Study JLPT N3 Vocabulary: 754 English-to-Japanese Flashcards with Kana, Romaji and Kanji

JLPT N3 Vocabulary (deck code UO6812, 754 cards) is built the way a production deck should be: the front is an English word, the back gives you kana, romaji and kanji together. You see to refuse and you have to come up with ことわる (kotowaru) — 断る. That is harder than recognising 断る in a reading passage, and it is the skill N3 actually tests in the listening and grammar sections.

Two things to know before you start, though: the deck is far larger in scope than N3, and it stops in the middle of the alphabet.

Sample cards

What the 754 cards cover

608 of the cards are verbs, grouped into meaning clusters for the first two thirds of the deck: talking and reporting (伝える, 知らせる, 通知する, 発表する, 報告する, 紹介する), thinking and judging (考える, 判断する, 認める, 示す), work and money (稼ぐ, 生産する, 提出する, 昇進する), the body and the everyday (咳をする, 包帯を巻く, 散歩する, 燃える, 躓く), and social verbs (責める, 従う, 尊重する, 訴える). After that come abstract nouns in verb-and-noun pairs — 評価/評価する, 保証/保証する, 主張/主張する, 近似/近似する — plus 憲法, 選挙, 預金, 添付, 課題.

Where it stops being N3

From roughly card 470 the deck abandons topic grouping and becomes a straight alphabetical English list — and it ends at handicap. There are 72 entries under C, 64 under E, 63 under D, then nine under H and nothing at all from I to Z. The tail is also where the level drifts: 君臨する (to reign), 遵守する (to comply), 対峙する (to confront), 収束 (convergence), 抽出する (to extract) and 呻く (to groan) are N1 vocabulary, not N3. Useful words, wrong label.

So split the deck in two. Drill cards 1–470 as your N3 deck; treat the alphabetical tail as a bonus N1/N2 sub-deck and shuffle it, or you will drill conservation, consolidation, constitution in that order forever.

Two fixes worth five minutes

Keep it one-way, English → Japanese. 157 cards share a back with another card: to evaluate, to appraise and to assess all resolve to 評価する; to communicate and to convey both give 伝える; to suggest and to propose both give 提案する. Reviewed in reverse, those cards are unanswerable. Forward, they are fine — the synonym fan is actually good for production.

Fix three broken backs first. Card 145 gives to visualize → 視化する, which is not a word (use 可視化する, or 思い描く for the mental sense). Card 169 gives to guard → 番する; say 見張る or 守る. And card 517 gives clarification → 明確, which is the adjective clear — the noun is 明確化 (meikakuka).

Working up from here? See Memorize JLPT N1 Vocabulary, the same format one level higher.

Open UO6812 — JLPT N3 Vocabulary in your library on Flip It.