Nihongo Pera Pera (Fluent Japanese)

Here I will describe how I have prepared for the 1kyuu over the past year.

December

I took the JLPT 2kyuu the first week of December. After an exhaustive four months of studying, I took a break for one month. However, during this time I continued to use SuperMemo to study the flashcards I had created to prepare for the 2kyuu.

January

In January, while I was still waiting for the results of the 2kyuu, I continued to practice using SuperMemo. However, I grew tired of SuperMemo's bugs so I looked at many other memory programs, before finally settling on Mnemosyne. Knowing the JLPT was still almost a full year away, I took it pretty easy this month, too.

February-April

At this point I began the Kanji in Context series, which took a full three months, but allowed me to learn how to read all of the Ministry of Education kanji recommended through high school. I also picked up several thousand vocabulary words during this time.

Mid March- JLPT Practice Test

Halfway through Kanji in Context, I took an 1kyuu practice exam and scored 58% (70% and above is passing). Although I didn't pass, I didn't think my score was too bad, either, so I decided that after I finished Kanji in Context I would ease up on studying a little and do more fun things in Japanese rather than just cram grammar.

May-June

After finishing Kanji in Context, I was ready to take a slight break from the maniac studying again. Since I could read nearly all the kanji I encountered at this point, I spent the next two months reading books in Japanese that I enjoyed, adding any unknown words or interesting sentences into Mnemosyne.

July

In July I returned to studying using textbooks. I used two books for vocabulary and example sentences, Nihongo Through Newspaper Articles and Business Japanese.

August

In August I decided I needed a more thorough review of grammar and so went through the first two volumes of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series.

September

In September I finished the third and final volume of the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series.

October

In October I worked through two UNICOM books.

First, I worked my way through UNICOM's 1kyuu and 2kyuu combined grammar book. I found this book very useful because although it drills you on the common mistakes of grammar, it does so through difficult sentences, so it's not something you quickly grow tired of as you review the grammar.

Second, I used UNICOM's 1kyuu reading practice book, completing all the example problems and scoring a 74% on the whole. Read my review of the UNICOM 1kyuu prep series.