How to study JLPT vocabulary with flashcards

How many words does each JLPT level need?

Nobody can give you an official number. The JLPT stopped publishing vocabulary lists when the test was revised in 2010. What learners and teachers still use are the old estimates, and they're good enough to plan with:

Look at the last column before you pick a pace. N5 is a two-month project. N1 is a two-year one, and that's only the vocabulary. The JLPT runs twice a year, on the first Sunday of July and the first Sunday of December, so count back from your test date and you'll know whether 20 words a day is enough.

1. 01

   Pick one level and a small daily set

   Choose the level you're sitting next, not the one you wish you were at. Then set a daily number you can hit on a bad day. For most people that's 15 to 20 new cards.

   Twenty sounds small. But 20 a day for five days is 100 words a week, and the whole N5 list is gone in two months. A hundred words crammed into one Sunday? You'll recognise maybe a third of them by Thursday.

   What goes wrong: students start three decks at once (N5, N4 and "a few N3 words that looked useful"). Reviews pile up across all three and the habit dies in week two.
2. 02

   Drill every side, not only kanji to meaning

   A JLPT word has three things you need to know: how it's written, how it's read, and what it means. The test checks all of them. One question gives you the kanji and asks for the reading. The next gives you the reading in hiragana and asks which kanji is right.

   So test yourself from every direction. Start from the kanji and recall the reading. Start from the meaning and recall the word. On DriveLMS each side has its own button, and Lock keeps your chosen side as the first thing you see on every card. Lock "Meaning" for a whole session and you're practising production instead of recognition.

   What goes wrong: kanji to meaning, every time. You'll recognise 日 instantly and still freeze when the question asks you to read 日曜日.
3. 03

   Say it out loud, then press the speaker

   Before you flip, say the answer. Out loud, not in your head. Then press the speaker icon and compare.

   Reading silently lets you get away with "something like にち… or ひ?" Saying it forces a decision, and a wrong decision you can hear is one you'll fix. (It also helps in the listening section, where you get one chance to catch the word.) The speaker on DriveLMS cards uses your browser's built-in voice for the card's language, so Japanese sides are read in Japanese. Voice quality depends on your device and browser, and Chrome usually sounds best.

   What goes wrong: flipping too fast. If you flip before you've committed to an answer, you're reading, not testing.
4. 04

   Go in order first, then shuffle

   The first time through a set, go in order. You're meeting the words, and the deck's order often groups related ones together.

   After that, shuffle. If you always see 月 right after 日, part of what you remember is the order. On the test, words don't come in your deck's order. DriveLMS shuffle shows every card exactly once in a random order, counts 1, 2, 3 up to the end, and doesn't touch your saved place in the deck. Switch it off and you're back where you left off.

   What goes wrong: "I know this whole deck." You know it in that order. Shuffle once and find out.
5. 05

   Review your misses tomorrow, and again in three days

   Memory fades on a curve. A word you got wrong today needs to come back tomorrow, then a few days later, then next week. That's spaced repetition, and you don't need special software to do it.

   Keep a short list (paper is fine) of the words you missed. Start tomorrow's session with that list before any new cards. Anything you miss twice goes on the list for three days later as well. DriveLMS decks don't schedule reviews for you, so this list is your review queue.

   What goes wrong: only ever studying new cards. Progress feels fast for three weeks, then the early words are gone.
6. 06

   Put every word into a sentence

   At the end of each session, pick five of today's words and write one short sentence with each. Use grammar you already know. 「日曜日に本を読みます。」(I read books on Sunday.) is a perfectly good sentence.

   This is the step most people skip, and it's the one that matters most for the exam. The next section explains why.

   What goes wrong: treating vocabulary and grammar as separate subjects that will join up on their own. They usually don't.

Where flashcards stop working

Here's what we see in class all the time. A student knows every word in a sentence and still gets the question wrong.

Flashcards teach words one at a time: what they mean, how they're read, what they look like. They don't teach what happens when those words meet grammar. And at N5 and N4, grammar and reading are tested together in the same section of the JLPT. You get a paragraph, a question about it, and a few small grammar patterns that change everything.

None of those mistakes is a vocabulary problem. 雨, 降る, 日本, 行く, 本, 読む: all early N5 words, all probably in your deck. The meaning lives in ても, たことがある and やすい, and you only learn those by reading them in sentences.

So keep the flashcards, but give them a partner. Read one short passage at your level every day. Check yourself against grammar questions, not only word lists. And take a timed mock test every few weeks, because that's where you'll see whether your 800 words survive contact with a real paragraph. If you'd rather have a teacher catch these mistakes, our live online Japanese batches and JLPT mock tests and courses are built for exactly this gap.

Free JLPT flashcards on DriveLMS, N5 to N1

We built our flashcards around the routine above. The decks are free, and you sign in with Google to open the cards. Here's what each feature is for:

Use ← and → to move between cards on a laptop, or swipe on your phone. Your place is saved in your browser for each deck, so close the tab and you'll come back to the same card.