A highway for JLPT
All the materials required (Grammar, vocabulary, Kanji) to top this level of exam are available here. Also, there are several tests and quizes which will help you boost your confidence.
1.Ability to read hiragana, katakana, and a few basic kanji (about 100 kanji)
2.Ability to greet in Japanese and make a good impression.
3.Ability to make simple sentences with basic grammar such as:
formal and casual conjugations of verbs and adjectives for past and non-past forms.
4.Approximately 800 vocabularies in your arsenal.
5.Able to listen and understand basic conversations in daily life.
It has 2 sections, the language knowledge section and the listening section. The language knowledge section into 2 subsections, vocabulary section and the grammar-reading section. The total duration of the exam is about 105 min.
The exam begins with language knowledge [vocabulary] section, and it is for 25 minutes. After a small break, language knowledge [grammar-reading] section will start and the time limit for this section is 50 minutes. Again after a small interval, the listening section which is the final section of the exam has the time limit of 30min. An exact breakdown of the time duration is shown in the table below.
| language knowledge (Vocabulary) | language knowledge (Grammar-Reading) | listening section. |
| 25 min | 50 min | 30 min |
| Total = 105 min | ||
| Overall pass marks | language knowledge(Vocabulary, Grammar-Reading) | listening section. |
| 80 out of 180 | 38 out of 120 | 19 out of 60 |
Following table will give a brief idea about the question pattern likely to be seen in this exam. The table will help you prepare strategies to tackle these questions.
| Section | Type of Test Questions | |
| Language knowledge | Vocabulary | Kanji Reading |
| Orthography | ||
| Contextually -defined expressions | ||
| Paraphrase | ||
| Grammar | Grammar form 1 (Selecting Grammar form) |
|
| Grammar 2 (sentence Composition) |
||
| Text grammar. | ||
| Reading | Comprehenssion (Short Passage) |
|
| Comprehenssion (Medium Passage) |
||
| Information Retrival | ||
| Listening | Task-based comprehenssion | |
| Comprehenssion of key points | ||
| Quick response | ||
To be frank, all the material required to clear JLPT N5 is already available for free on various websites. However, having a textbook or reference book by your side will definitely reduce the pain of searching the contents online and organizing them into notes.
We have listed out a few of the popular books that can help you in JLPT . To get a detailed review of the book, please click on the title of the book.
| Category | Book title |
| Reference book | Minna no Nihongo volume 1 |
| Reference book | Genki volume 1 |
| Textbook | Nihongo Sou matoume N5 |
| Kanji practice book | Basic Kanji book volume1 |
| kanji reference book | Nihongo challenge kanji |
| Practice Exam papers | Official JLPT N5 practice exam papers |
Sometimes, achieving bigger goals is not that easy, but dividing those goals into smaller pieces will give more chances for success. Learning Japanese is a long-term goal which requires years of study, and N5 is a baby step for achieving that goal. Also, with smaller goals such as JLPT N5, it will be easier to monitor the progress and self evaluate the interest in the language, so why not try with N5 exam first?