Part 2: Your NativShark and native material JLPT study plan

This is the only guide you’ll ever need to read about the JLPT.

This is part 2 of 3. It covers the most efficient way to pass the JLPT with NativShark as your core study resource.

This guide is split into 3 parts, discussing the following topics:

1. What is the JLPT and why is the failure rate so high?

2. Your NativShark and native material JLPT study plan (← You are here)

3. Passing the JLPT

This guide is written for a learner who has decided to take the JLPT and wants to pass as efficiently as reasonably* possible and is aimed at someone who is brand new to Japanese.

However, this guide will still work for someone who has studied Japanese previously.**

Having studied before mainly means that the timelines discussed can be adjusted. How much can be hard to predict, but moving things up a few months can be a good starting point.

*Reasonably is the keyword here. We’re not about to tell you to become a hermit in the mountains and study Japanese for 13 hours a day. There’s only so much new information your brain can absorb in a day without resting on it, after all.

**We recommend that learners who have studied Japanese elsewhere and are starting NativShark use the archive button with great lenience until unfamiliar content is consistently reached. This may mean that the first 60-80 Units are largely review, but you're likely to fill many holes in knowledge along the way. Getting a strong foundation is essential to passing the JLPT with ease.

This guide entails your entire study plan in both NativShark and native materials.

It's pretty long. Hold on to your 抹茶まっちゃ (matcha)

Feel free to skip around using the sidebar to the right (desktop) or by clicking "On this page" at the top of your screen (mobile/tablet).

Here's a quick reference/summary before we get into the details:

Summary of your study plan and timeline:

NativShark Milestones 1-6 (First ~4 months): About 30-40 minutes a day, extra time goes into new Units in NativShark as long as reviews are under control.

Do 5-6 new Units a week, with 1-2 days of review only (this pace is ideal for all parts of this study plan, so we’d recommend sticking with it).

Remember that the kana tool can be reviewed outside of your normal studies so feel free to do that especially as you’re getting used to them.

NativShark Milestones 6-10 (months 4~7): Maintain 30-40 minutes a day in NativShark, 5-6 new Units per week with 1-2 review-only days.

Integrate native materials into your study days, starting small and building up to an hour of native materials every day.

NativShark studies should always be done before native materials.

NativShark Milestone 10+ (~month 7+): Maintain 30-40 minutes a day in NativShark, 5-6 new Units per week with 1-2 review-only days.

Do about an hour of native materials each day. All extra study time should be spent using native materials.

Be sure to do enjoyable material as well so study time can naturally extend beyond this hour when the schedule permits.

More study time = higher chance of passing the JLPT when the time comes ^^

3 months before taking either test: Begin using test prep if you choose to do so. Extend study time and try not to replace more than 20 minutes of your current study time with this (you can try to get through NativShark faster to save some time, but be sure to still stay on pace with doing new Units).

Milestone 26-32 (~2 years): You’re ready to take the JLPT N2. Since you have to sign up 3 months in advance, feel free to sign up if you are past Milestone 23.

Milestone 41-49 (~3 years): You’re ready to take the JLPT N1. Since you have to sign up 3 months in advance, feel free to sign up if you are past Milestone 38.

Good luck!!

With the above clarifiers and such in mind, when trying to pass the JLPT, our first step is to…

Learn Japanese

As we discussed in Part 1 of this guide, we’re not particularly interested in any of the JLPT levels besides N2 and N1. As such, there is no need to even think about the JLPT until you’ve been studying for about two years.

This is because studying for the JLPT and learning Japanese are not the same things.

Passing the JLPT is a byproduct of learning Japanese, but learning Japanese is not necessarily a byproduct of studying for the JLPT.

Far too many learners forget this step when studying for the JLPT and skip directly to test prep or using materials focused on the JLPT for their entire learning journey.

They may also learn from textbooks or flashcard decks that scrape word lists from newspapers, both of which do not give learners an accurate picture of what Japanese is.

Studying only with test prep materials, grammar guides, or other materials focused on specific JLPT levels will not only harm your ability to understand Japanese outside of the JLPT environment but will also directly reduce your chances of passing the JLPT.

Which means, at the beginning…

The solution is to just focus on learning Japanese.

NativShark teaches you Japanese how it is used in Japan in everyday life along with all the grammar and cultural aspects you’ll need to understand. You’ll get plenty of listening practice with it as well.

Just by using NativShark and going through native materials* to practice your Japanese, you’ll be on a steady and efficient path to a high level of Japanese proficiency.

*A native material is any piece of media designed for a speaker of Japanese. This includes video games, anime, TV shows, books, manga, and so much more.

Just keep studying until you reach around Milestones** 26-32 or so for the N2, and around Milestones 41-49 for the N1.

**A "Milestone" is a measurement of progress in NativShark. A Milestone consists of a handful of "Units" which consist of kanji, vocab, grammar, cultural notes, and more. These add up to teach you skills in Japanese, such as navigating restaurants, exposure to grammar points, having seen all common kanji, knowledge about Japan's culture or holidays, and so on.

Passing the N2 when you’re around there should be a breeze without any specific test preparation, and as a bonus, you’ll be functional in Japanese (which the materials discussed above won’t do for you). We’ll talk about the N1 in a bit.

There is nothing else for you to think about other than doing 5-6 Units* a week and then going and engaging in native materials for the rest of your study time until you reach that point. (We’ll cover what this looks like in great detail soon as well.)

*A Unit is a complete package of Japanese language knowledge in NativShark. They consist of lessons, vocab, grammar, cultural notes, and Dialogues which let you practice the Japanese you know in new contexts. These are what you study when you press the "Study Now" button when you have completed your reviews for the day.

You can test prep a bit before the test to help increase your chances (we’ll cover that in part 3), but solely test prep or using the other materials discussed above is very likely to lead you to feel lost during the actual test because these materials are not designed to get you functional in Japanese.

That said, there is a small price to pay if you’re trying to pass the JLPT as fast as reasonably possible.

The costs of focusing on the JLPT

If your main goal is to pass the JLPT, you won’t have to practice speaking at all.

You won’t have to learn how to write, either. (Writing anything more than your name and your address in Japanese is beyond what the average learner needs anyway, so this isn’t a big deal.)

This means your ability to produce Japanese will likely take more time to develop compared to if you didn’t have a JLPT focus, and there’s a higher chance conversation may be more difficult due to this.

With that said, due to the nature of the content in NativShark, you would still be far ahead of a learner who wasn’t using NativShark.

However, if JLPT is your #1 focus, this isn’t a big deal to begin with.

It would not be too difficult to spend time focusing on conversational abilities after you’ve passed your desired JLPT level, which we will talk about in a different guide on studying with NativShark with a focus on speaking and conversation ability.

If you want to have more rounded abilities, add speaking practice by talking to people in Japanese either in real life, tutor lessons*, or online with language exchange apps or whatever your interests may be.

Just remember that doing so will push your timeline of passing the JLPT back because it’s not an efficient method of studying for the JLPT.

*Although they can be excellent for improving your speaking ability, tutor lessons are probably one of the biggest burners of time, effort, and money in regards to passing the JLPT, and are likely not worth taking if your main goal is to pass the JLPT. This is because speaking is not on the test, and studying with NativShark and native materials will allow you to encounter significantly more Japanese in various natural contexts than you would with a tutor and at significantly less cost. Also, this depends on the tutor, but you do run the risk of being treated like a student, which means they’ll be using slow and unnatural Japanese which wouldn’t help your acquisition rate either.

Speaking of how long this will all take…

The timeline to pass the JLPT

Thankfully, with the right mindset and study methods, passing the JLPT is much simpler than you may think.

However, while it is simple, it will take consistent effort and the appropriate amount of time put in every day with little exception.

For the N2, you’re looking at around 2 years of 5-6 new Units a week in NativShark with 1-2 days of review only, plus extra time doing native materials every day (once you’re at Milestone 6) to pass in the fastest reasonable amount of time.

*It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen someone pass it faster on YouTube. We’re trying to set ambitious yet attainable goals that can apply to the largest amount of learners. We aren’t chasing outliers who study for more than 8-10+ hours a day and make content out of it. For the vast majority of people, studying that much every day is completely unrealistic, and that’s okay because it is not a prerequisite for getting good at Japanese.

For the N1, you’re looking at around 3 years of doing the above.**

**Remember that passing the N1 automatically means you will pass the N2, so the estimate for N1 is 3 years starting from the beginning of your learning journey. It is not added on top of passing the N2.

If you’re interested in taking the N5, N4, or N3 for fun, then you can reduce the timeline needed accordingly.

The N5 should take about three months, the N4 about 6-7 months (completing Phase One means you should be able to pass the N4), and the N3 about a year or a year and a half. We’d still recommend going straight to the N2 at the very least, however. The Japanese used in the lower levels of the JLPT is, in short, not worth your time and money to take a test for.

If these timelines seem a bit intense to you, then you might have too busy of a schedule for this pace. That’s completely reasonable.

Few people need to pass the JLPT as fast as possible. You can adjust these numbers down to fit your lifestyle and goals, but of course, that would also extend your timeline to passing the JLPT proportionally.

No matter what, though, I do implore you to remember that it’s not a race to the finish line.

You have to go at a pace that works for you.

Sometimes you might sprint, sometimes you might walk… and sometimes you might decide to collapse onto the pavement.

Most days are best spent at a comfortable jog.

Now, let's look at what core studies are, and what our core studies will look like.

What are core studies?

Your core studies are your bread and butter. These are what you want to accomplish every single day, or as much as works for your schedule.

We call them "core studies" because learning Japanese revolves completely around them.

Once we get into our studies, they generally look like this:

NativShark reviews → new NativShark Unit* → native materials study**

*On review-only days, skip this step. More on this soon.

**Starting at Milestone 6. More on this soon.

If you have extra time, there are plenty of options for native materials or whatever you may want to do in Japanese! Core studies simply describe the minimum to get you past the JLPT when the time comes

By the way, you can feel free to pat yourself on the back whenever you complete your core studies.

Even if you feel like you had an off day, the fact that you showed up and had any amount of Japanese going into your brain means that you are taking steps toward your goal.

That's something to be celebrated.

An average study day

The following is written with someone brand new to studying Japanese in mind.

If you've studied before, or have a lot of available time to study with, feel free to adjust this to include more study time!

If you're a bit busier, feel free to adjust down as well. Consistency is key

No matter where you find yourself on this schedule, remember to be kind, honest, and accepting of yourself. Everyone is different, and you should never compare yourself to other learners (especially the ones who make content about it because they probably spend most of their day studying).

Enjoying the journey is sometimes an overlooked part of learning Japanese, and I think that's a shame. Remember to enjoy where you at, no matter where you are on the journey ^^

Learning Japanese can be one of the most fulfilling journeys a person can take, and who knows where it may lead you.

I didn't realize how much it would change my life, at least. I'd love to share that with you if possible

Based on the core studies described above, this is about what a given study day should look like depending on what Milestone you're at.

At the start and up until Milestone 6, we'll be focusing on NativShark studies only. We recommend doing 5-6 new Units a week and taking 1-2 days as "review-only days", where you don't do any new Units in NativShark.

Once you get into the groove, you might be spending up to 30-40 minutes per day on this. Try not to go over that unless you do more than what was just described above.

If you want to study more Japanese on any given day, feel free to do so! It is reasonable, especially for someone who has studied elsewhere, to do 2 or more Units per day here.

Just keep in mind that more new Units in NativShark means more reviews tomorrow ^^

That said, it's good to start steady so you can build a good, consistent study habit instead of teaching yourself to study in bursts (which makes us less likely to be consistent and causes review pile-up). So just keep an eye out for when you should slow down!

You may also find going through the kana review tool throughout this stage to be helpful. It's good to be pretty comfortable with the kana as soon as possible.

Once you hit Milestone 6, continue at the 5-6 new Units pace with 1-2 review-only days. And start doing native materials!

Native materials are things like books, shows, games, anything designed for a native speaker of the language. We're going to learn a lot about these and how to approach them in a later section. They're kind of why this guide is so long ^^;

As a quick summary though, start small. Even just 5-10 minutes a day on this. Work your way up to an hour a day by the time you hit Milestone 10.

Once you're at Milestone 10 and beyond, you'll want to maintain that 30-40 minutes in NativShark and then about an hour a day in native materials.

Keep that pace up until 3 months before whichever test you decide to take!

From that point, sign up for the relevant test, and maybe do some test prep for it, which we'll cover in Part 3 of this guide.

Staying on track

If your time spent in NativShark is longer than 40 minutes, you are likely spending too much time on your reviews. Avoid hitting the crying face during reviews and try not to spend more than 20~40 seconds on any individual card.

You’ll see all of this Japanese again in your later studies with NativShark and your native materials, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting it.

Hit the smiley face (default space bar on the computer) 99.9% of the time on all of your reviews. Any less than that means you’re slowing down your learning progress.

Progressing through new Units and seeing more native materials is more valuable than burning time in reviews.

Extra study time

Studying more is fun. Good on you for wanting to do it ^^

Let's talk about the optional things we can do after the above studies are done.

They're pretty simple, basically just do more of the above

If you haven't reached Milestone 6, feel free to do more Units as long as your reviews are under control.*

*If you study too many new Units in a day, you may have a review pileup the next day. If you have a review pileup that’s taking too long to get through, then only spend enough time on a flashcard to listen to a single audio track, which is usually about 3 seconds per card. As we study more and more, you’ll want to get closer and closer to a baseline of just enough time to listen to both audios and then press the smiley face, which comes out to ~6 seconds per card. Usually, we can start to do this more comfortably around Milestone 15+.

When you’re past Milestone 6 (~Unit 90), you should start doing native materials in most of your extra study time.

Don’t worry about progressing faster through NativShark at this point unless you’ve studied elsewhere and this is mostly review for you.

Extra study time spent on native materials should feel much more casual.

Let yourself become more and more okay with attempting to understand less and less the further you go into your extra study time.

This will help keep your brain alive during long periods of study.

Barely reading anything if you’re playing a video game or not focusing on the Japanese audio at all if you’re watching a TV show is perfectly acceptable as study time increases.

When spending extra study time on native materials in a single day, your first 10 minutes of study should look nothing like your last 10 minutes of study. This lets your brain get a low level of exposure to Japanese without it being a stressful experience.

This is probably the only way to spend extra time without increasing the risk of burnout.

Mindset

Mindset is one of the most valuable things you can have when approaching studies.

This is because we can often do only what we think we can do.

When applied to learning Japanese or passing the JLPT, that means that if we think we can't do it, or that we'll fail, our brains will work to make that true. We'll never be able to do it.

Thankfully, if we believe that we can do it, our brains will have us take action to prove us right.

So the first thing to tell yourself is that you can learn Japanese. Others have done it before you, others will do it after you. We're all human, and languages are kind of our specialty.

You are capable of doing this. We believe in you.

Remember to believe in yourself as well

Let's take a look at a few other helpful mindsets:

Showing up

One thing that all learners who have reached a high level of proficiency share is that they are consistent.

They may take breaks when needed, but they always come back to studying. And they show up as often as their schedule permits.

One of the key ways to ensure you show up is to turn yourself into “the person who studies Japanese every day”.

This means there is no longer a decision on if you’re going to study on any given day.

Let yourself be the person who studies Japanese every day.

If you ever ask yourself this question:

Am I going to study Japanese today?

Then there is only one answer:

Of course I’ll study today, how could I not? I'm the person who studies Japanese every day.

This mindset change makes a huge difference in consistency and therefore progress compared to if you haven’t decided this for yourself. It’s much harder to stay focused and motivated if every day is a battle between studying and not studying because every decision we make costs us energy and willpower.

Since willpower and motivation are limited resources, we’re at a higher risk of burnout every time we have to think about how or if we’ll study today.

Habit, however, is an unlimited resource.

The best way to build this habit, along with this mental adjustment, is to habit tag.

Pick something you do as a habit every day, and attach learning Japanese to it.

Do you drink coffee or tea every morning? Every time you drink coffee or tea, you now study Japanese.

Do you turn on your computer and game every day? Now, every time you press the power button, you study Japanese before gaming.

Are you a human who eats dinner every day? Now you study Japanese before or after doing so.

It’s best to pick something that you do every single day, and not only on weekends or weekdays.

You want to make studying Japanese feel like brushing your teeth; something is terribly wrong if you didn’t do it today. And if the day goes astray (there will be plenty of these days), you’ll find a way to squeeze at least some studies in somewhere, even if the studies aren’t super high-quality for that day.

Being kind to yourself

You're going to have to keep this study plan up for at least 2 to 3 years.

And we all know that life doesn’t always go according to plan.

No matter what, consistency is our greatest ally. If you have a crazy day or some big life event happens, then don’t beat yourself up for missing a day, or only being able to get 5 reviews in.

Your study streak does not matter at all. What matters is consistency over time and sticking to your studies.

This is why we use “Days Studied” in NativShark instead of a streak. If you missed a day, that doesn’t mean that all of the days before that have suddenly disappeared. All it means is you missed a day. Just show up for the next one

Most importantly, never try to make up a missed day by doing double your studies the next day.

This is likely the most assured way to instantly burn out that there is. Just pick up where you left off, go through your extra reviews a bit faster and with less care than you normally would, and get back on your feet.

While we have a lot of things to study per day. But this is a marathon, not a sprint. A steady pace will beat out going crazy for a week and then burning out and not studying for a month before repeating the process all over again.

So if you need to stop and take a breather or miss a day for reasons outside of your control, please be ready to forgive yourself. We’re all human.

The fact that you’ve made it to the point you have is incredible, and you should be proud of yourself.

Simply begin again and continue to make yourself proud

And to be honest, this study strategy is intense and not for everyone. We’re talking top realistic speeds here.

If you’re struggling with it day in and day out, you need to make an adjustment as soon as possible, even if that means extending your timeline.

Please remember that making adjustments is 100% expected and 100% okay. Everyone who has successfully reached their language goals has had to do so at some point, including all of us on the NativShark team!

Our top priority, above all other things, even before hitting our timeline, should be avoiding burnout.

Remember, getting to N1 in 5, 6, or 10 years is better than never getting there at all.

Good luck and happy studies, my friend

Focus areas

There are several important things to keep in mind as you go through your daily core studies, so let’s talk about them here.

All sections here refer specifically to your core studies with NativShark.

We'll get into native materials after these sections ^^

Listening

When studying with NativShark, listening won’t be a major issue as long as you have all your other bases covered appropriately.

All NativShark audio is spoken naturally by native speakers. The JLPT audio is overpronounced and not spoken naturally, so it will sound different (and generally much easier).

That doesn’t mean you can let your guard down, though.

When studying with NativShark, listen to the audio as much as possible. We suggest listening to both the male and female audio on all sentences you encounter at least one time before moving on.

During your flashcard reviews, some days should be spent focusing on the audio. Don’t read the sentence until after you’ve listened to both recordings and tried to understand it based on your listening skills alone.

You can be a bit lenient on exactly how many days of the week you spend doing this, but at least one should be enough. 2 or 3 could be ideal if you really want to make sure you’re nailing down your listening abilities, or if you’re not getting enough listening in via your chosen native materials.

Alternatively, you could close your eyes during some portions of your reviews every day, maybe even just 10~20 cards a day or such. Personally, this is what I do because I don't have to plan out what days I need to do what, I just have the same habits every day.

It doesn’t really matter how you do it, as long as you accomplish this in some way on a regular basis.

Switching the audio to be on the front of the card or having the audio auto-play can be helpful options with this. You can view your flashcard settings in your study settings.

Kanji

Don’t stress about kanji.

By the time you take N2 or N1, you will be well past having seen all of the common-use (jouyou) kanji and will be seeing them all in normal contexts.

NativShark having introduced you to them from the very beginning and constantly using them naturally means you shouldn’t have any issues with kanji once you get to the test.

Just getting exposure to any Japanese means you’re practicing and reviewing kanji, so you’ll be fine.

Also, feel free to archive NativShark kanji flashcards right as you see them, if you prefer. They’re mainly there to warm you up to kanji rather than be a focus in reviews.

Having kanji perfectly memorized in isolation is an unnecessary skill for both real-life and JLPT applications. Even native speakers of Japanese think of kanji relative to the words that they are used, not what they are in isolation.

The JLPT will give you plenty of context when it asks you to choose the correct kanji in a sentence, and knowing how to read them will naturally come with knowing vocab.

Speaking of which…

Comprehension (vocab and grammar)

Vocab and grammar are taught in NativShark, so simply progressing through the system means you’ll be fine.

NativShark teaches grammar in an order that gets you functional as fast as possible, which means you’ll have the tools in hand to hop into native materials quite early, which will help you increase your vocabulary naturally as you go.

It’s designed this way because it’s easy to tell when you don’t know a word, but it’s often impossible to detect when you don’t know a piece of grammar.

If you’ve studied Japanese before, you probably know the feeling of understanding all of the individual words in a sentence but still have no idea what the sentence is saying. Or you thought the sentence was saying something completely different than it was, and you didn’t realize it until someone pointed it out to you.

This is what makes using a comprehensive core resource like NativShark so valuable.

It can be incredibly difficult to detect what you don’t know, so it’s usually more efficient to learn it in a lesson and then solidify it via exposure.

As far as vocab goes, NativShark will teach you a lot of indispensable vocab for your functionality. However, relevant vocab varies wildly depending on the native materials you consume, so you’ll be learning a lot of it from your native materials too.

That said—

There is no specific need to make vocab flashcards either on NativShark’s custom flashcards or by pulling the text from a script and automatically generating them.*

*You can certainly make custom flashcards, but we’ve worded the above sentence as we have on purpose. It is not a necessary step, and you won’t suffer by skipping it. Many students try to create too many flashcards, which becomes a barrier to actually making progress through native materials and is extremely time-consuming all around.

We also do not recommend studying an auto-generated flashcard deck before actually going into the native materials. It’s redundant and defeats the purpose of a native material.

Native materials are meant to get you learning in reality, so turning them into flashcards and removing the reality portion just makes it a subpar learning resource instead of a native material.

Get your fundamentals and necessary tools from NativShark. Review them while learning more in new contexts with native materials.

The rest is just details

Production (Speaking and writing)

As discussed above, we don’t need either of these to pass the JLPT.

If you want to make sure your skills are more balanced, feel free to add speaking practice in with friends or tutors if you so please, but keep in mind that this extends your timeline to passing the JLPT.

As far as handwriting* goes, no need to bother^^

*This is specifically writing by hand from memory we’re talking about here. Texting or typing Japanese is definitely a helpful skill. It’s also a completely different skill from writing kanji by hand from memory.

Some students find that writing kanji helps with memorizing them, but we often see students writing them without context. In other words, they’re studying kanji in isolation when they do this.

Learning how to write kanji in isolation is probably the most unnecessary skill you can have when learning Japanese, and that’s baked on top of recognizing them in isolation, which is perhaps the second most unnecessary skill to have.

Learning to write each kanji one by one, especially from memory, does not make a big impact on your long-term ability to recognize kanji in context, and that’s the ability we need for both being functional in Japanese and trying to pass the JLPT.

*Some may argue that writing is very helpful to them. While I won’t discount valid personal experience, it’s mostly a short-term immediate retention gain.

To improve our kanji comprehension abilities, we need to get lots of exposure to Japanese in lots of contexts. Pausing our studies to copy down kanji we see will not accomplish this for us. Going out and seeing lots of Japanese will.

Study wide, not deep. See more and don’t try to memorize anything perfectly.

Of course, if you enjoy handwriting kanji as a side quest and that or calligraphy is a hobby of yours, then that’s awesome! Definitely chase that hobby But please know that this only pushes your timeline of passing the JLPT and reaching an overall high level of proficiency in the language back.

So in this case, it’s not worth your time with these goals in mind.

NativShark daily core studies done!

Sweet! That was about everything we need to talk about regarding your daily core studies with NativShark.

On an average day past Milestone 6, we wrap up our NativShark studies and then crack open whatever native material interests us.

It's time to get into what this means and looks like

First...

What are native materials?

Native materials are any piece of media or content designed for a purely Japanese-speaking audience.

Manga, anime, Japanese books, TV shows, the news or newspaper, and video games in Japanese are prime examples of native materials, though that’s not an exhaustive list by any means.

Note that native materials are distinct from learning-focused materials.

Learning-focused materials are designed for learners of the language, and a native speaker would have no reason to interact with them.

Examples of learning-focused materials are textbooks, grammar books, flashcard decks, YouTube channels that teach grammar, etc., and graded readers or any other resource that adjusts language to make it "easier" for learners (e.g. they don't show you kanji if they think you're not ready, or don't use "difficult" words).

The overuse of learning-focused materials often results in lopsided Japanese, since many learning-focused resources don't use language that is representative of real Japanese as used in Japan and its media.

Since we’re using NativShark to give us a comprehensive foundation and native materials to build on that foundation, we won’t need to use extra learning-focused materials in our core study time... or any extra time, really.

Starting native material core studies

Once we reach Milestone 6 (Unit 90), we want to begin incorporating native materials into our core studies.

Milestone 6 is around where we get into learning most of the common verb conjugations that are used in Japanese, meaning we should have a basic grasp of the sentences we see in our native materials.

There will be a ton of vocabulary we’re unfamiliar with but we’ll have a foothold for parsing the grammar of Japanese sentences. Getting exposure to new words while seeing some familiar words, grammar, and kanji is always a good thing.

You’ll want to get exposure to native materials every day, even if only for 10 to 20 minutes for now.

This will be a challenge.

When starting, it’s best to just read one or two sentences from a book, manga, or video game per session. If your material is audio-based, being passive and just letting yourself catch what you catch is fine. Maybe listen for 30 seconds or a minute and rewind to see if you can catch more the second time.

No need to go crazy with this yet. Overcommitting here tends to be more stressful than it is helpful.

If you find it fun, though, follow that for as long as the fun lasts! We're about to go into the specific strategies we can use when approaching a certain type of native material.

The key point for now is:

Don’t try to perfectly understand any of the Japanese you run into.

All you need to do is use it to start seeing the words you already know and start being able to take guesses (accurate or not) about the meaning of some sentences or unknown words.

And do a happy dance when you see a kanji you recognize^^ (← this is mandatory)

After you complete your 30-40 minutes with NativShark core studies, you do native material core studies. These start at 10-20 minutes and ramp up to about an hour. You want to be at about an hour by Milestone 10.

This slow ramp-up will help us build a sustainable habit.

We don’t want to crash and burn here, which is what will probably happen if we just hop into an hour and a half+ of total core studies every day from nothing.

Wait, why are native materials getting more time than the core resource?

Getting exposure to a wide amount of Japanese is the most valuable thing you can do to learn Japanese, and NativShark is built to make you functional in Japanese as efficiently as possible.

NativShark gives you the foundation and native materials build on it.

We want you to spend as much time as you can practicing what you’ve learned in NativShark by going out and experiencing it in the real world.

This helps prevent lopsided Japanese as explained in the above section. Or at least, as much as we can with a JLPT-focus study approach (as speaking practice is an afterthought for this approach).

By the way, don't set a timer for yourself and panic if you're a few minutes off on any given day. This study plan is going to take us 2+ years, so details like this come out in the wash in the long run.

Native material study strategies

Native materials can be a bit of a scary wall to climb when you first start them, but they don’t have to be.

Let’s take a look at what your studies with them should generally look like:

General strategies

Milestones 6 to 10

When you take a look at your first native material, there’s going to be a lot of Japanese you aren’t familiar with.

This is normal and perfectly okay.

The purpose, especially at the beginning, is to start getting familiar with Japanese in many different contexts.

All you need to do is make a few attempts at recognizing things you know and look up a few things you don’t.

The gist is all you need to worry about right now.

If you're completely lost on a given sentence, just move on. See what words you know in the next sentence or two. Recognizing anything, whether it’s a word, kanji, or piece of grammar, is a victory at any point, but especially so at this point.

We’ll slowly begin to understand more and more as we progress through our NativShark core studies, and as we continue to make progress into the native material.

You’ll find that native materials are generally the most difficult in the first 10 or 15% of it, and then you’ll see much of the vocab and language repeating itself over and over.

This is why skipping sentences isn’t a big deal. If it’s an important word or concept you need to know, you’re going to see it so many times that you won’t be able to get it out of your head.

Variation is nice here. Sometimes I look up a lot of words, and then just stop when I get tired of doing that.

Keeping moving means I see the same words over and over and then eventually I either understand them with context or curiosity makes me look them up and suddenly a lot of things make more sense.

Not understanding everything is fine here because we have our core studies. We're going to learn things as long as we keep showing up, so all we need to worry about is slowly understanding more and more, not being perfect right off the bat.

Mindset: Negativity bias

All of us have something called negativity bias built into our DNA, thanks to us being human.

In short, we're more likely to notice when we fail* than when we succeed. And we get more negatively emotional about what we see as losses than we get happy when we get a victory.

*Forgetting things is a part of the learning process so it's not a failure

There are likely to be some words, grammar, or kanji that you will feel like you will never remember, no matter how hard you try. This is a completely normal feeling to have, and the solution is to simply keep progressing.

I can nearly guarantee that if you just don’t give up, you will one day see that word, understand it and its nuances, and then laugh about all the times you struggled with it in the past.

This is thanks to having that wide understanding finally unlocking our ability to actually comprehend that word, piece of grammar, or kanji.

In other words, just keep swimming!

Most of the time, all you need is more time and exposure when you feel lost. Just try to recognize that you feel that way and that it’s okay to feel that way every now and then.

But you’re definitely making progress, so just keep it up

Milestone 10+

Once we reach Milestone 10 or so, we’ve received enough tools from NativShark and have seen enough Japanese in native materials to begin* breaking things down on our own at a deeper level.

*Keyword: begin. You aren’t going to suddenly become an expert at this, but you will be able to start to figure things out without needing as much help as you may have up to this point.

We recommend studying with native materials for about an hour, so let’s look at examples of what that hour may look like.

You have two main options when studying. You can focus on a single resource for the entire hour, and then change up what resources you use throughout the week, or you can use many of them in a single day.

Personally, I prefer the latter most of the time! I've found it to be easier to get a bit of everything so I can focus more on a single day at a time without worrying about what I'm missing.

This works better for me than trying to plan out my entire study week to make sure I don't accidentally have holes in my core studies. I don't want to put in the effort to plan stuff past my initial study plan. I just want to show up and do it all at once

You might be different though, so please experiment and find what works for you

Generally, doing at least a little bit of all the areas we want to focus on (long and short-form reading, active listening) in one day tends to be a bit easier because we’re getting a ton of variety.

This keeps our learning more balanced while helping to keep our brains a bit fresher, as well.

Either way, throughout each study day or week, we’ll want to do some form of active listening, some form of long-form reading, and some form of short-form reading.*

*We'll break down what all of these mean in great detail with examples after this section!

Generally, if we're trying to balance Reading vs Listening practice, it's better to lean towards having more Reading practice. (Say, 60% Reading and 40% Listening).

If you’re going to lean more towards one or the other, it’s likely more helpful to have more reading practice in your day rather than listening practice, based on JLPT test results and where students struggle the most.

We have 3 examples below of what your study day might look like, but keep in mind these are just examples. You don’t need to have any of your days look exactly like this, but hopefully, this shows what you might be looking at.

Note that there are “reading-focus” days and “listening-focus” days in these examples.

Again, for me personally, I don't often do these types of days, but they might work for you. They can be a nice change of pace, though, so it doesn't hurt to experiment.

Most of the time, I don't try to do one or the other, but there are times when I realize at the end of my study day that I did a listening focus day or such. Letting them occur naturally can be nice ^^

With that all said, here’s what that variety might look like in a single day while aiming for around an hour of native material studies:

Example 1 (an average day):

First ~10-15 minutes: Do long-form reading, such as looking at the news on NHK or going through a book.

Middle ~20-25 minutes: Swap to short-form reading, such as manga or video games.

Last 25-30 minutes: Watch an episode of anime/ a TV show with Japanese subtitles.

Example 2 (a listening-focus day):

First ~5-10 minutes: Do either long-form or short-form reading with manga, a book, or a newspaper.

Middle ~24 minutes: Watch an episode of anime one time through with subtitles off or with Japanese subtitles on.

Last ~30-40 minutes: Watch the same episode again with English or Japanese subtitles while pausing and rewinding to examine what you missed.*

*Alternatively, you may watch two episodes with or without Japanese subtitles while pausing or rewinding to listen to certain sentences, rather than the whole show. Personally, I find this approach more sustainable, but it can be more difficult as well. Feel free to play with mixing these two strategies!

Example 3 (a reading-focus day):

First ~5-10 minutes: read an article on NHK and watch the associated video

Last ~50-60 minutes: Read manga, a book, or play video games

Extra study time: do passive listening with a podcast, stream, or TV show on in the background, or just continue reading or playing whatever you might already be doing.

Note how the most difficult things are placed right at the start of the day, and are usually the shortest.

This helps conserve brainpower to last us the study session. We’ve noticed that it’s generally much easier to go from a newspaper to watching anime instead of watching anime to reading a newspaper, just as far as focus and enjoyment go. Getting through a newspaper when you’re excited to watch the anime after it makes things easier.

Overall:

Keep “wide not deep” in mind.

If you’re stuck, you might just not be ready to understand this piece of Japanese yet, and that’s okay. As long as you keep progressing, you’ll get there in time.

Also:

Try to have an overall daily or weekly balance of active listening, some form of long-form reading, and some form of short-form reading.

Which materials you choose will vary with what works best for you, but do your best to have a nice overall balance of these throughout each day or week of your studies.

Good luck! Now let's break down what native materials are good to study with ^^

The types of native materials

Choosing your first native material can be a challenge, but once you understand what you’re looking for, it can be quite simple.

First off, native materials can mostly be divided up into two categories:

Reading and Listening.

These probably don’t need to be explained, but reading will mean that it’s likely we have to do all the heavy lifting ourselves and will be reading without the help of an audio source reading to us.

Listening means we’re using mainly or entirely our ears to try to pick up language.

There are a nice handful of things that combine reading and listening together as well.

Having a material that gives us both is often the easiest to get into, but we will want to have a nice balance between all of these to make sure we can pass the various sections of the JLPT.

If we don’t get a somewhat even amount of practice with both reading and listening, then we’ll be a bit lopsided in our ability, which can hurt when we’re taking the JLPT.

You also want to make sure you cover as many different topics and varieties as you can with your native materials.

You never really know what topic will be on the JLPT, but they do tend to lean towards office and scientific topics, so we’ll want some native materials that can get us exposure to that as well.

Before we break down exactly what each medium can provide for us and give some examples, it’s important to talk about what native materials are generally the best for you.

The best native materials for you

Actually, I cannot tell you what native materials are best for you. It’s unique to each student

Thankfully, I do know the trick to finding them:

The best native material for you is the one that you will stick to.

Yes, we want variety.

Yes, we want to make sure the language we’re encountering will be relevant to our goal of passing the JLPT.

But all of that is meaningless if you don’t study with your native materials.

The easiest way to ensure that you consume native materials is to enjoy what you’re consuming.

As an example, I (Ty) love video games. I’ve used them far more than any other native material during my journey and can spend hours upon hours a day just playing them in Japanese.

This helps my reading abilities a lot. I contribute video games as a huge reason as to why I was able to pass the JLPT. I kind of used them too much though, which hurt my listening abilities

On the other hand, I really don’t like the news.

While newspapers contain some of the “best” language to study for the JLPT N1 with, I found myself dreading most of my time spent studying with them and found it hard to continue.

So I swapped to reading books instead, which filled in the same area of long-form reading practice that newspapers did, with much less stress.

Since our goal is to pass the JLPT, you should be familiarizing yourself with as many different mediums and topics of native materials as possible.

But if you find yourself dreading opening up the newspaper and you aren’t enjoying your studies, it’s time to move on to something else that can fill that area of practice. You may also choose to only read the newspaper once a week, which still helps while not being as overwhelming.

Preventing burnout precedes all other goals, even if you become “less efficient” in the process.

We also recommend that you pick areas of interest that you are already generally familiar with, especially when just starting out with native materials.

It’s better to be fighting only the Japanese you encounter, rather than what the story is or how to play the game. This familiarity also allows you to skip more difficult sections of language without getting lost in the story, ideas, or gameplay.

Once you’re more comfortable, absolutely start branching out into things that you’ve never experienced before.

Reading materials

Reading materials include manga, novels, light novels, books, newspapers, magazines, visual novels, and most video games.

They can generally be divided into two categories: Short-form and long-form.

Be sure to get exposure to both of these throughout your studies.

Short-form

Short-form materials often consist of video games, manga, and visual novels.

They’re often completely understandable sentence-by-sentence.

You aren’t reading multiple paragraphs to understand an idea, you’re probably just reading some short dialogue boxes or speech bubbles, and there’s no major idea trying to be conveyed. It’s usually just characters having a conversation.

Short-form reading will help us specifically in the Language Knowledge (grammar and vocab) section of the test, which includes knowing kanji in vocab/context as well. You don’t have to know kanji in isolation for the JLPT.

Short-form materials can also help us with the Reading section as well, but we will want to practice long-form reading to make sure we get all the tools we need. More on that in a bit.

You may find yourself thinking, “Manga and video games for passing the JLPT? That sounds like a dumb idea.”

Surprisingly, these mediums can be some of the most helpful to help you pass the JLPT’s Reading and Language Knowledge (vocab and grammar) sections.

This is because video game and manga characters often have very odd/unique speaking styles.

Especially if the character is in a past setting (think Kimetsu no Yaiba, Fire Emblem, or Breath of the Wild), they’re going to be using a lot of N2, N1, and even more difficult grammar/language when they speak.

A real person won’t talk like this, and you’ll sound unnatural and be very difficult to understand if you emulate them. But you will learn how to understand a lot of high-level grammar and vocab (along with associated kanji, of course) very fast when you use these materials.

In fact, I passed the N2 in 2 and a half years with no test prep simply by playing video games shortly after I started studying Japanese, along with going through my core resource (the previous iteration of what would eventually become NativShark).

I got exposure to the kanji, vocab, and grammar that I needed to pass because it is so plentiful in the video games I played.

You should use this to your advantage as well, especially if you enjoy manga and video games.

With that said, I did struggle in the reading section because I only used short-form native materials. Be sure you also practice the long-form native materials as well, which we’ll go over soon.

Also, it should be noted that if you find that you don’t enjoy manga or video games it can be…

worth looking into the vast variety of genres available to see if there is something you’re into but just haven’t found yet or…
find blogs and other social media posts around topics that you are interested in. Maybe it’s fishing, basketball, or karate. Or…
just skip straight to long-form and treat it like short-form in the beginning. The last option is…
come join the NativShark community and we can recommend you something^^

But no matter what, if we’re going to pass the JLPT N2 / N1, we have a lot of reading to do there’s no way around it.

Breakdown

Here’s a quick breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of each medium.

Keep in mind that the best native material for you is the one that you will enjoy and be able to stick to.

Video games:

These are fun to play no matter what, and you get to learn Japanese while doing so.

If you find yourself getting tired, you can also benefit from being much more casual with these and simply playing the game instead of focusing on the language, which can prolong your passive exposure much longer than other mediums.

Some video games also feature full voice acting, which means you’re practicing listening and reading at the same time. You’ll find that when these are combined, you’ll be able to get through more Japanese at a faster rate.

Usually, the most difficult language is found in the “how to play” explanations of games.

For this reason, at first, it can be best to play games you already know how to play, or games that are very intuitive to learn at the start before you branch out into new games you haven’t played before (a classic example is one of the Pokémon series entries).

Manga:

Manga can be a really helpful tool for our learning, even more so if you enjoy reading it in English already. There are so many genres of manga, so there really is something for everyone.

You can set a low minimum for your daily studies, even just a sentence or two a day while you get used to it.

Many manga also include furigana with all/most of their text, which saves lookup time and makes reading everything a smoother experience.

If you use an electronic version, you may be able to directly copy and paste language from the electronic versions into your preferred dictionary, which saves a lot of lookup time as well. It’s best to check the sample versions in the app to see if you can do this because not all apps allow this.

Visual Novels:

If you enjoy visual novels, they can also be good for studying.

Usually, thanks to the artistic language, you’ll find a lot of more advanced grammar points to dig into and learn.

Visual novels tend to be short-form, but there are also plenty of long-form visual novels where one screen may consist of a few paragraphs.

The approach is about the same either way: start slow and work your way up.

Many visual novels have the added benefit of the characters voice-acting their roles, so reading through these with voice acting can help both reading and listening abilities at the same time, increasing our speed and exposure to Japanese.

Suggestions

These are rough suggestions. You don't have to use any of these. They're here to give you an idea of about what language difficulty you might try to get into based on the various Milestones you're at.

Good luck^^

Milestones 6-10

Manga:

Teasing Master Takagi-san (からかい上手じょうずの高木たかぎさん):

A fun manga that is lighter on the level of language. Good for learning some minor school language and also a fun read with it focusing more on smaller gags than a giant overarching story.

It has furigana, which greatly helps look-up and reading speeds.

Video games:

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (ポケモン不思議ふしぎのダンジョン救助きゅうじょ隊たいdx):

A great game for starting out with thanks to the simpler language, furigana, and lots of breaks to just play the game in between all of the reading. You can also skip parts of the story if it’s a bit too tough and not really miss out on much.

Milestones 10-15

Around these Milestones, we’re going to have more tools to break into some more difficult native materials.

You can continue with the ones you’ve been doing, but we do want to start experimenting with slightly more difficult materials as time goes on, perhaps after you finish the materials you’re on.

Manga:

Komi Can't Communicate (古見こみさんは、コミュ症しょうです。):

Another fun manga that takes place in a high school. While the language isn’t terribly high-level, there is a lot of learning that can happen with this manga, and a useful expression or two right out of the gate.

It can help you get a radar for picking up on puns because there are a lot of them in this manga.

It also has furigana, which greatly helps look-up and reading speeds.

Video games:

Animal Crossing (どうぶつの森もり):

Any version works, but the 3DS (New Leaf // とびだせ！) and Switch (New Horizons // あつまれ！) versions tend to be the easiest to obtain nowadays. These two newer versions also have furigana, which is a huge help for faster reading and look-up of words.

This is a very laid-back game. You don’t have to understand much of what’s being said to enjoy it.

You can also decide if you want to talk to a lot of the villagers or just try to play the game without too much Japanese coming at you, which can help extend your time being exposed to Japanese as it’s not as intense of a mental load.

Conversations tend to lean towards simple topics since it’s a more everyday life game.

That said, the beginning of the Switch game can be difficult due to the high level of formal language being used. Once you make it past that, it should be quite doable. It can be a good idea to screenshot what you don’t know and save it for later (or tell yourself you’ll come back and then never do so. I do that most of the time^^).

Milestone 15+:

Once we reach around here, we can start trying almost anything.

There will be some things that are much more difficult than others, and that’s okay.

If something is too difficult, dropping it and coming back in 3-6 months is a great strategy. You’ll find that it’s much easier to come back to than when you dropped it. (This is why there can often be value in trying something that is a bit too above your level. It helps you feel your progress when you come back to it sometime later.)

Manga:

Kimi ni Todoke (君きみに届とどけ):

While this one also features a high school setting, the language used is pretty dense per page, and there’s lots of handwritten stuff as well, making it harder to parse.

And due to the nature of manga, it’s harder to skip content without getting lost if you haven’t read it before.

Video games:

Fire Emblem Awakening (ファイアーエムブレム覚醒かくせい)
Fire Emblem Three Houses (ファイアーエムブレム風花雪月ふうかせつげつ)
Fire Emblem 7 (ファイアーエムブレム烈火れっかの剣けん):

Fire Emblem games have some very specific language but overall can really push your knowledge thanks to the older/stiffer grammar points being used, which also are sometimes used on the N2 and N1.

Fire Emblem can be very nice to study with because it’s organized as story → gameplay → story, so you can take breaks by playing the game after trying to understand the story.

There are also scripts for these games that make looking up unknown words much easier. You can find them by looking up the game title in Japanese plus the word “会話集かいわしゅう”. (This applies to many games that have straightforward stories without many twists and turns).

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (or Tears of the Kingdom):

These two games have many characters using a lot of N2 and N1 grammar points thanks to the older setting.

It’s also a fun game in which you can balance out how much gameplay you do with how many characters you talk to, allowing you to play longer on less brain power while still getting exposure to lots of Japanese.

Is my taste in games showing?

I really do mean it when I say the thing you enjoy is the best native material for you!

Long-form reading

Newspapers / online news articles, books, novels, light novels, and magazines are all good examples of long-form reading.

Long-form reading is anything where you need to keep a good two paragraphs or more of text in your brain in order to understand the entire picture of what you’re being told.

Since you have to read so much text and remember so many connecting ideas, it’s much harder to guess the overall meaning based on comprehending individual sentences.

As such, long-form reading tends to be much more challenging, especially at the beginning, but it is vital for increasing your chances of passing the JLPT.

Be sure you don’t skip practicing and learning from long-form reading.

Many learners find that, when starting out, it is often best to read a single sentence per day until it starts to become comfortable. Then read two sentences per day, slowly moving up to a paragraph per day, two paragraphs per day, a page per day, and continue that trend until it feels appropriate.

Again, be sure to make attempts at long-form reading, even just a sentence a day, as often as you can.

If you can handle long-form reading, short-form reading should be pretty easy. But only practicing with short-form reading can lead you to struggle with the dense language found in the reading comprehension passages on the JLPT N2 & N1.

You’ll also want to make sure you get a wide variety of topics when practicing this as well.

Big bonus points if you can get a topic you might find in a newspaper (basic economics, work / office-related things, basic politics, sciences such as biology) because you’re likely to see words, grammar, and kanji used there in the JLPT.

Breakdown

The news:

The news gives you knowledge about current events in Japan while also being very close in vocab, grammar, and kanji to how the JLPT will look.

You can also break these down a few sentences per day and slowly work your way up to paragraphs or entire articles per day. The varying length of articles also lets you read a long article if you’re feeling motivated, or “cheat” by reading a really short one if you’re feeling tired that day.

The news is also nice because you can practice your listening skills directly after reading the article to see how much of it you understand by watching the attached video (when one exists). The video can also be used to help us understand the article if we’re struggling with it, and simply give us a bit of a change of pace to make things more fun.

Magazines:

These are pretty similar to the news except the topics might be more hobby-oriented or casual. They can be treated about the same way as the news and be great at training our brain to handle long-form ideas thanks to us needing to read a few paragraphs from these to get the big picture.

Books (novels and light novels):

Books can be a lot to jump into but get progressively easier because the same vocab, grammar, and kanji tend to be used repetitively throughout the story.

So your pace through the first 15 pages of a book will look nothing like the last 15 pages of it.

They also give us the benefit of really needing to keep ideas in our heads, because they span entire chapters or entire scenes at the least.

With that said, books are a lot to get into. There can be a lot of language that you might only find in books. This language is still useful though, so just give it a sentence a day at the start and then slowly ramp up.

Suggestions

Milestones 6-10

The news:

NHK Easy:

A great way to get into understanding the news. This is written for elementary school kids and learners of Japanese. Understanding this is a good first step to eventually jumping into the normal NHK site later.

They have Japanese definitions for some words, but you’re better off using a Japanese-to-English dictionary such as https://jisho.org/. Getting lost in the Japanese dictionary rabbit hole is not really helpful at any level, but especially not here (see FAQ at the very end of this guide for more details).

Milestones 10-15

Book:

Japanese Folktales for Language Learners 昔むかしばなしで学まなぶ日本語にほんご:

Generally, things designed for language learners can be difficult to navigate and are not typically recommended. However, this book also serves as a great long-form native material, as the Japanese is written in a normal style for story-telling.

English translations and cultural notes are added on the opposite page and at the end of stories, so you can check your understanding either after reading everything or during reading. (Keep in mind that translations may not be exact, so if you had the gist of the translation, you’re probably doing fine.)

Furigana is only added for potentially unknown words at the start of these stories, and if the same word is used twice, they do not add furigana the second time. This can help with not becoming over-reliant on furigana.

Milestone 15+

The news:

NHK

This offers a very wide variety of topics and you should be very adventurous here. While it’s not exactly easy at the start, there will be a lot of learning if you stick with it. Try to give it a sentence or so a day until you can move up to a paragraph a day.

We generally recommend doing this before a more stimulating native material that you enjoy, both for focus and enjoyment reasons. Mixing and matching native materials is a great strategy to keep things fresh, and doing the potentially more tedious/unfun ones first gives you something to look forward to once you get through it.

Reading FAQ

How do I look up a kanji I don’t know?

You can take a picture and use your phone’s built-in text recognition if it has it (newer iPhone models do), or use the Google Translate app on your phone to take a picture and then copy and paste the Japanese text over to a different dictionary such as https://jisho.org/.

We do not recommend using Google’s translation as it will only give one definition for the word, and its English translations are shady at best.

The same is true for DeepL although it can sometimes be less shady than Google Translate. Still, better to just go straight to the dictionary and parse together a literal meaning in your mind the best you can.

You’re better off trying to figure out the gist yourself and not relying on automated tools like Google Translate, DeepL, or chatGPT (chatGPT is particularly misleading and we strongly recommend that you do not use it for serious language studies).

Again, our core studies with NativShark will be going on during this time and we’ll be getting exposed to tons of nuance explanations and natural translations there already. You’re always welcome to join our community on Discord and ask in the #japanese-help channel as well!

You can also pick out the kanji via radicals on most dictionaries, including https://jisho.org/.

Radicals can be confusing at first but as you do it more, you’ll become more and more comfortable with how they’re sorted. Note that they’re sorted by stroke number, so try drawing it in the air and counting how many strokes it takes you to give you a starting point on where to look.

Most dictionaries also have a writing feature, so you can try that too. These can be sensitive to stroke order, so your results may vary based on your handwriting skills.

It is generally a good idea to find native materials that use furigana until you have a foothold in looking up kanji without it.

Once you start increasing your vocab, you’ll find that you’ll be able to look up kanji because you know them in different words, but this strategy isn’t really reliable until you’ve been studying for a while. Perhaps around Milestone 16 to 18 or so.

I’m a bit scared of kanji. Can I use a native material that uses hiragana and katakana only?

While kanji right off the bat can be a bit intimidating, using hiragana and katakana (kana) only tends to slow down our progress and is much more difficult to parse due to the number of different words in Japanese that share the same pronunciation.

If you’re struggling with understanding a sentence, you will find that kanji may be your saving grace once you get them looked up. Otherwise, you might be looking at 5 different words with 3 meanings each, and not sure how any of them could fit into this sentence.

Again, we highly recommend using furigana if you’re reading manga, playing a game, or otherwise. That’s why all of our early material examples have furigana!

Listening material

A listening material is any material you’re mainly using your listening skills to pick up language, unassisted (or mostly unassisted) by reading skills.

These include anime, TV shows, podcasts, YouTube, the news, movies, audiobooks, and (to an extent) music.

Listening materials can also be broken down into two categories, but we’ll be breaking them down via our approach to them rather than the content itself.

We will want to approach listening in two distinct ways: active and passive listening.

Active listening

Active listening involves, well, actively paying attention. You are focusing on the material you’re listening to and trying to understand it as fully as possible.

Especially when you’re just starting out, listening can be a difficult skill to grapple with.

As with any of our native materials, don’t worry too much if you feel that it’s a bit challenging. We’re here to pick up what we can and keep moving. Never feel bad about skipping more difficult sections, or just choosing a different native material.*

*Swapping native materials when you feel it’s too difficult can be a great strategy, but you’ll also find that most native materials become significantly easier to parse the further you get along in them due to the repetition of vocab and ideas. If you notice yourself swapping materials every few days or every week, it may be worth trying to stick with one to see if it becomes easier with time.

The main thing is that we’re actively focusing on the language we’re hearing instead of letting it play in the background while we do something else. (Letting it play in the background is called passive listening, which we’ll cover right after this.)

If your native material has subtitles, they can be quite useful to turn on, especially in the beginning. You shouldn’t ever feel bad for using them, but turning them off can provide an extra challenge which can be quite helpful.

There are many approaches to active listening, and all of them are valid.

You may find yourself focusing more on a specific strategy throughout any given day, but it’s generally most helpful to mix these strategies throughout a single study session. The different strategies all take varying amounts of effort and brainpower, so this helps keep things fresh while ensuring your listening skills come out balanced.

You’ll probably find yourself naturally swapping between all of these, but let’s shine some light on what to expect.

Full speed ahead

With this method, all we want to focus on is getting the gist. Constantly stopping and rewinding can get a bit annoying after a while, so this is what we would do instead of that.

You won’t have the chance to stop and rewind on the JLPT either, so it can be helpful to get used to letting confusing things go as quickly as you can so you can attempt to catch the next sentence that’s barreling toward you.

Pause and rewind

It can be helpful to listen to a single sentence or small section two or even three times every now and then.

Since most of these methods mix really well together, you may find yourself trying not to pause for a bit and then running into a sentence that you think is really interesting. From there, you might pause and rewind so you can listen to it a few more times and/or look up all the words it contains.

If it’s something where you can also read the language being spoken (i.e. a show with Japanese subtitles) then you may try to listen once and then listen again while reading the subtitle, or simply read while you listen and try to understand the gist that way.

Shadowing

If you find yourself listening to the same sentences a few times, doing something called “shadowing” can also be very helpful. This is when we try to say the sentence we’re listening to out loud.

Shadowing helps us keep the Japanese we shadowed in our heads and cement it a little bit faster.

Shadowing can also help prepare our production abilities, as repeating things like this helps us build our bank of quick responses. It also helps with our pronunciation skills if we pay a bit of attention to the intonation and general rhythm of the sentence as well.

*To be fair, neither of these will directly help us on the JLPT, but knowing how to say something basically always means that you understand it, so it does help increase our total knowledge base.

Since all audio can be used both passively and actively, let’s hold off on the examples for a second and talk about passive listening.

Passive listening

Passive listening is generally best treated as something you do in your low-quality study time.

In other words, if you’re studying for an hour and a half a day, then you usually shouldn’t count passive listening towards that (it’s not a big deal if you’re super busy that day and that’s the only studying you could squeeze in, though.)

Passive listening can be incredibly helpful for getting used to the general flow of Japanese and picking up random words here or there.

With that said, let’s take a look at how we can best use each medium to increase our listening skills.

Breakdown

Podcasts:

Great for active or passive listening.

Generally, podcasts tend to be more long-form so they’re often best for passive listening when you can’t fit in high-quality studies (such as while driving, on the train, etc.) or are simply out of brain juice for the day.

You can actively study them as well. If there’s a script available or there are English translations in the podcast itself, this becomes much easier to do.

Anime:

Characters often tend to have very specific ways of speaking, so copying them often won’t help us sound more natural. However, there can be a tendency to speak in more difficult grammar points (to sound more dramatic, fit an older style, etc.) so we can use this to our advantage and get lots of exposure to things we might end up seeing on the JLPT.

Anime is great for both passive and active listening.

When being passive, you can just relax and notice what you notice.

This will help with listening comprehension abilities in the long term and getting used to the flow of Japanese in the short term. Odds are you’ve watched some anime in your life, and you should still do so even before Milestone 6 if it’s your hobby.

You can also be active with anime. There are a few different approaches you can take.

You can choose to watch it with English or Japanese subtitles, or with them completely off depending on the level of challenge you want to give yourself.

You can also watch the same episode twice, back to back, with different subtitle settings. For example, you might watch one episode with no subtitles, turn on English/Japanese subtitles, and then watch that same episode again to check if you understood it, or to fill in what you missed.

You might also use Japanese/English subtitles first and then turn off all subtitles just to try to hear the Japanese being used since you now know what should be happening in each scene.

You can also do English subtitles first and then use Japanese subtitles on the second watch, which is a good way to ease into this, particularly at the start / if the show is on the tougher side as far as language goes.

It’s worth experimenting with all of these methods to find what works the best for you on any given day, and/or based on where you are in NativShark. All of these offer different skills being trained, along with different difficulty levels.

TV shows and movies:

Most of the things that apply to anime also apply here, especially in regards to the subtitles.

TV shows tend to have more realistic speech, whereas anime can be a little bit out there. So it is good to balance these every now and then to get your ears used to all of these listening formats.

The news:

The news can be great for active or passive listening, depending on the format.

If you have access to a Japanese news channel, it could be good to leave that running and passively listen. On news websites, small clips that accompany articles on news websites may be particularly helpful for active listening. (We’ll talk about this more in a bit.)

Audiobooks:

These can be best for active listening. They're usually on the tougher side, but buying the physical version of a book and reading along with the audiobook can make for some really nice practice.

If you already know the contents of the book because you've read or listened to it before in a language you already know, you might be able to use them passively as well.

Streams:

While audiobooks are good for active listening, streams can be good for passive listening (though this does depend on the stream).

If you enjoy watching streams on https://www.twitch.tv/, https://www.youtube.com/, etc. then all you need to do is find people who make content you like in Japanese ^^

Feel free to watch whatever interests you, such as gaming, cooking, or just chatting about whatever streams. You’ll notice your ability to comprehend spoken language improving over time even if you don’t pay active attention the majority of the time.

Music:

Music is a strange beast. It’s usually quite difficult to break down lyrics. There’s a ton of language you won’t really find outside of songs, but you can learn a few good words here and there.

Music is generally best treated with an “I’m interested in what this song says” vibe over a “this will help my Japanese” vibe. Feel free to examine song lyrics with that in mind!

Suggestions

Remember, we won’t be able to understand 100% of the language we see here, but we will have the tools to understand it with effort.

Milestones 6-10

Podcast:

Konnichiwa Podcast:

A podcast hosted by 2 Japanese native speakers and 1 English native speaker. There is a mix of Japanese and English throughout the podcast, and it’s great for practicing listening and then immediately checking to see if you understood what was said. It’s not strictly a learning podcast, which means we won’t get hit with unnatural language aimed at learners either.

Anime:

Tamako market (たまこまーけっと):

A comfy anime about a girl living in a 商店街しょうてんがい shopping street. It’s fun, pretty Japan, and doesn’t have the most difficult topics overall. Could be good to do an active or passive listening strategy for this one, with subtitles in English or Japanese, or none at all.

Also, don’t stress about not understanding what the bird character says. Their speaking style is likely to be the most difficult at this point, so just see if you can get the gist and go based on the other character’s reactions to him.

Milestones 10-15

Anime:

Sound! Euphonium (響ひびけ！ユーフォニアム):

A great anime for getting your ears used to faster language while still not being over-the-top challenging.

It has a high school setting and a focus on concert band, so don’t worry if some of the instrument language goes over your head. Thankfully, there’s a character who doesn’t know anything about band, so there are lots of explanations that can help you out as well.

Milestone 15+

Anime:

March comes in like a Lion (３月さんがつのライオン):

Certain parts feature more silence than your average show but the language used is good for around this level. These silences can become a nice break from the fast-paced talking that tends to follow when certain characters are around. There’s also a nice variety of language, between characters of all ages talking and topics that range from light-hearted to serious.

It could be good to pick up a few basic shogi terms, but in general, you can zone these out. There are explanations in the anime itself that might be worth breaking down if you’re interested, but you don’t need to know how shogi works to enjoy or learn a lot from this anime.

TV shows:

Tokyo midnight diner:

This one has a lot of fast-spoken natural language, but has a bunch of (usually) chill vibes and more realistic spoken conversations, as far as how a person in real life would speak goes.

The content can be a bit tough at times but it’s on Netflix, which means you should also be able to get Japanese subtitles or English subtitles to help you out.

Monday Late Show (月曜げつようから夜よふかし):

At about 45 minutes per episode, this is great for both active and passive listening. It’s also hilarious and has many different topics, which means you’ll be enjoying the show while also learning tons of ways to talk about many situations.

Sometimes there are even language questions on it so you can see how natives think about Japanese, along with common or funny mistakes. They also sometimes show off certain dialects and ask people to say silly lines that show these dialects off.

The news:

NHK:

If you happen to have TV channels (or a subscription to a service that can get you Japanese TV channels) then the news makes great active and passive listening. You can also go on the NHK website and watch videos there as well.

The grammar and vocab used in the news is generally very high-level so it’s hard to parse, but it’s good practice for getting the gist and getting used to things that may appear on the JLPT. If you can understand the news 95% of the way, you’re likely more than prepared for the JLPT listening section.

Listening FAQ

Should I use English subtitles or is that a waste of time?

English subtitles are fine to use!

They can be used both actively or passively. I may keep an ear out for keywords if I’m being active, or if I just wanna relax and enjoy some anime then I might not really pay much attention but still find myself recognizing a few things here and there. Both are valid approaches

Any amount of Japanese going into your brain will be helpful, but if I know I’m going to have a much higher chance of zoning out and not studying much, I tend to treat it as extra passive study time, instead of part of my usual daily core studies.

It still helps, but that’s likely not the only thing we want to be doing for listening.

I feel completely lost whenever I try listening. What do I do?

If you consistently find yourself lost or frustrated when practicing listening, it might be good to spend some extra time in NativShark focusing on listening.

During your review flashcards, try closing your eyes and playing the audio before you see the sentence, and then play once again while reading along. Doing this often should help boost your listening skills.

Keep in mind that this will come with time, so while it will be helpful, try not to expect immediate results with this. Stay consistent with this method and you should notice improvement with time.

It’s important to remember that you’re learning.

We aren’t mastering the language and then flexing with native materials; we’re getting tools from NativShark and then practicing those tools via native materials. Learning takes time and happens in NativShark and with immersion in native materials.

Just like any new shiny tool you may have ever received in the past, you’re probably not going to get it perfect on the first try. Or the tenth or twentieth try, in some cases.

Native materials aren't the test at the end of the tunnel; they're a part of the study journey. You won't know things, and you'll learn them as you go.

It’s going to take time, and that's okay ^^

Core studies FAQ

Should I make flashcards from my native materials?

You can if you really want to, and sometimes the extra effort of making a flashcard alone can help solidify a particular word, but even still it’s often more helpful to spend that time progressing and seeing more Japanese instead.

NativShark already has you reviewing things you learned, so you really don’t need to add more on top of that.

On top of custom flashcards often being a bit redundant, they also eat up your study time because of how long it takes to review them. So generally give them a pass and spend more time in native materials instead.

What about premade flashcards pulled from the native materials I want to study?

While this may seem like a good idea at first, this defeats the purpose of even doing a native material to begin with.

We study with native materials so we can learn Japanese in lots of new contexts while reviewing what we already know and solidifying it via these new contexts.

Ripping the language from the material and autogenerating flashcards which you then study in isolation just means that you’re studying with a subpar learning resource now instead of a native material.

NativShark already is teaching you all the tools you need to get into native materials and become proficient in Japanese, so the above is, quite simply, not worth your valuable study time.

Should I use an English-to-Japanese dictionary or a Japanese-to-Japanese dictionary?

Use an English-to-Japanese dictionary.

Japanese-to-Japanese dictionaries both take too long to parse, are harder to understand in general, and contain loads of unhelpful words. On top of that, you have to go down this big rabbit hole of looking up 8 other words just to understand the one you were looking up.

We’ve had team members try this approach, and it’s always more time-consuming while resulting in lots of unnatural and unhelpful Japanese knowledge.

What’s worse, it’s significantly harder to remember vocab looked up in Japanese when compared to vocab looked up in English, so your retention will drop as well.

This isn’t to say that it’s always unhelpful, however.

If you come across two different words that have the same English translation, it can be useful to look them up in Japanese.

However, you’ll usually want to google the following in that case: “Word1 Word2 違い”.

For example, you might google “食べる食う違い”, which would lead you to a discussion from Japanese people on the nuance differences of these words.

But in general, save the monolingual dictionary usage until after you’ve passed the N1. Right now, our goal is to build proficiency and pass the test so we can move on to our other perhaps more exciting Japanese learning goals!

Great job reaching the end of this guide! That was a ton to read.

You might want to skim it a few more times as you study, but I definitely recommend checking back with the general summary every now and then to make sure you're staying on track if you want to hit the timelines discussed.

In the next part, we're going to go over some test prep strategies. Don't worry, this part is much shorter ^^

Continue with Part 3 of this guide.