Kyoto Entrance Japanese study plan

Build a 600-item core vocabulary deck drawn from your own reading errors, tagging every card with pitch accent and a Japanese-language definition instead of an English gloss.

Drill 120 kanji per week in three passes (recognise, write from dictation, use inside a compound), retiring a character only after two correct dictation recalls.

Read two 400-character expository passages daily: first pass with no dictionary, second pass marking unknown words and adding only high-frequency ones to the deck.

Time one 10-minute reading set each week and record raw score, number left unanswered, and the exact passage where you ran out of time.

Read question stems before the passage on every practice set, then locate the single sentence that answers each stem and underline the discourse marker that signals it.

Classify the four recurring question types (内容一致, 空所補充, 理由説明, 主旨) and write a one-line decision rule for each in your own words.

Recycle 150 cumulative kanji from week 1 by writing them into short sentences about campus, work, and daily life rather than isolated drills.

Eliminate dictionary lookups during timed practice, logging every guess so you can verify or correct it afterwards.

Parse every long sentence in a passage into clauses, labelling subject, predicate, and the particle governing each noun phrase.

Drill 40 upper-level grammar patterns per week (～ながらも, ～に即して, ～を皮切りに) and write one original sentence for each pattern.

Convert ten passive, causative, and causative-passive sentences into plain form and back, checking agent markers に versus によって.

Read one 800-character opinion essay daily and compress each paragraph into a single clause so the argument skeleton becomes visible.

Sit one full timed reading section weekly under real time limits with no pausing, since reading carries the largest share of the paper.

Shadow ten minutes of academic Japanese audio daily, matching pause length and pitch contour rather than raw speed.

Log five discourse markers per listening task (つまり, ただし, とはいえ) and note where the speaker flags the answer.

Re-test only the items you got wrong in weeks 1 to 3, and retire anything you now recall correctly twice.

Transcribe five-minute listening passages verbatim, then diff your transcript against the script and mark every missed morpheme.

Take notes in a two-column layout with facts on the left and speaker stance on the right so opinion shifts become visible.

Drill 30 spoken-register forms (～じゃないですか, ～ってこと, ～させていただく) through dictation and oral reproduction.

Answer after a single play only, never replaying before committing to an answer.

Draft one 400-to-500-character composition every three days using a fixed four-part frame: 主張, 理由, 具体例, 結論.

Proofread each draft twice, first for です・ます consistency and tense, then for particle and kanji accuracy.

Answer 20 listening questions per week in full Japanese sentences, writing the reason rather than just the option letter.

Memorise 15 set phrases for hedging and asserting opinion (確かに…しかし, ～と考えられる) and deploy at least five per composition.

Convert three reading passages into 200-character summaries and check whether each summary preserves the author's actual conclusion.

Write compositions under a 25-minute timer to build the pace the exam demands.

Re-drill the 100 highest-frequency kanji in your error log by writing them inside full sentences.

Reverse-outline one model essay into five bullet points so you can reuse its structure without copying its content.

Sit two complete mock exams at real timing on non-consecutive days, covering reading, listening, grammar, and composition.

Review only error-logged items and retire anything you have now passed twice.

Recite your composition frame and 15 set phrases from memory without notes.

Assemble your exam-day kit and rehearse the first five minutes of the paper so timing decisions are automatic.