JLPT N4 Study Plan: How to Pass in 6 Months

I passed N5 feeling pretty good about myself, so I signed up for N4 six months later assuming it would be the same test with a few more words in it. Then I sat down with a practice listening section. Two people were talking about changing a meeting time, and they were not saying 行いきます. They were saying 行いってる, じゃあ, 来こなきゃ. I knew every one of those verbs in their polite form and I could not catch a single sentence.

That is the actual gap between N5 and N4, and almost nobody warns you about it. N5 tests whether you have learned textbook Japanese. N4 starts testing whether you can handle Japanese as people actually string it together: plain form, casual contractions, longer sentences, and a listening section that no longer waits for you.

The scope roughly doubles too. Here is a six-month plan that takes that seriously, built around the parts that actually fail people rather than a flat "learn 300 kanji" instruction.

Table of Contents

• What N4 Actually Tests
• The Pass Mark and the Sectional Trap
• What You Need to Know for N4
• The Grammar That Carries the Most Weight
• How Many Hours It Really Takes
• The 6-Month Study Plan
• A Sample Week
• Test Day
• Check Yourself
• Tools to Use Along the Way

What N4 Actually Tests

Like every JLPT level, N4 is multiple choice. No speaking, no writing, no producing a sentence yourself. You only have to recognize the right answer, which is genuinely easier than it sounds when you are staring at the syllabus.

The paper comes in three timed parts:

Treat those times as approximate and check jlpt.jp for the year you sit, because the official timings have been adjusted before.

The number that matters more than the minutes is the reading section. At N5 the passages are a few lines long. At N4 you get notices, emails and short articles, and the grammar and reading share one clock. Run out of time on grammar and you are reading the last passage at a sprint. More people lose points to the clock here than to any single grammar point.

The Pass Mark and the Sectional Trap

N4 is scored out of 180 points, split into two scoring blocks: Language Knowledge plus Reading combined (0 to 120), and Listening (0 to 60).

To pass you need two things at once:

1. A total of 90 / 180 or higher.
2. A sectional minimum in each block: at least 38 / 120 on Language Knowledge and Reading, and 19 / 60 on Listening.

Notice what changed from N5 and what did not. The total you need went up from 80 to 90, but the sectional minimums stayed exactly where they were. That sounds generous until you look at it from the other direction: the sectional floor is low enough that people assume listening will take care of itself, then discover that a 19 on listening leaves them needing 71 out of 120 on everything else. The margin disappears quietly.

So the plan below runs listening every week from week one. Not as revision, as a main subject.

What You Need to Know for N4

The commonly quoted scope, which is not published by the test makers but is consistent across schools and textbook series:

• Around 300 kanji. Roughly triple N5. Recognition only, no handwriting.
• About 1,500 vocabulary words. Again, roughly double.
• Plain form everywhere. This is the real jump, and it is a change of default rather than a new topic.
• Compound sentences. Two or three clauses joined together, which is what makes the reading passages feel long.

That third point deserves the emphasis. At N5 you can survive entirely in ます form. At N4, plain form stops being an optional extra chapter and becomes the form that other grammar is built on top of. と思おもう, 時とき, かもしれない, つもり, ようだ: every one of them attaches to plain form, not to ます form.

This is where the single most common N4 sentence error comes from:

✗ 明日あした、友達ともだちに会あいますと思おもいます。
✓ 明日あした、友達ともだちに会あうと思おもいます。
Ashita, tomodachi ni au to omoimasu.
I think I'll meet a friend tomorrow.

The sentence can still end politely. It is only the part before と that has to go plain. Learners who studied N5 well are the most likely to get this wrong, because ます has been the safe, polite choice for a year and switching it off feels like being rude on purpose.

Here is the kind of sentence an N4 reading passage will expect you to take apart without slowing down:

来週らいしゅうの会議かいぎは時間じかんが変かわるかもしれないので、もう一度いちどメールを確認かくにんしてください。
Raishuu no kaigi wa jikan ga kawaru kamoshirenai node, mou ichido meeru o kakunin shite kudasai.
Next week's meeting time might change, so please check your email once more.

One sentence, three N4 grammar points: かもしれない on plain form, ので joining the clauses, and て form plus ください. None of them are hard individually. Reading them at speed, as one thought, is the skill being tested. If a sentence like this takes you thirty seconds to unpick, paste it into our Japanese sentence analyzer and it will split the particles and verb forms for you.

The Grammar That Carries the Most Weight

There are about 69 grammar points on a typical N4 list, and our JLPT N4 grammar list walks through all of them. But they are not equally weighted in practice. Five clusters do most of the work, and they are also where the marks leak.

The plain form family. Dictionary form, ない form, た form, なかった. Everything above plugs into these. Drill them until they are reflex, not calculation.

The て form family. You met て form at N5 for requests. N4 adds the rest of the household: ている for ongoing states, てもいい for permission, てはいけない for prohibition, てから for sequence, てしまう for regret or completion, ておく for doing something in advance.

Potential, passive and causative. Potential is the friendly one. Passive and causative are where people panic, largely because 食たべられる is both "can eat" and "is eaten" and context is the only thing separating them. One test-specific note worth knowing: in casual speech people drop the ら and say 食たべれる, which you will hear constantly in real Japanese and should not write on the exam. The test wants 食たべられる.

Giving and receiving. あげる, くれる, もらう, then the same three attached to て form. English has no equivalent machinery, so this cluster is pure memorization of direction and particles. The classic slip is the particle, not the verb:

✗ 母ははが弁当べんとうを作つくってもらいました。
✓ 母ははに弁当べんとうを作つくってもらいました。
Haha ni bentou o tsukutte moraimashita.
I had my mother make me a bento.

もらう looks at the exchange from the receiver's side, so the person who did the favour is marked with に. Swap to くれる and the camera flips: 母ははが弁当べんとうを作つくってくれました, same event, told from the giver's side. The full breakdown lives in our あげる・くれる・もらう and てあげる・てくれる・てもらう guides.

Transitive and intransitive pairs. 開あける and 開あく, 閉しめる and 閉しまる, つける and つく. The pattern to internalize is that the transitive verb takes を and needs a person doing it, while the intransitive one takes が and just happens:

✗ 電気でんきをつきました。
✓ 電気でんきをつけました。 (I turned on the light.)
✓ 電気でんきがつきました。 (The light came on.)

Both correct versions are useful sentences. They just describe different situations, and N4 will absolutely give you all four options and ask which fits the context. Our transitive and intransitive verbs page has the pair list worth memorizing.

Conditionals are the sixth cluster, and they are big enough to deserve their own read: たら vs ば vs と vs なら covers the whole set with the rule that actually separates them.

How Many Hours It Really Takes

Language schools and learner surveys tend to put N4 at roughly 575 to 1,000 study hours from zero for someone with no prior kanji background, against something like 350 to 450 for N5. Treat both as planning ranges, not promises. The official JLPT site does not publish an hours requirement, so every number you see, this one included, comes from schools and learner reports rather than the test makers.

Read from where you probably are, that means roughly another 200 to 400 hours on top of N5. Over six months:

• 1 hour a day is about 180 hours. Tight, and it works best if you already passed N5 comfortably rather than scraping it.
• 1.5 hours a day is about 270 hours. This is the sweet spot for most people, and it is the pace the plan below assumes.
• 2 hours a day is about 360 hours, with real margin.

If you come from Chinese or another language that uses kanji, the reading half of this collapses and your bottleneck becomes listening and grammar instead. Adjust the plan accordingly rather than grinding kanji you already know. For the wider picture, see how long it takes to learn Japanese.

The 6-Month Study Plan

The shape: convert to plain form early, then build the て form family and the harder verb forms on top of it, while kanji, vocabulary and listening run continuously underneath. The last month is exam mode, not new material.

Month 1: Switch to Plain Form

If plain form still feels like arithmetic at the end of week four, do not move on. Everything in months two and three sits on top of it, and the cost of a shaky foundation here compounds. The verb conjugator is the fastest way to drill it: put in any verb and check yourself against every form.

Month 2: The Te Form Family

This month is where reading speed starts improving, because most of what makes an N4 sentence long is a て form joining two ideas. Push your vocabulary habit toward ~700 words total.

Halfway through is also the point to check yourself honestly rather than assume. If you want a quick measure of where the grammar actually sits, the Japanese grammar quiz is filtered to N5 and N4 points and takes a couple of minutes.

Month 3: Conditionals and Volition

Score that practice test honestly and write down the section, not the total. The total tells you nothing you can act on. The section tells you what month four is for.

Month 4: The Hard Verb Forms

Four heavy weeks in a row, so protect your listening time rather than trading it away for grammar. If you drop listening this month, week 21 is where you find out.

Month 5: Reading Speed and Volume

Month five is deliberately less about new grammar and more about doing it faster. The N4 reading section punishes hesitation more than ignorance, and the fix for hesitation is volume. Our Japanese reading practice passages come with furigana you can switch off, which is a useful way to check whether your kanji is actually solid or just propped up.

Month 6: Exam Mode

The highest-value hour in month six is not another practice test. It is the hour after a practice test, spent working out why each wrong answer was wrong. A test you do not review is just a score.

A Sample Week

Six days on, one day light, at roughly 1.5 hours a day:

Two things are non-negotiable in that table. Listening appears on six days out of seven, because it is the section with a floor you can fall through. And review appears as often as new material, because at N4 the volume is large enough that anything you do not revisit is gone in a month.

If your commute or your dishes are the only free time you have, that is exactly where listening fits. Fifteen honest minutes a day of audio beats an hour on Sunday, and you can get the speaking half in the same slot: Benkyō: Speak & Learn Japanese runs short spoken conversations so the grammar you are drilling actually comes out of your mouth.

Test Day

N4 is offered twice a year in most countries, in July and December, though some test sites overseas only run the December sitting. Registration usually opens several months ahead and closes earlier than people expect, so check your local test site's dates the moment you decide to sit, rather than the month before.

On the day itself, three practical things:

The answer sheet is a separate mark sheet. Bring a pencil, not a pen, and keep your place. Skipping a question without skipping the corresponding row is a genuine, preventable way to lose a lot of points at once.

There is no penalty for a wrong answer. Leave nothing blank. A guess is worth strictly more than an empty box.

The listening section plays once. You cannot go back, and dwelling on the question you just missed is how you miss the next one too. Let it go and be ready for the next audio prompt.

Check Yourself

Three quick ones. Pick the natural option, then check the reasons below.

1. 雨あめが＿＿＿と思おもいます。 (降ふります / 降ふる)
2. 窓まどが＿＿＿います。 (開あけて / 開あいて)
3. 友達ともだち＿＿＿宿題しゅくだいを手伝てつだってもらいました。 (が / に)

Answers. (1) 降ふる, because と思おもう takes plain form no matter how polite the end of the sentence is. (2) 開あいて, the intransitive one: the window is in an open state, nobody is mid-action opening it. (3) に, because もらう marks the person who did the favour with に.

If all three felt obvious, you are further along than the week number suggests. If any of them made you pause, that is your month four.

Tools to Use Along the Way

Free, and built for exactly these six months:

• JLPT N4 grammar practice for all 69 points with audio and quizzes.
• Japanese grammar quiz to test N5 and N4 grammar in a couple of minutes.
• Verb conjugator for drilling plain, て, potential, passive and causative forms.
• Japanese sentence analyzer for any sentence you cannot take apart.
• Kanji to hiragana converter when you hit a reading you do not know.
• Japanese reading practice for the timed reading work in month five.

The honest summary of N4 is that it is not a harder version of N5, it is a different job. N5 asks whether you learned the textbook. N4 asks whether you can follow Japanese when it stops being slow and polite for your benefit. Six months of steady work gets most people there, as long as listening and plain form start in week one rather than week twenty.

The part no study plan can do on paper is get the Japanese out of your mouth at conversation speed, which is the same skill the listening section is testing from the other direction. Benkyō: Speak & Learn Japanese is built for exactly that: short spoken conversations, daily, on the N4 grammar you are drilling anyway.

Coming from the beginning? Start with the JLPT N5 study plan first. Already comfortable here and looking up? The JLPT N3 grammar list is where this road goes next.