ariariari Wrote:So I slept on it and now I'm thinking that I will take the test, but just with a different goal: Seeing if I can get a "B" on both the vocab and grammar sections. From the practice test it looks like if I took the test today I could probably get a B on vocab and maybe-just-maybe get a B on grammar.

I'm counting 9 weeks until test day, and it looks like JOI will be running weekly N3 language knowledge test prep classes until the test, as well as their usual N3 grammar classes. It will be interesting to see if those classes can help me reach that goal.

That being said, I'm still totally content to just write off the reading and listening parts of the exam. I can use the test to get a benchmark, but it looks like I'll need more time before I can begin really giving them any serious attention.

I just wanted to say that, a week in, this change in approach has been great for me. By changing the goal to something more attainable pressure has been reduced and my motivation has increased again.

It's so nice that I can pass the vocab part today. It looks like last week I had over 1,500 vocab answers in anki in a bit over 4 hours. Based on my practice test result it looks like I can stop adding in new vocab cards until the vocab reps decrease to a more manageable level.

My plan for grammar right now is to just do 1 JOI lesson a week for the rest of October. In November I might switch to their language knowledge prep classes, or just continue with regular grammar lessons.

ariariari Wrote:I just wanted to say that, a week in, this change in approach has been great for me. By changing the goal to something more attainable pressure has been reduced and my motivation has increased again.

I think the best goals are those who make you do work in order to attain them. Goals that are too difficult for a person to work towards are not worth much. But of course changing a goal to something less difficult requires you to be honest towards yourself and willing to take the immediate sacrifice in order to have a long term gain. That's not easy to do. You should give yourself a pat on the back

thanks Hinsudesu and Ariariari for your hints. I posted herethe letter. it would be great if the moderators or site administrators could remove it from this thread.

Thanks guys.

As the test gets closer I've been reviewing my study methods, seeing what worked well and what I would have done differently.

The thing that surprises me is that anki is so good at helping me learn vocabulary that I think I wound up spending too much time doing that. (I have about an hour a day that I budget for Japanese). In retrospect, I wish that I had spent, say, 10%-20% less time with that and instead:

1. Watched videos on fluentu. That's the best listening experience I've had yet, and I just got into it.
2. Worked thru Nihongo Challenge Grammar Reading JLPT N4. Even though I already passed N4, I did pretty bad on both the grammar and reading parts. And since I self study, I don't get much experience taking exams. Working thru an easier level's test prep probably would have been a good experience for me.

ariariari Wrote:Thanks guys.

As the test gets closer I've been reviewing my study methods, seeing what worked well and what I would have done differently.

The thing that surprises me is that anki is so good at helping me learn vocabulary that I think I wound up spending too much time doing that. (I have about an hour a day that I budget for Japanese). In retrospect, I wish that I had spent, say, 10%-20% less time with that and instead:

1. Watched videos on fluentu. That's the best listening experience I've had yet, and I just got into it.
2. Worked thru Nihongo Challenge Grammar Reading JLPT N4. Even though I already passed N4, I did pretty bad on both the grammar and reading parts. And since I self study, I don't get much experience taking exams. Working thru an easier level's test prep probably would have been a good experience for me.

Just a quick update that going thru that N4 workbook for reading comprehension practice has been extremely helpful for me. The texts are easy enough for me to understand and I can almost always get the right answer. But I still get a headache, and it's still slow going, because it's really the first time that I've had to answer reading comprehension questions in Japanese.

The lesson for me is that sometimes when focusing on a particular JLPT level it's easy to miss the forest for the trees. I just don't have any experience doing reading comprehension questions in Japanese. It doesn't matter whether it's N4 or N3. It's just using my brain in a different way than I'm used to, and it takes some getting used to.

I recently cast a wither eye over some N5 exercises and discovered to my embarrassment that they were not all quite as contemptible as I thought they would be.

Swallowing my pride and working up through the levels has been enormously beneficial.

Doh

Yeah, when I first started working on JLPT 読解 prep at the beginning of the year (man, it's been this long already...), my tutor made me go through an N5 exercise, then an N4, and at N3 I missed something (we were using the expected completion time as a limit, and obviously I wasn't allowed to look anything up).
Reading comprehension is its own beast.

anotherjohn & sholum: thanks for sharing. I'm glad that I'm not the only person who's done this!

So now I've finished 8 of the 15 reading exercises in that book. Here's what I've learned:

1. Read the questions first.
2. In the questions, focus on words like who, what, where, when why.

Following that advice, I just correctly answered a problem (3 questions on a long text) without even finishing the text. Pretty amazing. I remember when I took the N4 exam struggling so hard just to finish the text on one of the questions. When I finally finished I took a look at the questions and said "I give up. I don't have enough energy to even look at the questions now."

After taking the exam I'm planning to write up some notes on what worked and what didn't work on this little adventure I've had over the last year. One thing I'll say is that I wish I started working thru this book much earlier. I also wish I had time to work thru a book on N4 listening as well, so I got in the rhythm of doing that type of questions. I doubt I'll have time for that though.

<virtual high 5>

I just finished all 15 of the N4 reading comprehension exercises. That was really good practice for me.

Now I'm gonna try to go thru the grammar exercises in that book. It looks like they have about 30 chapters. If I do 1 a day I should be able to finish the text well before the exam.

Anki's been feeling like a slog lately, so I thought that I'd update this thread with my stats for October so far:

Compared to the end of September:
mature grammar cards: 432 (today) - 423 (end of September) = +9
mature kanji cards: 679 (today) - 665 (end of September) = +14
mature vocab cards: 4,392 (today) - 4,315 (end of Setpember) = +77

Total: 5,503 (today) - 5,403 (end of September) = +100

The big news is that I've basically stopped adding in new vocab cards so I could focus more on grammar. I found the N4 reading prep book so helpful that I started going thru the same book's grammar section to. I started adding in a bunch of cards for the sample sentences that I don't consider myself fluent in. There's a lot of "Oh, I studied that before, but don't encounter it much, so why don't I create a card for it?"

End of October Stats

mature grammar cards: 434 (today) - 423 (end of September) = +11
mature kanji cards: 685 (today) - 665 (end of Septebmer) = +20
mature vocab cards: 4,426 (today) - 4,315 (end of September) = +111

Total: 5,545 (today) - 5,403 (end of September) = +142

Compared to January 20 (my earliest record for 2015):
mature grammar cards: 434 (today) - 208 (1/20) = +226
mature kanji cards: 685 (today) - 478 mature (1/20) = +207
mature vocab cards: 4,426 (today) - 3,246 (1/20) = +1,180

Total: 5,545 (today) - 3932 (1/20) = +1,613

The increase in vocab surprises me - I've virtually stopped adding in new vocab cards. Here are my vocab stats from the past year



You can see the lack of blue, and the sharp decline, in the last few weeks. I currently only have 52 unseen vocab cards, and I basically expect them to be the only vocab cards I add before the exam in December.

I have 3 remaining JOI lessons that I need to use by 11/18. Since I'll be travelling for part of that time, I might not get to use them all.

I expect most of the new cards I add in the next month to be sentence grammar cards from this N4 book Grammar. Even though I've been focusing on N3 grammar for the last year I still feel like I don't yet know all the N4 stuff 100%. So I want to focus in on filling in those gaps, as well as getting lots of practice doing JLPT style grammar questions on material that should be easy for me.

Good stats ariariari! I'm sure you will do well next week in the N3 exam!

RawrPk Wrote:Good stats ariariari! I'm sure you will do well next week in the N3 exam!

Don't scare me like that! It's not until next month!

Oh no! すみません！For some strange I thought next week was December XD I just took an exam for nursing school yesterday morning (TEAS V) and I'm still mentally tired from it all. Though it's not as bad as when I took my microbiology final in June 2014 and said "Have a good winter. Happy holidays" when I handed him the exam. It was June and I didn't realize my mistake til my bf and friend LOLed at me -_-

(oh crap double post...)

Oh no! ごめんなさい！For some strange I thought next week was December XD I just took an exam for nursing school yesterday morning (TEAS V) and I'm still mentally tired from it all. Though it's not as bad as when I took my microbiology final in June 2014 and said "Have a good winter. Happy holidays" when I handed him the exam. It was June and I didn't realize my mistake til my bf and friend LOLed at me -_-

Hahah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I'll still fail the N3 this year. I think it's likely that I'll pass the vocab part, but I'm still borderline on grammar. And I'm just punting on reading and listening.

The good news is that at my current rate I should pass the N3 easily in 2016.

Doing a monthly anki stats post has probably been one of the most helpful things for me. I'm thinking of creating a thread on January 1 2016 titled something like "2016 Anki Stats Challenge", unrelated to any JLPT level.

ariariari Wrote:Hahah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I'll still fail the N3 this year. I think it's likely that I'll pass the vocab part, but I'm still borderline on grammar. And I'm just punting on reading and listening.

The good news is that at my current rate I should pass the N3 easily in 2016.

Doing a monthly anki stats post has probably been one of the most helpful things for me. I'm thinking of creating a thread on January 1 2016 titled something like "2016 Anki Stats Challenge", unrelated to any JLPT level.

I hope you're wrong about that. I'm convinced you'll pass, but what do I know.

About the stats thing, I'd really like to see a section on the forum to post individual journals where we can post stats, methods, wins, losses, etc. Maybe if enough people show interest, Fabrice will add a section.

Hello folks,
today it was holiday here in Japan, the day dedicated to culture I guess thus I took the whole morning to set up a test exam seat at the local Mc Donald. The new is that it went no bad at all.
I scored
37 on 60 for the first section
34/60 for the reading section
and
something like 39 on 60 on the listening section (it is 41/63)
At least it would be 37+34+39 totally 110 on 180, that is 20 points more than my last July result. I guess I scored enough on each section.
The real thing is different since I ran out of time for the reading+grammar section because
1 - McDonald is not real the right place to test yourself and I caught my mind wandering around insted of keep focused on the test more than once,
2 - In the last month I did not practiced the reading section so I was slow again.
It took me 12 minutes more than the 70minutes allowed for that section.
Even so, the real improvement is due to the drill & drill book and this is my contribution to this thread.
The book is called ドリル& ドリル
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　日本語能力試験
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Ｎ３文法
I began doing those exercises Ocotber the 1st and I finished the book just two days ago, so about a month.
It is divided in three section with the answer sheets and very well written explanations, that is the most effective point of the book.
文の文法‘１
It has 23 rounds of 13 questions each. It is asked to choose the grammar part among 4 different choiches to fit into the sentences. I did it no more than one per day.
文の文法‘２
It is the scrambling sentences part. It has 15 rounds of 5 questions each.
文章の文法
These are 10 rounds composed each of a written piece of document, either a letter, or a business comunication and so on. You are asked to choose 5 times a piece of sentence to fill the empty space.
Overall those kind of exercises are the same of the real JPN3 test.
To underline the effectiveness of the book, let me write you how was I doing the scrambling sentences before it. In average I was scoring 1 out of 5, randomly guessing at least two of them.
Now I do not random anymore and I score quite higher, say an average 3 out of 5. More than once I scored 4/5 and it happened I got all 5 right which was way out of my thoughts just one month ago. My guess is because I went through the book explanations for each answer.
Other notes my preparation are:
I am continuing to build up vocabulary with iknow.jp and since last July I added about 400 new words on study.
I kept doing 1 hour lesson with a japanese teacher that forces me to keep focused, I had to change the teacher.
I did also the listening book I wrote some posts before. I wil review later since this post is enough long.
I hope this will help somebody else out there.

@uaifestival Congrats on your improvement.

It looks like we're exactly a month out. Good luck to everyone on their final push.

In my case work is so busy that I won't have time to cram. I just have a few more JOI classes left, and I probably won't renew when they're done.

My grammar focus now is actually to go thru my N4 book and make sentences for the grammar points that I don't yet consider myself fluent with. That's going well for me.

I also have a bunch of unseen vocab cards that I am dripping in. I currently have ~150 vocab cards to review each day.

The best part of the exam is that it's really been good at helping me to refine my study habits. I'm looking forward to, one day, comparing my score on N3 this year with my score on N3 next year.

Well, the test is in a couple of weeks so I thought I'd check my stats for the month:

mature grammar cards:  441 (today) - 434 (end of October) = +7
mature kanji cards: 678 (today) - 685 (end of October) = -7
mature vocab cards: 4,450 (today) - 4,426 (end of October) = +24

Total: 5,569 (today) - 5,545 (end of October) = +24

Kinda surprised about the kanji going down. But I guess that if you stop adding new cards it's only a matter of time before it decreases. Surprised that grammar didn't go up more since that's my new focus. But maybe a bunch of the cards I've been adding recently are just on the verge of going mature.

How are you guys doing? I'm surprised I haven't received any written instructions about where to go on test day, etc.

It does not seems to get crowded here these days...
I was sick with flu thus I unfortunately skipped two lessons with the japanese teacher.
I am repeating the dril & drill book with bad surprises time after time of scoring less than thelprevious time () and that is a bit frustrating.
I was doing a new book on listening, too much easier than I hoped. I have two mini sets of mock test on listening
and one about reading yet to do.
Overall I resent the long fatigue of coming to December as a long way, I need to take it slow again after this test.
By the way I noticed that some grammar is not explained in minna  no nihongo 中級　I but it is in the volume II...I browsed the pages while I was in a bookshop.
I am planning also to do some expenses math for this exam preparation and post them here.

(2015-12-01, 3:21 am)uaifestival Wrote: It does not seems to get crowded here these days...

Yeah, the test is on Sunday - I totally thought that everyone would be posting here now. I guess that the busy period on this thread already passed. Well, I'll still post after the exam to let everyone know how I did.

For reference, I really do think that the vocab section is the only section that I'll pass. I'm fine with that (although it will result in a very unpleasant test taking experience). It will be a nice comparison for next year.

(2015-11-19, 2:45 pm)ariariari Wrote: I'm surprised I haven't received any written instructions about where to go on test day, etc.

You should have received your card and directions before now. There were some posts in the N1 thread when people got theirs. If you didn't get yours and you did register online, then you can go online and print out what you need.

And you do -need- to have the card with your name and number on it. And a photo ID. You're told that you need to bring a pencil and a non-digital watch, but at my test site they had a bag of pencils and a clock on the wall... actually the final time I took the JLPT, they had a laptop+projector to display written information during the test explanation period, and they used that same projector to show a timer countdown during the test.
Still, that varies by test site. It'd be strongly advisable to bring a couple of pencils, and if you are going to be bothered by not knowing the time remaining, it would be good insurance to have a watch with hands.

Oh, and peel the labels off if you bring a bottle of water. I actually brought lemon seltzer instead of regular water. It's a bit distracting though to have to pause to peel off your label when the proctor comes around to make sure everybody is obeying the 'clear bottle' rule. And they'll just take your drink away if you bring an opaque bottle so don't do that.

We weren't even allowed bottles, clear or otherwise.