Need some advice on studying N1 grammar
So I’ve been doing some past-year papers that I found online. So far, I’ve completed papers from 2010/07 to 2016/07. From what I can tell, grammar is definitely my weakest point right now.
I’d say I can score around 85% in kanji and vocabulary, but only about 30% in grammar, which brings my language knowledge score down to around 60–70%. Combined with my other scores (reading: 60–70%, listening: 70–80%), I’m aiming for around 75% overall to have a comfortable margin for passing. I think improving my grammar is the easiest way to achieve that, especially compared to improving my reading skills, which would take much longer to develop.
With that out of the way, I first bought the Nihongo no Mori N1 book and memorized every single grammar point (this was a few months ago). After that, I performed better on online N1 grammar quizzes, so I thought I was good to go, until I actually started doing past-year papers.
I then reviewed all the grammar points again, found a YouTube playlist by 出口先生, and went through it. I also bought Shin Kanzen Master and Nihongo 500 Mon, and I was able to ace the questions there as well.
The problem is that I just skimmed through the grammar section of the 2023/07 paper (I haven’t committed to doing a full mock test yet because I want to save some papers for the final two weeks), and I still wasn’t able to answer the questions confidently.
So now I need some advice on what my next step should be, ideally something achievable within 1.5 months. I don’t mind studying for 2 hours every day if it’ll get me there.
Thanks!