JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - Printable Version

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - Printable Version

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JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - ashman63 - 2008-08-16

I'm going for level 2 this year. Never done the test before.

I am excited to hear that there will be a new level coming between 2 and 3, because that's where I describe myself as being!

Still, hopefully I'll pass level two, and won't need to worry about that! Tongue

And an extra test in July is great too!

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - yorkii - 2008-08-18

can anyone send me some past JLPT 1 papers with answers at all? or provide a link please.

cheers

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - JimmySeal - 2008-08-18

http://www.bk1.jp/product/02784402
http://www.bk1.jp/product/03006595
http://www.bk1.jp/product/02673949

http://www.7andy.jp/books/search_result/?fromKeywordSearch=true&kword_in=%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%83%BD%E5%8A%9B%E8%A9%A6%E9%A8%93%EF%BC%91%E3%83%BB%EF%BC%92%E7%B4%9A%E8%A9%A6%E9%A8%93%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C%E3%81%A8%E6%AD%A3%E8%A7%A3&ctgy=books&oop=on

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - woelpad - 2008-08-18

Search for "past papers" on the JLPT Study Forum. In particular this thread should be quite useful, in combination with this message, which serves as a warning that the Chinese site is probably not kosher.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - MrMorden - 2008-08-21

FYI: Just got my application from SOAS, and they've bumped the price to ?60 this year. Still cheaper than my hotel bill's going to be, though, even if I just did one night.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - MrMorden - 2008-08-21

... the forum appears to be barfing on non-ASCII now. The heck? That's GBP 60.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - meolox - 2008-08-21

MrMorden Wrote:FYI: Just got my application from SOAS, and they've bumped the price to ?60 this year. Still cheaper than my hotel bill's going to be, though, even if I just did one night.

Yep just got mine too, ?60!!
I might not be able to make it London this year, anyone in the UK knows how much a hotel in London costs, and I just can't afford it so close to Uni Exams...we'll see.

Either way If i have to do JLPT3 next year I'll be way more than ready Smile

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - meolox - 2008-08-21

MrMorden Wrote:... the forum appears to be barfing on non-ASCII now. The heck? That's GBP 60.

Messed up my post too and it posted it twice, with an Index words or something or other error.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - Savara - 2008-08-22

I hope to be able to give level 3 a try this year... (I mailed the school in Dusseldorf ... They don't have any locations in the Netherlands! But whatever, parent's want to go with me and have a fun day in Germany Wink

)

For a moment I was thinking about level 2, but my grammar is horrible. And I do mean horrible. Kanji and vocab wise it would be very possible to get there before December... But grammar? I'm not so sure...

Well, I do have *a lot* of free time... How hard is level 2 in reality? (I'm not in school at the moment, just work, mostly 3~4 days a week and only for 4 hours a day...)
Would it be possible to get your grammar to level 2 in a few months...? I guess it has to be level 3 this year... Oh well.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - yorkii - 2008-08-25

woelpad Wrote:Search for "past papers" on the JLPT Study Forum. In particular this thread should be quite useful, in combination with this message, which serves as a warning that the Chinese site is probably not kosher.

thanks a lot

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - sutebun - 2008-08-25

Savara Wrote:Well, I do have *a lot* of free time... How hard is level 2 in reality? (I'm not in school at the moment, just work, mostly 3~4 days a week and only for 4 hours a day...)
Would it be possible to get your grammar to level 2 in a few months...? I guess it has to be level 3 this year... Oh well.

While I haven't done a JLPT ever, I think you could do it if you already have strong vocab.

Just start reading and listening to lots of things. While you build your reading skills, your grammar will also improve. If you're really focused and can pretty much go AJATT excluding those work hours, I believe you could pull it off. Really, grammar is not too complicated, especially since the test measures comprehension and not your ability to output good sentences.

Anyway, even if you fail 2級, by aiming higher you will probably learn more over these few months! And remember, it's just a test; the larger goal is Japanese itself, not a test which is supposed to measure your Japanese.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - erlog - 2008-08-25

I don't want to create a new thread, and so I'll just ask my question here.

How stingy is the verb morphology stuff in the JLPT 2-kyuu? Like, to compare, my regular Japanese classes spend a lot of time making sure you know which verb form goes with which grammar point. However, I don't have time to study that for every grammar point in the JLPT. The regular classes can do that because we learn 3 grammar points a week. My pace for 2-kyuu is something like 10 grammar points per week.

Being able to know and recognize the meanings of all of the grammar points will get me a long way. I just want to know how cheap the JLPT is going to be in terms of that very technical stuff.

My suspicion is that reading comprehension is the biggest factor in JLPT success. Because the test is multiple-choice, a person can test each option. From the test papers I've seen. Knowing the right option doesn't actually help you very much. Knowing which options don't work, by understanding them, seems like it would help you more. Am I correct in my suspicions? So, it seems like alls I have to do is make sure I understand every grammar point(not necessarily verb forms that go along with them), because the decision between the right and wrong answer, most often, won't be a question of verb form.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - pm215 - 2008-08-26

Yeah, for JLPT2 reading comprehension is a biggie: it's the part worth the most points. The grammar section is, I think, the easiest to push your score up on in a short period of time, because the grammar points are relatively few in number. Grammar questions will be checking two things: (1) do you know the general meaning of the grammatical construction? (2) do you know the form of the construction? By the latter, I mean that for example you might get a question where とたん ("as soon as") is one of the options and makes sense for meaning but you know it can't be the right answer because the verb preceding it is not in the ~た form.

So I think the answer to your question is: you do need to know that sort of thing. But it's not very hard to cram into your brain, in comparison to vocabulary.

The other thing you absolutely want to do is past papers, several of them. The JLPT2 is very tightly timed, especially on the reading/grammar part (which you do as a single paper). You need to practice the trick of almost skimreading the texts so you can get the reading part done in enough time to do the grammar. Even then you don't have time to hang about wondering about the answer to a particular question -- make a good guess and press on. I found that it was only by doing past papers that I got a feel for how long I ought to be spending on each question.

The listening part also repays past-paper study, because the format of the questions is (a) fairly standard (b) quite confusing if you haven't encountered it before [they try to ensure that you can't answer correctly unless you've basically understood the whole dialog]. Hints: (1) listen to the question(!) so you know what you're listening for and can ignore irrelevant detail. (2) revise some vocabulary related to graphs (rising, falling, reaching, that sort of thing) as there's always a graphs question.

My general feeling was that it wasn't worth putting too much revision time into the vocabulary part -- there are simply too many vocabulary items for the test setters to choose from, so if you study ten words it's possible none of them will turn up; in contrast, if you study ten grammar points it's much more likely that most or all of them will appear on the test. (And the grammar questions are worth more, IIRC).

Good luck...

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - Jarvik7 - 2008-08-26

However, vocabulary is the easiest skill to build up and is necessary to answer every question on the exam, not just what directly gets tested.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - erlog - 2008-08-26

I was afraid I would get an answer like that, but I think if I can push through to understanding all the grammar points for the exam then I can flashcard cram which form they should be in.

Actually, now that I think about it, the Unicom book only has 191 grammar points. If I create a separate morphology deck, add a card for each point with the verb form and an example sentence on the back, I can understand that sort of material in 15 minutes per day. Easy as pie 100 days out from the exam.

I can also go through and add all the 3 & 4 grammar points from my grammar book as something else to do.

Thanks a lot for your advice. I'm studying 4 hours a day, but I'm not moving as fast as I should. I have time to study more. I just need to buckle down with it.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - pm215 - 2008-08-27

Jarvik7 Wrote:However, vocabulary is the easiest skill to build up and is necessary to answer every question on the exam, not just what directly gets tested.

I agree that it's necessary, I just think it's much harder (and less rewarding) to cram for test purposes, so if you're not already reasonably there then you're a bit stuffed. (I suppose I did pass JLPT2 before I really encountered the SRS concept, though, which might colour my attitudes to vocab learning a bit.)

erlog Wrote:I can also go through and add all the 3 & 4 grammar points

If you're short on time I wouldn't bother personally unless there are some specific points you know you're a bit weak on.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - Tobberoth - 2008-08-27

Personally I was going to apply but... I've already passed JLPT2 and I feel I still have no chance at JLPT1. While I could take JLPT2 one more time (for motivation and confidence boost), it turns out it can't be taken in Sweden, one has to go to Denmark, so the expenses would be kind of big for such a goal. Therefor, I decided to wait til 2009 and hope I'm ready for JLPT1 then.

Good luck to anyone going for it though.

I also agree with pm215, cramming is probably not all that helpful (of course, studying is ALWAYS helpful) because JLPT is such a broad test if you do the upper levels. What I personally did was to keep studying in my normal pace while hoping I simply had the skill needed. If you feel you can retain enough, raising the pace can't be harmful though, I guess.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - erlog - 2008-08-27

pm215 Wrote:
erlog Wrote:I can also go through and add all the 3 & 4 grammar points
If you're short on time I wouldn't bother personally unless there are some specific points you know you're a bit weak on.

There are, but I know that I'm too low of a level for JLPT2, and so there are some that would fall through the cracks if I didn't make sure to look through that material as well.

I'm not so much cramming as I am rapidly moving myself from advanced beginner to advanced intermediate. I see it as moving myself to where I should be after all these years of not studying hard enough.

I'm living in Japan now, and I can tell day by day that it's paying off. I can read magazines/other real Japanese a lot easier now, and I can talk to people with a lot more varied vocabulary than I could before.

My thing is that I have the time to do this stuff. I'm on scholarship, so I don't need to have a job. There's no reason I can't make studying Japanese my job and really be at a very comfortable level with the language by the time I go home. My feeling is that the more I learn while I'm here then the more likely I am to continue learning when I go back home. If I can use real Japanese material when I go back home then it is likely I will continue to use real Japanese material at home to keep learning more. I want to have that solid base to learn more from later.

There is no easy way to build up that base. It just takes a lot of studying. I'm in that really awkward area where I'm too advanced for Genki 1/2(been through them), but not quite advanced enough yet to only learn from real Japanese sources.

I very much understand why some people could be skeptical of my plans and what I say, but there isn't really a way to put across how committed I am and how hard I study. You're just going to have to trust me on that, and wait to see the results I hope to achieve.

Very interestingly, I've been chronicling my studying everyday on my blog, and I will probably begin to add number of hours I study to my stat tracking along with all the other flashcard stats. From just the numbers I've put up so far, you should be able to tell that I'm serious.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - pm215 - 2008-08-27

Tobberoth Wrote:I also agree with pm215, cramming is probably not all that helpful (of course, studying is ALWAYS helpful) because JLPT is such a broad test if you do the upper levels.

Actually, my point is rather the opposite. I think that the stereotyped format of the JLPT means that it is quite easy to push up your scores in a short time if you weren't already familiar with the test. But to do that you need to concentrate your effort where it pays off the most, which I think is in practicing past papers and studying grammar rather than vocabulary. (And that's why I suggested not just going over all the level 3 & 4 grammar -- there's bound to be a lot in there which you know easily well enough for test purposes so better to spend the time on the bits of it which you do need to revise.)

I also appreciate the point of view which says "treat the test as simply a measure of where you are and don't study specifically to pass it". But if you do want to do as well as possible on this particular test, there are ways of improving your mark, which are probably of interest if you're doing this to put on your CV/resume or if you just like scoring high marks in tests :-)

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - mentat_kgs - 2008-08-27

Do you need the test for an specific goal? Can't you take it next year? You'd waste less time studying properly.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - johnzep - 2008-08-30

I sent in my application for 2kyuu on Friday ^_^

And tonight I just finished (finally) putting example sentences from the 173 grammar points in the kanzen master grammar book.

So...next, I'll probably keep putting in a few more sentences from the book (because for some grammar points I only entered 2 sentences out of the 4 or 5 typically given for each grammar point).

And I'm gonna start trying to read a lot more (I really need to get my reading speed up) and I'll do some practice tests.

And I have a 2kyuu vocab list in the anki deck is well. I keep it on low priority...so only after I finish sentences do I start plugging through a little vocab.

Also, it's been a year since I've done any RTK reviews and I don't write a lot, so I'm wondering if I should go through the Japanese version of RTK that people made to brush up on my kanji.

Lot's to do...but I'm glad I got acquainted with all the grammar 3 months before the test.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - rollypop - 2008-09-02

I`m working on my app now, and there`s the Tohoku (Miyagi, Iwate) option and the Niigata/Toyama/Ishikawa option for test centers. The slashes imply to me that there`s only going to be one test center between those three prefectures, where there are two in the Tohoku`s parentheses.

So, here`s my catch. I`m north of Niigata City, roughly 5-6 hours away from Sendai. If the ambiguous Niigata/Toyama/Ishikawa test center is Niigata City, that`s awesome. If it`s in Toyama City, that`s roughly the same as it is for me to go to Sendai. If it`s anywhere further...

So, should I guess or should I just leave it blank and up to the JLPT gods? Anyone want to janken? Anyone dealt with this problem before?

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - wasurenaide - 2008-09-04

I barely passed 2級 last year, so I signed up for １級. I don't expect to pass as I wont have any time to study for it, but what the hell.

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - cangy - 2008-09-11

remember, applications are due today!

JLPT 2008 Sign-Up Thread - captal - 2008-09-11

I signed up this week- going for 3級 but I think the grammar may kill me. Well 3 months to study!