Shin Kanzen Master Essential 1800 Words for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) N3 (Revised Edition)

Shin Kanzen Master N3 Wordbook covers 1,800 words organised by topic: transportation, health, human relations, education, work, nature, daily life, and more. Every word comes with an example sentence, and every 200 words a reading passage lets you see them in real context. A free companion app provides audio for all words and passages. Comes with English, Chinese, and Vietnamese translations and a red overlay sheet for self-testing.

Shin Kanzen Master was designed to build learning into each book alongside the test prep. Vocabulary is harder to do that with, and the Wordbook sub-series seems to be 3A's answer: split it into two books, one for learning and one for testing. This is the learning side. The format is more than a word list. You learn a word, see how it's used in a sentence, then meet it again in a reading passage. If you're using the Vocabulary (語彙) drill book, this pairs with it. It also works on its own if you prefer working through words on a page over flashcard apps like Anki.