Most study plans are written as though you have your days free. Almost nobody preparing for JFT-Basic does — you are working, and studying in the hours around it.
This plan assumes eight weeks and about ten hours a week, which is roughly ninety minutes on weeknights and a longer block at the weekend.
Read this before you start
Eight weeks gets you to 200 if you already read hiragana and katakana comfortably and have some vocabulary behind you. From an absolute standing start the honest number is three to six months, and no plan changes that — see how long it takes for what actually drives the estimate.
If you cannot read kana yet, spend two weeks on that alone before starting week 1 here. Everything downstream depends on it, and nothing else will stick until it is automatic.
Weeks 1–2: baseline and foundations
Start with a full timed test, before you have studied anything. This feels pointless and it is the most valuable ninety minutes of the whole eight weeks — it tells you which section is actually costing you points, and everything after this depends on that answer. The free practice test gives you a section breakdown.
Then:
- Kana to automatic. Not “I can work it out” — instant. Reading speed caps your score in three of the four sections.
- Core vocabulary, daily. Twenty new words a day with spaced review. Prioritise daily life and workplace words: shops, transport, time, numbers, work instructions, the hospital.
- Twenty minutes of listening every day, starting now and never stopping. It is the slowest thing to improve, so it needs the longest runway.
Weeks 3–5: the bulk of the work
This is where the score actually gets built.
- Basic grammar in use, not in lists. Particles, verb forms, past and negative, giving and receiving. Learn them inside sentences you could say out loud, not as a table you can recite.
- Vocabulary continues. Every day, without exception. Momentum here is worth more than intensity.
- Start reading short passages. Signs, notices, short messages, simple instructions — the kind of thing the reading section is built from.
- Listening moves up a level. If you understand everything, it is too easy.
- One full timed test at the end of week 4. Compare it against your baseline.
Put your hours where the points are
JFT-Basic has no section minimum — only the total out of 250 counts. So if Script and Vocabulary is where you gain fastest, study it, even when listening feels more urgent. This is the opposite of the JLPT, where a single weak section can fail you outright regardless of your total. The reasoning is set out in what 200 points actually means.
Weeks 6–7: exam conditions
Now the plan changes shape. You stop learning new material and start converting what you know into points.
- A full-length, timed test twice a week. On a computer. Sixty minutes, no pauses, no dictionary.
- Review every wrong answer properly. Not “I should have known that” — why you got it wrong. Unknown word, misread grammar, ran out of time, or careless. Those four have completely different fixes, and only the first is a vocabulary problem.
- Practise the clock. The sections are not separately timed; you get sixty minutes for the whole test and you manage it yourself. People who have never rehearsed this spend too long on the early vocabulary questions and then rush the reading passages, which is where the points are.
- Keep listening daily. Twenty minutes, still.
Week 8: hold your nerve
- Two light revision days, going over your own error log. Nothing new.
- One final timed test, early in the week, not the day before.
- Stop studying the day before the test. Sleep is worth more than a late cramming session.
- Confirm the logistics: centre address, travel time, reporting time, and the identification named on your booking. Test day covers what happens at the centre.
How to know whether it worked
Not by feel. By this rule:
Two full-length, timed tests in the same week, both at 200 or above, on a computer. Then book.
One good score is noise. Two is a signal. If you are landing in the 175–199 band you are close but not there — usually six to eight more weeks, and what the CEFR bands mean explains how to read a near-miss.
The week this plan does not include
The most common reason an eight-week plan fails is not the plan. It is week 5, when the novelty has gone and the test is still far away.
Build for that in advance: a fixed time of day rather than “when I get a chance”, a smaller minimum you will hit on bad days — twenty minutes of listening and yesterday’s vocabulary review, nothing more — and someone who will notice if you stop. If you want that someone to be a teacher, our classes are capped at eight students, which is small enough that an absence is noticed.