit of hope.
Your graphs show literal exponential growth 😅 It looks like it took you three years to crack 2500 words, then within the next two years you quadrupled that count to over 10,000. That explains the same trend in the kanji graph.
I’m curious – in the beginning were you learning words from textbooks or taking Anki at a super slow pace? After the third year, it seems like you had some revolution in your study method that got you memorizing words and reading books like a demon.
Did you feel that taking the Japanese language exams was a useful modality of studying?
Also for a person trying to get fluent in conversational Japanese, are there any resources you recommend
How do you keep track of your word count across different sources? I imagine at the beginning when doing SRS it’s easy, but how do you define it after that? If your read a novel (or a news article or whatever), do you take the word count and subtract the ones you had to look up or something?
I think a lot of this comes down to discipline, time, and yes, individual aptitude. I started mid 2020 and passed N3 with flying colors in July 2023. I’ve been studying for N2 on and off since late 2023 and still don’t feel quite comfortable taking it. It’s such a considerable gap that I’m taking my time as much as I can. I don’t live in Japan or anything, though I’ve been a few times since the post-Covid reopening.
How did you study Kanji? Only mining and anki? Did you use premade decks? Or kanji books?
What do you mean you didn’t memorize 200,000 words and all 50,000 ancient kanji in just 6 months studying for 1 hour a day and passed the N1 blindfolded while hanging upside down?!?
Lol thank you for posting REAL results.
I appreciate very much, its useful to me to calculate my own progress! Im very excited after this! One question can you at least summarize a little your routines? Or how much you studied per week on your first years and then in the years before? Thank you very much!
This is great dude! I love looking at posts like these, I feel so represented lol
It’s always great to see these kinds of posts, not too many people love tracking their progress in as much detail as this. I also find it interesting to see the differences in how each person visualizes their progress. Does each mark on your curve represent the exact date that you finished a piece of media? Personally, I did each piece of media as its own series, although VNs are long enough that I can get away with doing that. I’ve been inspired to update my curve, but I took a very long break after the N1, so my curve doesn’t look nearly as good as it used to.
https://preview.redd.it/z4pvnamfwpbf1.png?width=3960&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b0c12f50c4436e7d6336072265f7aad4c3f84fd
How did you track how many words your learned?