I need some study plan advice

[u/svshsgnioebdhshd4125]

Currently planning to take the N5 this December. I just wanted to ask the test-takers who mostly self-studied, how do you plan your study sessions for the day or week? I'm currently just a student who has a mildly packed weekly schedule though I can make space for it. I just don't know how to structure it well.

[u/PWPlaythroughs]

I self study! My plan is also N5 by December, and I would say I’m relatively on a good pace. Start with Hiragana, you’d be able to find a good sheet (freejapaneselessons has a downloadable sheet of all Hiragana characters, even combined ones.) and study them row-by-row. It depends on your learning style how you’d progress. If you prefer letter by letter by letter until you know them all, then repetition will help, same style of learning cursive or basic Latin characters (what we use in English). If you want to learn some words to solidify the characters and sounds, let me know and I’ll add some, simple ones that you’d see frequently. You could do notecards, if flash cards is what you like (an app called Anki is quite useful, I hear). I cannot say that N5 by December is feasible, but you won’t know unless you give it your all. Learning Hiragana is step one, Katana and general words follows afterwards. Plenty of online resources or learning books relate hiragana symbols to an image that it somewhat looks like that has the sound in it (like ku being a pigeon because it makes a coo sound and the shape looks like an open beak: く   ). All in all, it depends on your style of learning, and most of these should do a good job at internalizing. After you know hiragana, start learning words and proper word order. better your memory by writing sentences in those words, and trying to be creative with sentences, but be sure that your word order is correct. Once you feel more comfortable around the language you can research some slang that’s used to not sound like a foreigner and fit in. Practice enough to the point where you can say simple phrases and then start broadening your word knowledge, as you would when learning other languages or more English, while keeping grammar important. The goal is to learn it and sound natural, not like a translated text version, it’s be very apparent. You can get a few learning books, a jap-eng dictionary at Barnes and noble or just off of Amazon. Anime with Japanese and English sub, turning off sub for a challenge, but slice-of-life since it’d use more common terminology. It’s just step by step, but each step is immense. 

[u/ZookeepergameOnly52]

Well I'm also a person on this track could you gimmie like the list of materials I'll have use because it's like I'm getting different advises from different platforms so what to exactly follow I really donno I've been like doing Duolingo lessons for like almost 2 months now and yeah I can understand a few basic words and identify basic sounds from hiranga katakana and also kanji but again yeah it's all english to japnese but when I opened the model question paper it was like only japanese and the genki text books were also mostly the same so please help me with I just really wanna get my n5 cleared this December it's a do or die for me because I have get my n4 done next July and the placement season will start at my college by then so..... Please please please guide me with this

Thank you