I passed N3 back in december(january) by 5 points when I thought 100% i was gonna fail. Anyways, its passed but I feel like I dont deserve it, especially because in reality Im nowhere close to understanding or speaking at the expected N3 level.
Before that, I spent some time studying for the N4 which I passed, and then I went to N3 6 months later. I was studying specifically for the JLPT: I learnt grammar from Game Gengo's videos where I would watch the video progressively, stop at each point and take notes on a notebook, and then I studied them in Anki for months, mostly with their own decks, and it was SUPER helpful. For vocab I just downloaded some deck that looked good and repeated that to oblivion. For kanji, I had originally started with RTK and I was doing a deck of it, so I knew some more advanced kanji because of the special way they're ordered there, but when I signed up for both tests and definitely knew I was taking them, I took note of all the specific level N4/N3 kanji I had NOT reached in RTK/didnt know, and changed my same RTK deck so they'd appear first, and kept doing repetitions.
Anyways, anki was an amazing help and taking both tests was also a good way to put pressure on me and learn A LOT in the 3-4 mo that I would prepare, but after the N3 results I became lazy and didnt know how to follow. I either wanna retake N3 in the next 12 months to get a higher grade and feel like it actually tests my knowledge, or wait many years more, take a break off JLPT and come back for N2 when I know I'm ready and have a lot of knowledge to pass it.
Right now I'm not in a situation where I can or want to do anki every single day again, and since its what sped up everything the most I feel like anything I do is too slow or useless. To not abandon my japanese learning completely, Ive just been trying to focus a bit more on input these last months, watching some anime with jap subs or no subs and trying to get into it.
What do you think is the best thing to keep going at this point in my journey?
by FuzzyAvocadoRoll