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Practicing for JLPT listening part - Zarxrax - 2009-11-29
Listening is probably one of my worst parts of Japanese. And so, It's the part of the JLPT that is giving me the most trouble.
When I am reading, or reviewing in an SRS, I take my time and think about things. I see a word that I know, and often I can't recall it immediately, but after thinking a bit I can usually recall it.
However when listening, there is no opportunity to stop and think, you just have to know it IMMEDIATELY, and I'm having trouble dealing with this. When I hear a word and I can't think what it means, my first instinct is to just try and remember it, but while I'm focused on that, I miss all the other words that are being said.
And another thing, is the listening test requires you to use your short term memory to remember all sorts of little facts. So I'm simultaneously trying to listen, pick out the words I know, recall what the words mean, and then remember everything that is being said long enough to answer the question. It is all just overwhelming to me!
Does anyone have some tips for me (JLPT is in just a few days, so I need short-term suggestions, not long-term ones)?
Practicing for JLPT listening part - chamcham - 2009-11-29
Buy the Unicom listening books and cram like crazy.
After a while, you'll notice that the listening questions
will follow many of the same patterns.
For example, you'll likely have questions on:
choosing the picture with correct person
choose the picture with the person wearing the right clothes
choosing the picture that shows the correct sequence of events
Many fall into similar categories like the 3 I just mentioned.
Just focus on getting each category down and you'll be fine.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - Zarxrax - 2009-11-29
Actually I do ok with the ones with the pictures, as the picture gives me an idea of what I'll need to be listening for. I mainly have trouble with the ones without pictures.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - mirina - 2009-12-02
Speaking as someone who was actually TERRIBLE at listening comprehension, the very simple answer to your dilemma is this: you're not listening to Japanese enough.
Here are the things that might be contributing to your difficulties in understanding:
(a) you are not able to pick out words in speech because your ears are not fine-tuned enough to properly understand spoken Japanese.
(b) you are trying to think of the English equivalent to the Japanese word, rather than thinking in concepts.
© like you said, you spend too much time thinking about the word you just heard, while trying to figure out what it meant, and then lose the meaning of the whole sentence because you weren't paying attention to the rest of it.
The only thing I found that improved my listening abilities dramatically was to listen to short clips of Japanese every day, practically non-stop. I started from the absolute very beginning--even though it was way below my reading level--and worked my way up, step by step. Like the second poster said, you need to be cramming audio lessons like crazy.
Another thing that helped me was to stop translating the word into English and to instead simply picture the sentence itself in my head. So, "toshokan de benkyou shite imasu" would immediately lead me to think of being in a library, not the actual words "library" "in" and "studying". When you force yourself to start to think only in concepts, you can listen to the sentence and just understand. And if you don't know a word, you can generally pick it up through context.
I know what you mean when you talk about reading and reviewing; you can analyze everything. But listening is completely different; you have to just let instinct take over, to a certain point.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - vosmiura - 2009-12-02
If you just want a bit better score on JLPT in 3 days, I guess there's nothing to do but cram the Unicom listening book as much as possible.
More general advice after this test is to listen to easy Japanese shows and gradually build up to harder ones. Lighthearted dramas are usually easy to pick up. You'll gradually process larger blocks of speech without parsing them; you'll just know them. Listening to something that is too much above your level is not very effective.
I haven't done listening all the time; I've watched maybe under 100 hours of dramas this year... and my listening's still got a long way to go but I can get around 90% on JLPT2 tests.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - Zarxrax - 2009-12-02
I have a question about the 2nd part of the listening comprehension test (the part without pictures).
I have a JLPT practice book, but not the unicom one. On that section, it's a bit confusing to me, because it doesn't show the answer sheets like it has on the actual test. But when I took the test last year, I remember on that section, it had 2 rows for you to fill in. One row was if something was "correct" the other row was if something was "incorrect". So basically instead of having 4 bubbles, you have 8.
When I got to that part on the JLPT last year, I didn't properly understand the instructions, and I should have asked for clarification, but I didn't. The 2 people administering the exam could barely speak English, and I think they even explained it wrong. A lot of people in the room had confused looks on their faces.
But, anyways, to my point. On the jlpt, it shows an example, where 1 of the bubbles is marked as "correct" and all the others are marked "incorrect". And in my practice book, for each question, it just lists a single number as the correct one, which implies to me, that on every single question, only one of the answers is correct.
However, this flies in the face of my common sense. If only 1 answer can be correct, then why the heck would you need to mark every single one as correct or incorrect? It makes no sense!
Could someone clarify this for me?
Practicing for JLPT listening part - Katsuo - 2009-12-02
I imagine it's to stop people guessing the answer from the overall movement of others.
Consider the situation if correct answers only were filled in:
If, say, the average score in the listening test is 60%, then for each question approx. 60% of people will get the right answer and 13% each wrong answer. Assuming that people keep still when they consider the answer to be wrong but move slightly to fill in a correct answer, someone observing a large group of people could perceive the difference.
Making everyone fill in a box every time should reduce the possibility of someone doing the above.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - jonjimbo2000 - 2009-12-02
I dont know why you have to fill them in like that but only one answer is correct.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - ocircle - 2009-12-02
I was confused about filling out correct and incorrect questions too, but I guess it makes sense considering what Katsuo mentions. If you only had to fill in one answer you'd just have to mark your answer sheet whenever you saw the most people move. But if you have to mark all of them, then it's a little harder to guess based on the movement of other people...
But I dunno.. I was planning on putting all my answers on the test itself and then transferring all the answers to the answer sheet. The recording doesn't usually take up all 45 minutes, so I thought that maybe the last 2-3 minutes is when you can make minor adjustments, or in my case, mark up the answer sheet.
In any case I take notes like my life depends on it during the listening part, so just from watching my movements during the test would probably give other people very few correct answers.
I'd say the best way to improve your listening short term is to try as many previous listening tests as you can. There are some here: http://jp.hjenglish.com/papers.aspx
I'm pretty sure that just by taking one past test after another I've raised my listening score at least 10 points (averaging ~70 to averaging ~85 now.)
When you get a problem wrong, hear it again.
If you get it wrong again, look at the transcript and see what you're missing.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - uberstuber - 2009-12-03
Quote:I was planning on putting all my answers on the test itself and then transferring all the answers to the answer sheet. The recording doesn't usually take up all 45 minutes, so I thought that maybe the last 2-3 minutes is when you can make minor adjustments, or in my case, mark up the answer sheet.I wouldn't risk doing that; last year when the recording finished we had to turn in our sheets almost right away, and filling in 4 bubbles for all of the questions takes some time. I suppose you could do it for the sections that have a break afterwards.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - Katsuo - 2009-12-03
@uberstuber
Same here. When I took the test there was a short break half-way through that section, and it would have been possible (just) to fill in all the boxes. However, at the end there was no time; the staff were strict about putting pencils down straightaway. That was in Japan, other locations may not be so precise.
Practicing for JLPT listening part - vosmiura - 2009-12-03
Hmm, don't quite see a benefit to waiting to fill in the answers. Am I missing something?
Practicing for JLPT listening part - ocircle - 2009-12-03
vosmiura Wrote:Hmm, don't quite see a benefit to waiting to fill in the answers. Am I missing something?There isn't. It's just a thing I do on tests. But for this test, I guess I'll fill it out as I go.
I'll be testing in Washington D.C.