Vocabulary: Words in Context
What N5 vocabulary tests
N5 covers roughly eight hundred words and one hundred kanji, but the paper never asks for a bare definition. Each question puts a word in a sentence and asks which option fits, which reading is correct, or which option means the same as the underlined word. Paraphrase questions are the ones candidates lose, because they require knowing a second way to say the same thing.
Build vocabulary by field rather than alphabetically: greetings, numbers and counters, clock time and dates, family, food, transport, classroom objects, daily verbs in the polite ます form, and the two adjective types. Katakana loanwords deserve a separate list, because their spelling traps are different.
Traps
- Small っ and long vowels carry meaning: きって is a stamp, きて is the te-form of come; おばさん and おばあさん are different people; ビル is a building while ビール is beer.
- Counter and date readings are irregular: ひとつ, ふたつ, みっつ; いちまい, にまい; さんぷん but よんぷん; ついたち, ふつか, よっか, はつか.
- Verbs take a fixed partner noun: シャワーをあびる, くすりをのむ, でんわをかける, しゃしんをとる. Learning the pair stops wrong-particle options from looking plausible.
- Transitive and intransitive pairs are told apart by the particle: を marks the transitive member (ドアをあける), が marks the intransitive (ドアがあく).
Rule of thumb
Learn every new word inside a short phrase with its particle, and read that phrase aloud; sound is what both the vocabulary and listening papers test.
Worked example
In まいあさ 七時に おきます, the options are おきます, いきます, のみます and たべます. The time phrase plus the absence of a destination particle rules out いきます; the absence of an object rules out のみます and たべます; a daily routine with a clock time leaves おきます, to get up. When two options seem possible, let the particles and the nouns, not the overall feel of the sentence, decide.