JLPT N3 in 24 weeks

For after the N4 plan: twenty-four weeks at forty-five to fifty-five minutes a day, and everything is here, free, in order. N3 is the level where Japanese stops being a course and becomes a language you use — 1,200 new words, 354 kanji, 136 patterns, and texts that are notices, emails, interviews and arguments, printed without spaces because that is how Japanese is printed.

What the plan assumes

That N4 is done — you read the 238 kanji of Levels C and E without furigana, and plain form, たら and 〜と思う are automatic. If they are not, go back; this plan repeats none of it. About 140 hours in all — N3 is roughly twice N4, and the calendar says so honestly. The numbers are the site's own: 45 kanji units (34 sets plus their reviews), 29 grammar units (22 sets plus reviews) with 408 fill-in exercises, 60 vocabulary sets and 20 passages, all tickable on the course page.

The twenty-four weeks

Why kanji first, then grammar

Because at N3 the grammar is mostly recognisable and the kanji are not. A pattern like 〜わけではない announces itself in kana; 影響, 状況 and 現在 do not announce anything until you know them. Eleven weeks of kanji before the first grammar sheet feels lopsided, and it is — deliberately. By week 12 you can read the example sentences on the grammar sheets without the furigana, which halves how long each sheet takes.

Week by week

Week 1 — Kanji: politics, business, work. N3 kanji are abstract in a way N4's were not — 政, 権, economy words, the vocabulary of a newspaper. Four units a week, and the review unit is the test, not a re-read.

Week 2 — Kanji: reporting, deciding, parts and wholes. The first N3 passage has no spaces between words. Expect it to feel harder than N4 even though the words are easier; that is the spacing, and it goes away in about a fortnight.

Week 3 — Kanji: change, cause and result, giving. Cause-and-result is the set that unlocks the essays later: 因, result, 影響 in kana for now. Learn these as pairs of compounds, not as single characters.

Week 4 — Kanji: movement, transport, time. Three transport-heavy sets in a row, and the notices in the reading are full of them. Read T3 with a pencil and circle every kanji from this week.

Week 5 — Kanji: weather, nature, the body. Weather kanji pay for themselves the day you read a forecast. Pair the set with the weather-and-disasters vocabulary sheet in the same week.

Week 6 — Kanji: health, and the feelings sets. Two feelings sets — joy and hope, then fear and anger. Twenty kanji you will meet mostly in novels and in things people say about their week.

Week 7 — Kanji: thinking, family, effort. Halfway through the kanji. Do the four reviews behind you again on Sunday, cold; anything under 80 % is that set again, not the review again.

Week 8 — Kanji: school and arts, quantity, rules. The rules-and-forms set is the one on every application form you will ever fill in: 記, 認, 限, 条. Write each in a phrase, not alone.

Week 9 — Kanji: home, hands, safety. Verbs of the hand — 押, 抜, 掛, 抱 — are the ones that look alike. Cover the meanings and read the sheet aloud from the kanji alone.

Week 10 — Kanji: connections, asking, more verbs. Half the vocabulary list is behind you too. If a set from week 3 has gone, print its page 2 again now rather than at the end.

Week 11 — Kanji: describing, ability, places, life. All 354 are behind you. Take the week's last day for the last three G reviews in one sitting; that is roughly what the exam's kanji section feels like.

Week 12 — Grammar: nominalisers, aspect, obligation. Every N3 grammar set now prints a second sheet of fill-in exercises — three per pattern, answers on the back. Do the sheet, then the exercises the next day, never the same day.

Week 13 — Grammar: conditionals, reasons and purpose. ば, たら, なら, と on one sheet again, but now against おかげで and せいで. The exercise page for this set is the single most useful sheet on the level.

Week 14 — Grammar: giving and receiving, time clauses. 間 and うちに differ by one idea: a span versus a window that is closing. Write two sentences of your own for each, on genkōyōshi.

Week 15 — Grammar: stages of an action, listing, negatives. なかなか〜ない, 必ずしも〜ない: the negatives set is where N3 listening starts to make sense, because these adverbs arrive long before the verb ends.

Week 16 — Grammar: contrast, guessing, certainty. のに, くせに, ようだ, らしい, はず, かもしれない — six ways to be less than sure. The exam tests exactly the differences between them.

Week 17 — Grammar: the ように family, degree, only and even. ように is four patterns wearing one coat: purpose, instruction, resemblance, change. The set puts them side by side on purpose.

Week 18 — Grammar: quoting, explaining, passive and keigo. Keigo is not extra politeness, it is a different grammar. Do the passive/causative sheet twice — once producing forms, once reading them in T17.

Week 19 — Grammar: compound particles, casual speech. All 136 patterns are behind you. Redo every H exercise sheet from weeks 12–15 cold; you will find the conditionals have stayed and the aspect verbs have not.

Week 20 — Vocabulary and reading, to the end. The last sets are the prefixes and suffixes and the everyday-action verbs — the two that make unfamiliar words guessable. Then the last two passages, both of them arguments rather than accounts.

Week 21 — Recall: every vocabulary set, page 2 only. This is the heaviest week in the plan and the one that decides your score. Expect to miss 150–250 words of 1,200; that list is the next two weeks.

Week 22 — The list, and the kanji reviews again. Write each missed word inside a sentence about your own week. A word you have used once is worth ten you have read.

Week 23 — Grammar exercises, all of them, cold. Time the passages: N3 gives you roughly a minute per hundred characters in the exam. If a 500-character text takes eight minutes, the problem is stopping at unknown words, not the words.

Week 24 — Everything, timed. Then stop the day before. Reread T1 last: it will read like a note from a friend, which is what six months of this is for.

Where each thing lives

• N3 kanji, Level G — 354 kanji in 34 sets, with review units in both directions.
• N3 grammar, Level H — 136 patterns in 22 sheets, each with a companion sheet of fill-in exercises and answers.
• N3 vocabulary — 1,200 words in 60 sets, none of them on the N5 or N4 list; two pages each.
• N3 reading — 20 passages, 280 to 560 characters, unspaced, using only the 589 kanji of Levels C, E and G.
• Genkōyōshi — the blank squared paper the plan keeps asking you to write on.

What this site does not have

Listening, and at N3 it is a third of the exam. Twenty to thirty minutes a day from week 1 — not week 12 — with the official JLPT sample audio, a news-for-learners podcast, or anything with a transcript you can read afterwards. The plan also has no speaking practice beyond the "your turn" boxes; one conversation a week with a tutor or an exchange partner is the single addition most worth making, and at N3 you finally have enough grammar for that conversation to be worth having.

If twenty-four weeks is too fast

Stretch weeks 1–11 to eighteen and leave the rest as they are: the kanji are what take time to settle, and everything after them goes faster once they have. Do not stretch weeks 21–24 — recall under time pressure is a different skill from study, and spreading it thin is how people who "know" 1,200 words score badly on 1,200 words.

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