Alright. Now is the time to analyse where I stand after so many years of passive learning and mere days of active Japanese learning.

I have always been apprehensive about my studying techniques. And I have read a lot of blogs regarding the same. Everybody says a different thing. Obviously it’s what suits them the best. And after reading many a times, I have reached exactly the same conclusion, there is no best technique at all (not that I am qualified enough to say that (^_^)).

My study techniques have involved flash cards making and flash card apps, revising the lists, practise writing, taking quizzes through various apps, one word a day apps etc etc and of course, watching hours and hours of anime and drama. The extensive use of some apps have been very useful! (I’ll review some of them in the near future)

After everything, I have come to know that there are a lot of things which are beyond N5 and I know them. Sometimes, I would see a kanji in my dictionary and lo, I know it because I saw it in the OP of some anime. Whereas, there are a lot of N5 vocabulary that i still don’t know. I might have heard the word but I don’t know the meaning or I might not have heard it at all. Or I might know the meaning of certain kanji but I might not know it’s Japanese pronunciation.

And I don’t know about you but for me these two things have been very important till now (which I discovered very recently （￣□￣；）). First, if I learn some new word and I hear it the same day or subsequent days in some anime, it gives me ultimate happiness. “Oh! I just learnt that word and it means this~ Great!” That leaves a very deep impression and I won’t forget the word, ever (Yeah, it keeps ringing in my head, for like a whole day! (☉__☉”)).

Second, people talk about learning vocabulary by associating them with something related. For me, even if it’s unrelated and I think of something to associate the word with, it works for me. I’ll give an example: “しんせつ” (shinsetsu) in Japanese means kind, gentle. First thing that came to my mind was “shin” the part of the body (I don’t know why. Please don’t judge me on that (#／。＼#)). Now it has nothing to do with kindness but whenever I try to remember this word, my mind automatically goes to shin, kind, shinsetsu. I know it’s a lol thing but works fine for me (I do hope this will resonate with some people out there).

Anyways, I need to practice a lot more before I appear for the test in these 10 days. On a side note, I would like to tell all those people who think taking N5 is futile just because it won’t be accepted anywhere in Japan and it’s funny to appear for it. Please! There are a lot more people out there who get motivated by these things which appear funny to you. Don’t take that from them. Even I needed to start somewhere. I chose N5 not because I want to prove someone, but I need to test myself and see where I stand and what I need to do next.

I very well understand, N5 won’t take me anywhere in Japan, but there is something beyond finding jobs with my JLPT certification and I want to achieve that – the satisfaction of learning the language myself and testing myself. (Yes, yes. I got flustered after I saw people dropping the idea of appearing for N5 just because other people said it was super easy and not worth it. What does that make me? o┤*｀□´ *├o)

Whatever, I’ll stop my rant here for today ! I so wanted to upload pics of my kanji practice notebooks. Guess, I have become a pretty notebooks buff too after reading so many blog posts of fellow bloggers using various stationery. But this room of mine and my sister’s is such a big mess, that I don’t know where they would be right now. Oh, well! I’ll do it some other day.