NickT Wrote:I thought you had to pass each individual section to pass the test?

You do.

NickT Wrote:Also I thought the passmark was 70%? Apparently not.

Nope, it's 19 points for the individual sections and 100 points for the whole thing. Congrats!

Ah ok, thanks for explaining.

It certainly didn't feel like I passed the listening, but I always was good at guessing multiple choice answers for some reason.

[Zgarbas]

70% would be a bit too much to ask of people =P. The minimum passing score is 100, with at least 19 points in each section.

Edit: ninja'd.
Congrats on passing anyway .

Took the N4 test last December.

Vocab/Grammar/Reading: 110/120
Listening: 60/60
Total: 170/180

First time taking the JLPT, listening was so scary! Never did i thought i would score so well in listening haha.

I'm aiming for N2 next, but i'm still contemplating if i should take N3...

(off topic, but does anyone know of any simple reading materials for my level? email me or something.)

Zgarbas Wrote:70% would be a bit too much to ask of people =P. The minimum passing score is 100, with at least 19 points in each section.

I believe the pass mark for the old style 1級 was 70%... I just googled it and there are still lots of websites that reference this. It seems odd to make the exam itself harder but substantially lower the pass mark (100/180 is only 56%)

19/60 for individual sections is only 32%. Given that this is a multiple choice, and you can achieve a score of 25% by answering at random, this seems way too low to me. "Intelligent guesswork", only slightly better than random answers, should be able to yield a score between 25%-40% and that is essentially what I did.

Anyway, I don't want to demean other people's achievements, but I won't be personally happy till I get over 70% overall and at least 60% in each section.

Really need to find a better way to work on my listening comprehension without living - or having ever lived - in Japan! How do other non-resident N1 takers handle this?

I did not pass JLPT4, however looking at the reference section my test results do not add up using their numbers.

For the vocab/grammar/reading section it says I only scored 49 out of 120. This would appear to be impossible given my my vocab section was scored an A (>=67%), Grammar B (34-66%), and Reading B (34-66%). The minimum point spread would be then:

(.67X40)=26.8=27
(.34X40)=13.6=14
(.34X40)=13.6=14
55 out of 120

I know that my vocab should have been much higher than 67% probably more like 90%.
I'm also sure that the grammar section would have been higher than 34%, there
were very few items that I didn't feel confident in answering (unless they were all "trick" questions).
The only section I feel I did poorly was the reading section because I ran out of time so
I had to guess quickly on those. Given these factors I rally feel there's something wrong.

The JLPT site says all tests are final and there's no way to contest my results. Normally I would just accept that, but given that my score doesn't match what's minimally possible as described above I feel I have a legitimate concern. Does anyone on this site have any suggestions? Is there a misunderstanding on my part?

Thanks

grstar85 Wrote:I did not pass JLPT4, however looking at the reference section my test results do not add up using their numbers.

The test scores are weighted and they don't provide enough information for you to score the test yourself.

Ultimately your time is much better spent studying Japanese than wasting time worrying about these test results. If you absolutely must pass the JLPT then don't forget to devote some time to studying the taking of the test.

I study at least 15 hours a week and this is the 3rd time I've taken the test. Last year
I only missed passing by 4 points. I am further frustrated by having this confidence
going into this test, confidence in my answers only to find I've totally blown it. And
there's no way to confirm that my test scores were not somehow scored incorrectly.

So let's say I have a fundamental misunderstanding of japanese grammar (despite the books despite the studying), how would I progress? there's no return of the test that
would provide me some guidance as to what I'm not getting.

To those who passed N4 I would ask: Were the grammar questions as obvious as they seemed? To me there didn't ever seem to be more than 1 right answer.

grstar85 Wrote:I study at least 15 hours a week and this is the 3rd time I've taken the test. Last year
I only missed passing by 4 points. I am further frustrated by having this confidence
going into this test, confidence in my answers only to find I've totally blown it. And
there's no way to confirm that my test scores were not somehow scored incorrectly.

So let's say I have a fundamental misunderstanding of japanese grammar (despite the books despite the studying), how would I progress? there's no return of the test that
would provide me some guidance as to what I'm not getting.

To those who passed N4 I would ask: Were the grammar questions as obvious as they seemed? To me there didn't ever seem to be more than 1 right answer.

You said yourself that you ran out of time on the reading section, but yet you don't seem to be focused on it the way that you should. Grammar is definitely something you should pay attention to, but at this point I would suggest you drill reading.

Have you done anything like Core or another systematic way of building vocabulary/reading?

Reading is one of the most important parts of the test, and practicing for it will boost your scores in other areas. The fact that you ran out of a time on it is a very big red flag.

grstar85 Wrote:And
there's no way to confirm that my test scores were not somehow scored incorrectly.

Unfortunately I don't know a better way to express this, but you need to get rid of this attitude of entitlement. There are many Japanese learners who could walk into that test with no sleep, hung over from binge drinking and all manor of drugs and still pass with a 90% or better. I do remember when I struggled with the material of N4/N5 and I do understand the frustration, but it's very possible to destroy these tests as long as you have a very complete understanding of the material on them. The problem is not with the test and the problem is not with the scoring.

Quote:Were the grammar questions as obvious as they seemed? To me there didn't ever seem to be more than 1 right answer.

That has not been my experience with the JLPT. There are usually two insanely wrong answers, one right answer, and one answer that attempts to challenge your understanding of the material.

Practice exams will help you understand where your weakness are and will help you recognize the wrong answers that seem correct. You should also read up on how to take the JLPT test itself because a large part of it is time management.

You should also consider your reasons for taking the JLPT. If are you acing practice exams but doing poorly on the real thing then perhaps it's best to find another way to gauge your progress.

[Zgarbas]

grstar85, there are lots of trick questions in the JLPT. Maybe you fell for the traps?

(I don't think I've ever seen a JLPT point where a single answer was obvious, aside from maybe some kanji&reading questions).

.

[Zgarbas]

You sparked my curiosity. How?

.

[s0apgun]

Interesting. Do you think you could make a short youtube clip with an example? Sort of hard to imagine the process clearly. Thanks!

[Zgarbas]

Oh, I see. I used to do that with English, and still do it for some exercises in the JLPT, but it doesn't work as nicely (the ability to get basic content from a 10 second skim is very important when doing this).

The last questions (the ones with a page full of table, explanation, what not) is usually solved in 1 min thanks to this, but many reading passages in the JLPT will be traps. As a general time-saving rule, it does work, but from personal experience its results aren't exactly foolproof. For example, I've seen exercises where the correct answer was the one not using the keyword, precisely to trick you (I wish I'd remember the context but alas). The method worked nicely for <N3 tests, but not for the N2. Or maybe I just happened to take the N2 in a year which was trickier...

So, imho, the method only really works* if you could breeze through the text in the first place. That pre-trick skim is important, and to actually breeze instead of stumble your way you need to have good reading comprehension in the first place. Or not, and I just suck at using tricks =).
*though even if the method per se doesn't always work, reading the questions before the text and knowing what to look for saves a great deal of time in the first place =).

.

Minna-san,

Thanks for your observations and suggestions, I will focus on reading and grammar (I know every Anki deck response for the N5/N4 vocab and kanji so I don't see a way to improve there).

Then don't focus on improving there. Push forward. You could spend your entire life trying to put the perfect finishing touches on those lower levels. The analogy I like to use is that it's like paving a road. The newest parts of the road are always kind of rough and gravelly, but then they get paved and smoothed over as ground gets broken by the new road further down the line. The only way for you to solidify your knowledge of past material is to move forward.

The things you'll learn by moving forward will definitely feed back onto the older bits, and you'll find yourself having a newer, deeper, better understanding. So if you feel like you've exhausted all your study material for N4/5 then push on to studying for N3. I can almost guarantee that studying for N3 will push you to where you need to be in order to finally pass N4.

This is why whenever I'm trying to reach a study goal, I always plan and study for a bit further than where I need to be for the test. Not all subjects work like this, but language skills definitely do.

I finally received the results today (forgot the password for the online registration thing). I managed to "improve" on the previous year's result by 1 point!

You improved a lot more than 1 point. N3 -> N2! What did you do between last year and this year test?

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:You improved a lot more than 1 point. N3 -> N2! What did you do between last year and this year test?

I don't think I did anything special, just the usual routine. I focused mainly on increasing vocab daily and on reading a fair bit -- mainly news, articles, blogs and 2ch, with only a bit of fiction in the form of novels. I found this approach fine for the JLPT because the JLPT almost never tests your ability to read fiction (or text written in a literary style). But still, it's an area where I feel I'm lacking comprehension so improving there is a current goal.

Other than the daily vocab and reading, towards the end of the year I patched up grammar holes with the Kanzen Master series of books which are quite comprehensive. I didn't do any structured study for listening, just watched or listened to whatever I came across day-to-day.