I took the test in Japan, there was no clock in the room, but there was a watch beeping all the time... It was kind of annoying and I'm pretty sure the owner was clearly afraid of the the instructors....
Drinking? I had a coffee with me but I was finished before they closed the door so I was cool about that...

Any answers you guys can remind would be really helpful!!!!

z1bbo Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:Good job z1bbo! You just bost my motivation to study more hours per day! Could I ask how you do/did Core? Recognition only? Production? Do you read the sentence or only the single word? Do you test only readings or both readings and meanings? And RtK? You review from english keyword to kanji? Are you still reviewing it?

My vocab cards are regocnition only: on front: kanji, sentence
on back: audio, definition, kanji+ reading, sentence, picture (so yes, reading and meaning)
for definition I have various field depending on how easy the vocab is to understand from the picture. For most nouns for example I have only japanese dictionary definition or 類語 from http://thesaurus.weblio.jp/, for adjective etc. mostly english/german definition.

I read the sentence only when I'm not sure about the meaning/usage of the word, at the start I always read it, but now I mostly ignore it.

I still review rtk and do keyword --> kanji, started changing keywords to japanese upon learning corresponding vocab, by now about 80%+ are japanese (not sure if this is good though, it lowered my retention rate).

hope this helps

Indeed it helped! Thank you very much! But after 10k words you stopped adding new cards? I'm still at 2500 words and I wonder if, after 10000 words, it will be easy to just pick words from reading without any need to add them to anki...

(Sorry for the off-topic :/ )

z1bbo Wrote:I think everyone can learn this fast, if you are really motivated and focus on reading and vocab.

I'm envious you have the time to invest. I feel like I squandered my youth.

I really didn't - I spent my youth building the skills for a great career in tech. But damn, I wish I'd studied more Japanese before the kids were born.

Looking forward to hearing your results.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:rmpalpha, go right ahead. It'll be good learning for everyone.

On that note, was anyone else thrown by the second to last paragraph in the essay about niche interests in N2? I'm sure if I had time to think about it it would make total sense, but I couldn't grok what they were trying to say about absorbing yourself in an interest resulting in a 不足 feeling. Ah well...

i quickly blew through that piece, but if I read it right the point was that if you keep doing something you love, you will eventually start doing some aspects a bit differently, because it seems like more fun that way. As you explore these new ways of performing your hobby, you may realize that other people who are unsatisfied with the original way would love your way, and you have stumbled upon a new niche of serving these people.

I took N2, mostly for fun (a very twisted and mazochistic variety thereof), in Hungary. About 80 other people showed up, all but 3 of them in their mid 20s (I was one of the exceptions ) There was a clock in the room, which seemed like it was temporarily hung from the projector screen just for the purpose of the JLPT. The test was started and finished according to this sacred clock (event though it wasn't quite on atomic clock time)
This was my first JLPT.

kanji: As a way of preparation, I spent a few days going through half a dozen practice tests, and studying the recurring unknown words. It turned out to be a decent investment because about 4 of those words did actually pop up here and the next section, and the rest were common words. I think I did pretty well on this section.

word compounds and compound words: this was the most painful section, I ended up guessing on half of the questions.

sentence Lego: a couple of the sentences felt a bit odd, but I did my best to choose the order that felt the least weird.

reading: I wasted a lot of time trying to find the "mottomo yoi" from the two goodish answers in the case of two of the short texts. I hate playing this game of smoke and mirrors, and the game hates me right back. As a result I started running out of time on the long text, so I couldn't read it as thoroughly as I would have preferred. I also didn't like the idea that the footnotes were overflowing to the next page. I finished the information retrieval about 500 ms before they called for pencils down. On the practice tests I usually had about 15 minutes left over, but it seems like practice and reality are indeed different. Overall I felt I've made the best choices given the circumstances, thinking enough but not overthinking things.

listening: shock and devastation. Due to a combination of the nasty distorted pile of poo boombox they used to play the CD, the skipped lunch (the test ran from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm) and the exhaustion and stress of the written portion setting in, I did much worse than on any of the practice tests before. Even discounting these major factors, the test seemed harder than average, both in vocabulary and the complexity of the questions. The last section didn't feel so much a listening test as an exercise in taking notes and solving puzzles. I'm not too worried about outright failing the listening test, but I was hoping to pick up a bunch of extra points here to pad for any shortcomings in mottomo yoi guessing and word compounding. That definitely did not happen.

Overall it was an interesting experience that I'm glad to have tried but that I hope I will not have a need to repeat anytime soon.

rich_f Wrote:I think I have an idea... I'm going to listen to my NHK News podcasts at 1.3x speed, and just learn to get used to it. Gogo Doggcatcher!

Or you could just watch Legal High or Hanzawa Naoki a few times over.

rmpalpha Wrote:This is what I could remember from the N2 test -
...

Amazing memory, I remembered practically nothing from this section. Do you recall anything from the reading section?

Edit: now we have the results thanks to chinesewebber, so this is obsolete

The listening section was harder than I expected.
Or maybe it was because I had to focus on random talk and conversations for 50 minutes after working hard for 105 minutes before, I don't know.

When I went to the train station afterwards, I heard a group of people talking (university students majoring in japanese) about how the listening was kinda tough.

kerecsen Wrote:

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:rmpalpha, go right ahead. It'll be good learning for everyone.

On that note, was anyone else thrown by the second to last paragraph in the essay about niche interests in N2? I'm sure if I had time to think about it it would make total sense, but I couldn't grok what they were trying to say about absorbing yourself in an interest resulting in a 不足 feeling. Ah well...

i quickly blew through that piece, but if I read it right the point was that if you keep doing something you love, you will eventually start doing some aspects a bit differently, because it seems like more fun that way. As you explore these new ways of performing your hobby, you may realize that other people who are unsatisfied with the original way would love your way, and you have stumbled upon a new niche of serving these people.

That makes a lot of sense, now that you said it :-| Definitely think I blew question 2 on that one, then.

kerecsen Wrote:I also didn't like the idea that the footnotes were overflowing to the next page.

I noticed this year the notes had a lot of "ここで、。。。" in them. This year's N2 had a lot of text choices that used standard words in slightly non-standard ways. This is the first year I can remember seeing that style of footnote.

kerecsen Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:I think I have an idea... I'm going to listen to my NHK News podcasts at 1.3x speed, and just learn to get used to it. Gogo Doggcatcher!

Or you could just watch Legal High or Hanzawa Naoki a few times over.

Followed up by Teekyu.

I took the N4. Vocab was pretty easy, grammar was tricky and reading was also pretty hard for some questions. It seemed like all the answers were right so I had to really look at conjugations/small details to see what was most correct. Listening however was really hard for some reason. I practiced the sample listening sections on the JLPT site and I did really well but for some reason on the test it wasn't as easy.

I was also disappointed at the lack of community there. I really wanna try to meet new people who are also learning Japanese/Japanese people but after the test, everyone kinda kept to themselves, went home, or only talked to their group. The teachers/instructors went to their lunch room or something so you couldn't really talk to them.

As always, the Chinese can be trusted to disregard all rules and bring us pertinent information: http://www.onlyjp.cn/jlpt/

This one requires registration for the download, but covers the reading and listening sections too (not just number key, but the correct response text): http://jp.hjenglish.com/jlpt/

chinesewebber Wrote:As always, the Chinese can be trusted to disregard all rules and bring us pertinent information: http://www.onlyjp.cn/jlpt/

This one requires registration for the download, but covers the reading and listening sections too (not just number key, but the correct response text): http://jp.hjenglish.com/jlpt/

Chinesewebber,

Could you please (please please please please) show where on that chinese website we could download the N2 and how are we supposed to register?

Taking a look at the exam now would really calm my nerves down.
I had no idea how important that exam was unitl after I was finished with it.
Besides I really want my tutor to take a look at it.... by my side.... holding my hands.... while I pray... and probably cry...


Thank U....

Wow, thanks for posting that. Turns out I pretty much nailed the entire first section (N1). Not what I expected but can't complain lol.

Ally1987 Wrote:Could you please (please please please please) show where on that chinese website we could download the N2 and how are we supposed to register?

You go to http://jp.hjenglish.com/jlpt/ then on the bottom right look for a white box with a green header row that says "资料下载" (download materials). Select N1N2 from there and some links will appear in the box. Follow them to the download site (I think the first one may be what you need). When you click on the very international download button, a sad character will appear complaining that you are not logged in, and next to it you will see an orange link to register. On the registration popup choose e-mail registration (second tab, 邮箱注册), and if you took N2 you should be able to guess the rest just looking at the Chinese characters If all goes well you will get a registration confirmation email, and after clicking on the included link to confirm, you will be able to download.

You may have to use google/bing translate liberally, because some of the questions and answers are translated to Chinese...

chinesewebber Wrote:As always, the Chinese can be trusted to disregard all rules and bring us pertinent information: http://www.onlyjp.cn/jlpt/

This one requires registration for the download, but covers the reading and listening sections too (not just number key, but the correct response text): http://jp.hjenglish.com/jlpt/

Thank you very much.
I'm going to score worst in the listening section, that was unthinkable before taking the test. Google Translate doesn't help for some Chinese sentences, also:

Quote:5番　正解：２
解析：略

#2 is the right answer to... whatever question it was

Clockwise Wrote:

chinesewebber Wrote:As always, the Chinese can be trusted to disregard all rules and bring us pertinent information: http://www.onlyjp.cn/jlpt/

This one requires registration for the download, but covers the reading and listening sections too (not just number key, but the correct response text): http://jp.hjenglish.com/jlpt/

Thank you very much.
I'm going to score worst in the listening section, that was unthinkable before taking the test. Google Translate doesn't help for some Chinese sentences, also:

Quote:5番　正解：２
解析：略

#2 is the right answer to... whatever question it was

Just wait until they crunch the numbers. There can be a sizable difference between "percentage of correct answers" and "jlpt score". If listening was indeed more difficult than usual, you might end up with a high score even though you've made several mistakes (or the other way around).

Chinesewebber,

Thanks a lot!!
you saved my week!!!
way less worried now thanks to you!!!

Yay, I finally found the more detailed analysis with answers also for reading and listening for the N1 test in case anyone is interested (look under N1解析):
http://jp.hjenglish.com/nenglikaon1/p708510/

I took the N3 test in Los Angeles. As expected, I found myself quite uncomfortable in the initial vocabulary section. I did better in the grammar section, but didn't finish the penultimate reading, and therefore probably missed the four questions associated with it.

The listening section was easy (except for one question when I got distracted by another test-taker's coughing). For my studies, I used the パターン別徹底ドリル 日本語能力試験N3 book, which included about two hours of listening practice on CD. The CDs were much, much, much more difficult than the audio prompts on the actual test. If you plan on taking N3 next year and struggle with the listening comprehension part, I recommend this book. However, it was just so-so for vocabulary.

Sorry to ask but when will the online results be available? I mean the time they release it online just like previous years

I think they said early February.

Aren't online records late January, physical records early February? Either way it takes a stupid amount of time.

Remember, it's a test scanning machine; those things require some kind of ancient ritual to be performed before processing the test sheets, and help the poor fool who didn't use a No.2 pencil.
I hear they eat people.

But yeah, these kinds of standardized tests always take a long time to process. They probably had to ship it to a processing center with a (possibly imaginary) queue where they then have to process and return the packets. But maybe that's not the case since they have a special grading system.