Japanese level when you started vs. now?

I would say that I had a solid high level N3/low N2 when starting. The thing is that I had a long pause for my Japanese studies because I was doing my MA in another language, so it took me a little while to readjust. By the time I retook the N2 the winter I arrived, I missed the mark by only 2%.

Grrr!

Then, I haven't retaken it in over a year because of COVID and I started doing other language studies (I speak 5 languages to various degrees now) for a couple of reasons, but I feel like I am at a decent N2 level. No matter what you do, you're going to increase your level just by being immersed in the environment. On the other hand, if focused more on Japanese I could have probably taken a stab at N1 by this winter.

Before I started as a CIR I had passed the N2, but that was back in 2011. I started as a CIR in 2017 and felt like I was pretty decent at daily conversations and reading comprehension. I couldn't hold deep conversations on various subjects though.

Over the past 4 years I have learned a lot even without actively studying. I spend half my day at a kindergarten and the other half in a geopark office, so I've picked up a lot of child-rearing vocab and geological/UNESCO vocab. I am currently studying to take the N1 this December (altho I'm not very confident I will pass). I can listen to the news and scan through the newspaper ok, but I feel like my speaking had gone downhill since I spend most of my time talking to 3-6 year olds instead of adults.

I've definitely hit a plateau in my language studies, and I have to keep reminding myself of how much I've learned and how far I've come since becoming a CIR.

I took the N1 just before graduating college while applying for program, and I failed by like 7 points or something. I hadn't taken any JLPT tests before that, and I didn't study much so I was going in basically with what I learned from my college classes, which were not JLPT prep classes by any means, but the curriculum could conceivably get someone to N1.

I took it again after 2-ish years of living here and passed it by a fairly WIDEEE margin (I won't tell my score _{unless you ask teehee})

So, I'd say, by both measurable, and unmeasureable metrics, I've improved substantially by just being here.

Only thing is I have a bad memory in English which means I have a worse memory in Japanese, so I forget a lot of shit people say to me unless I make a real point to remember it.

i also feel like i am similar to everyone who posted. i failed n1 twice before jet (by very small margins) and never took n2. i took a gap in studying and passed with a good margin last july. it was through the test that i realised that my listening skills have improved the most, despite never studying it. i don't read japanese newspapers or books so my reading could be better but i can understand any piece of writing if i put my mind to it.

i'm surrounded by japanese constantly and don't have any english speaking hulemdos in my city so i guess full immersion was a big part of my improvement!

I came to Japan in 2017 as an ALT with a low N3 score. Passed N2 by a single point in December 2018, so spent most of 2019 brushing up on N2 level material with a tutor. Then I spent 2020 until December 2021 studying for N1 and passed with an okayish/kinda low score.

I'm still picking up a lot of new vocab every day since that's my weakest point. Hoping to find ways to motivate myself to do more "studying" in Japanese, even if it isn't with a textbook.

sameeee i'm probably a high N3/low N2 level and feel like im worst at speaking and listening, but my reading is ok. im trying to push myself to read more fanfics (im sorry its just the only literature im interested in) and i search whatever i dont know, but i always feel like theres some basic grammar that i dont know because of my gap in my language studies so i always feel some impostors syndrome whenever i think about the interview + just generally. the fact that im actually going to japan

I would also be interested if there's room for one more but totally fine if not

Thisss I really need to remember this. When I studied abroad in 2019 I was even overthinking how I pronounced ありがとうございます (￣^￣)  I have made a lot of progress on that but I guess putting myself in the deepend is going to be the best way to learn

I second comparing yourself to your past self and not others.

We all have different goals, different things we want to achieve with the language. Some people are perfectly fine with one level of ability, and another person might find that it does not work for them.

Like most things, you should keep a goal in mind. Japanese is just a language, it's just a tool. And how sharp you need your tools depends on what work you want to accomplish with them.

If you want to get better, repetition is important, but what is even more important I think is what's called "deliberate practice" or practicing while always being on the lookout for what you can improve.

Repetition by itself doesn't make one person good at something, or at least not past a certain point. For example, there won't be much difference in driving skill between someone who has driven a car to commute for 5 years vs 30 years. To improve, you need to practice deliberately, asking yourself what are your weaknesses and what to do to overcome them.

If you just use the same words and phrases over and over, you'll only become better at using those words and phrases. This is not at all a bad thing in itself, it just depends whether you're comfortable with your actual level or want to "sharpen your tool more." This will be different for everyone.

Sometimes, the tool you have does its job just well, and you're better off working at something else. Everyone has different goals, expectations, needs, priorities, which is why it's almost always irrelevant to compare oneself to others.

Here's a cool (and long) article about deliberate practice if it interests you. :)

literally this

If you had told baby me back in high school or even college days, that I would one day be this far in studies/life, I would never have believed it to be possible. I might still have a long way to go towards actual fluency in this language but darn it, it does feel good to compare to the me of 4 years ago and see that growth~

regression is a thing too right? Or maybe you were just dealing with easier situations and now you're doing harder stuff so it feels like there's more of a gap. Let me know if I'm off base though 

Language learning definitely goes in diminishing returns. You feel like making huge leaps first, because you know literally nothing. So going from knowing 30 kanji to 300 kanji feels like a world of difference, because you know, well, 10 times more. Whereas the difference between knowing 1500 kanji and 1770 kanji feels less amazing despite being the same number of 270 kanji.

And this goes for everything. When you first learn the word 悲しい it feels like you can express yourself way better. But when you already know 悲しい、寂しい and you learn 切ない, it doesn't give the same "I got something I needed" feel of progressing.

The more you progress, the more effort it takes to progress further, and the harder it is to notice your progress. It's very much like a video game. It takes low effort to go from level 1 to 20, you learn plenty of new moves along the way, whereas it takes several hundred times that effort to go from level 90 to 100, and you don't really learn any new shiny moves anymore.



Having passed N1 three years ago myself, and having had a big hiatus where I stopped learning actively too, I really feel you in not knowing how to measure progress anymore, or where to even go from there.

One way to think about it is to not see N1 as the ultimate goal of fluency, but the starting point. In old League of Legends, your max level was capped at 30, and I used to think this was the end game. But it turns out that's the level where you can start playing ranked games, and is considered by many the "end of the tutorial." You can think of the N1 in the same light, as the end of the tutorial, and now you get to teach yourself the language instead of relying on pre-written "guides."

Another thing is to look for other ways to test your knowledge. The 漢字検定 is one of them, which can teach you new kanji words. But it doesn't test advanced words which are not written in kanji like やおら、しどけない etc. There is another test called 日本語検定 aimed at native speakers which teaches you this and more, which can also be a good thing to strive for if you want to go further.