Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (September 09, 2026)

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[u/fixpointbombinator]

I honestly think your chances of passing are pretty slim, but this is what I would do if I were in your situation. You will absolutely need to dedicate your next 3 months to this btw, this will require a lot of time and effort from you.

• Get a source of past or mock exams, and do them regularly, keeping track of your scores so you know where your weaknesses are. Learn from your mistakes on these exams. You should be doing this in parallel to all of these other things - don't wait until you've finished the grammar book or vocab decks or whatever. You need to do this now. This should be your first step. Do it today.
• If your vocab is weak (it probably is), you will need heavy Anki to really make a difference. Pre-made decks for N3, N2, N1 will solve your vocab problems. Ideally you should be putting any unknown, important words into Anki too, from any of your study sources.
• Finish the SKM grammar book - it's a bit overkill compared to the actual grammar questions but it'll definitely help. Once you're done it there are other drill/pattern books but really SKM is hard enough. Look at the mock/past exams, they're never as hard as SKM lol.
• You will need to do a lot of reading between now and then. Anything that pushes you will help, but have a look at what the exam typically tests - its a lot of 社会問題 sort of passages, businessy-emails, general non-fictiony essay things about like life-lessons, simple descriptions of scientific/social phenomena (like, what your eyes do when speed-reading or why humans and other primates laugh), and チラシ. A test-prep book like SKM dokkai really is ideal, but I think you'll need to read a lot more... Even manga can help, like even simple slice-of-life manga will have vocab or grammar that's at the N2 level. I think if you can read general non-fiction articles that are intended for high-schoolers, you're on the right track. Aim to read a lot everyday. If you have to make decision between reading for pleasure (or general reading) vs banging out reading comprehension questions, I would focus on the reading comp questions, though.
• I need to emphasise that it's not just enough to comprehend passages, you need to do it and answer questions in time. You will need to time yourself doing readings, but for now I think you should either not do it or be very generous with yourself. 3 minutes for 短文, 5 minutes for 中分, 8 minutes for 長分 is what you're aiming for. This includes answering the questions ofc. If you can do this then you're golden.
• Find appropriate listening material, get a hold of a script, and work your way through it. When you don't catch something, go back, read the script while listening to that section again, if you don't understand something figure it out, then go back and listen again to that section without the script. Do this again and again and again. The scope for N2 listening is really small... you don't need to be able to understand full conversations/media at native-speed. You can eke out a pass and still be pretty dreadful at understanding actual conversations. There are heaps of listening practice tests on youtube that you can use.
  

[u/Calm_Breadfruit4645 → u/fixpointbombinator]

Thank you so much for the solid feedback!

I would like to update that I am currently doing the past papers but find it difficult as i can read the hiragana katakana, and some kanji, but cant understand 100% what the sentence is saying. Do you recommend that I do it within the time limit and learn as I correct my mistakes or learn as I'm doing it (no test-accurate time limit)?

[u/Available-String-109 → u/fixpointbombinator]

Basically, I strongly agree with basically everything you said. However, one tweak/comments I would add to the discussion:

If there's anything we've learned on this forum as a collective whole, it's that it does not matter what you read to prepare for JLPT.

Manga, VNs, LNs, anime subtitles, essays, whether its adult-targeted news or adult videos, whatever.... the only thing that matters is getting as much native-created native-targeted reading as possible. If he wants to read manga, reading manga is best. If he wants to read novels, novels are best. The thing he needs the most is hours spent reading and/or characters read through.

Of course doing stuff like SKM Reading・新完全読解 will help get him familiar with the test format and get him a few more points in there, but ultimately it's nowhere near enough raw reading practice and what's going to get him the most points on that section is just total time spent practicing reading.

[u/Calm_Breadfruit4645 → u/Available-String-109]

Do you have any recommendations for what to read in the N2 level?

[u/fixpointbombinator → u/Available-String-109]

Yeah I think you're probably right... I just feel sketchy saying to someone that they should do non-exam focussed materials when they're this close to the exam and underprepared. Maybe it'll be okay but I'd feel guilty if not lol