Yay! Passed N5!
I also learned that I'm worse than I thought at listening, might have to do something about that... (any tips? the only real listening I do is a core deck with audio and listening to some japanese music)

Edit: Way to go Sunehiro! That is a pretty amazing feat!

congrats sunehiro!

and thank you very much for exam papers you send me for practice, they really helped a lot!!

Damn sunehiro, impressive! And congrats to everyone else!!

You're welcome z1bbo! And congrats to you, too!

Really interesting time and score, keep it up!

Edit: thanks guys!

*failed editing, sorry*

N1, having started 22 months ago:

Vocab/Grammar: 54/60
Reading: 54/60
Listening: 44/60
Total: 152/180

I had trouble concentrating at first (actually filled my information on the wrong (Listening) answer sheet before the test, so the first 1-2 minutes were spent on that), but went back and fixed all my stupid errors in the last 15 minutes. Reading was easy except for the answering part, there were several answers I was unsure of. Erlog's deck was awesome for grammar. Listening was just... harder for some reason. I got 80% on the workbook listening a year before, though there was some luck involved.

"Just read VNs" confirmed a valid method of studying Japanese (though Ixrec's guide was indispensable and Anki was (and still is) used to optimize parts of the process).

sunehiro Wrote:It's not a glorious pass but it's still super duper cool.

Yeah, for glorious you'd need either exactly 100 points (preferably something like 19/21/60) or a perfect score, but you were close!

Congrats to all others who passed!

Congrats to those who passed!

First time taking JLPT. I was totally sure I failed, but...

Passed N1 118/180 (Vocab/Grammar 45/60, Reading 29/60, Listening 44/60).

Yeah, apparently, I'm not a good reader. Well, actually, I think it was more a time management problem on my part -- I could have spent less time on the grammar section and not ended up with 2 minutes left on the clock and a page filled with moonrunes staring at me (4 questions went unanswered). But all's well that ends well.

Naturally, I can't be satisfied with this score, so I plan to take it again in December this year.

I must thank everyone on this forum. Many of the study materials I used were created by you guys. You are awesome.

I passed the JLPT N1!

Vocab 52/60
Reading 60/60 (!!!)
Listening 28/60

Total: 140/180

I'm not sure how I managed to 'pass' Listening with such a low score, but it must have to do with scaling. I did think it was considerably harder listening this year than last year.

I am trying to improve my listening comprehension, but I don't think I'll be taking the JLPT again to measure it, and it doesn't seem like I need to worry about my reading skills. (I kind of knew that since I can read newspapers and novels.) I didn't really need to worry about reading skills last year either, but in a test situation I was simply too slow to complete the questions in time. Reading speed was a big focus of mine, which conveniently enough is practiced by finding something you like and reading it. Study and leisure at the same time for the win!

I've been slacking on explicitly practicing my kanji (ironic considering which site this is!) but I may have to get back into that since I'm likely to give Kanji Kentei a try now that I'm done with the JLPT.

@sunehiro & Vempele
First, congrats on passing—and in record time, too! If you have the interest and time, I encourage you to write study method posts like the ones zorlee and drdunlap did. You'll help people figure out their own study plans and, more importantly, give them hope and motivation.

vileru Wrote:@sunehiro & Vempele
First, congrats on passing—and in record time, too! If you have the interest and time, I encourage you to write study method posts like the ones zorlee and drdunlap did. You'll help people figure out their own study plans and, more importantly, give them hope and motivation.

Agreed.

Congratulations to everybody! Seems like almost everybody passed (or the unfortunate ones are too intimidated to post by now). I'd also be interested to find out how some of you reached the N1 in very little time (e.g. Vempele, sunehiro, z1bbo) and to read an analysis about what worked, what you'd do differently etc. I felt like my 2 years + some odd months were rather quick, but apparently one can do much better than that. I'd have liked to share interesting and novel study methods with you, but I haven't really done anything worth mentioning in quite a while.

Zgarbas Wrote:hyvel: there's no real secret. Basically, do whatever it takes to keep you interested in the language. Keep reading. Read various genres for variety. Try interacting with actual Japanese people. Write a blog (not a Japanese language learning blog). Don't neglect your reviews. Don't be fooled into thinking that because you have a high level you can neglect the language for a year with no consequences (forgetting is a frustrating experience). At this point, maintenance is more important than active learning.

I understand your point about maintenance and heartily agree. But with regard to getting better, I still suspect that 'just enjoying the language' only gets one to a certain point, after which one stagnates.

Example: I always mark unclear passages in the books I read. When going back, I understand some of them now, but alarmingly there are also a lot of passages that I still don't understand. And it's actually not even very surprising, because I was too lazy to spend some time and effort to cross-reference them and figure them out. So I guess my main point is that I feel like I need to be careful to not just enjoy the language, but to also make an active effort to improve and to fill in gaps in my understanding. That's what I meant when I used the word 'complacent'.

I actually have a similar issue with my English. It's probably quite decent, but I've kind of stopped actively trying to improve. Consequently, I feel as if I haven't really improved in the past few years (other than picking up a few more words).

vileru Wrote:@sunehiro & Vempele
First, congrats on passing—and in record time, too! If you have the interest and time, I encourage you to write study method posts like the ones zorlee and drdunlap did. You'll help people figure out their own study plans and, more importantly, give them hope and motivation.

How do people reset their study methods? I don't like studying specifically for tests, so I mean studying the language in general. Both of these threads just made it seem like they suddenly became awesome in comparison to how long it's taking me. I need to change something, but not sure what I guess. About a year and a half ago the big change I made was into reading. Don't know what to mix up now to make sure I'm improving instead of simply maintaining my ability.

I seem to have passed N2 with a so-so score (135/180). Which is a good thing, because I'm not sure I would ever have the time/motivation to try again

I was particularly curious about the scaling of the scores. For grammar and reading, the scaling didn't have a big impact (the difference between my estimated "correct" score and the JLPT score is less than 5%, which is well within the margin of error for my estimate). For listening however, I got a nice boost, jumping from 75% correct answers to a 90% JLPT score.

Which leads me to conclude that grammar and reading difficulty was about par for the course, but listening was in fact harder this time than average.

TheVinster Wrote:How do people reset their study methods? I don't like studying specifically for tests, so I mean studying the language in general. Both of these threads just made it seem like they suddenly became awesome in comparison to how long it's taking me. I need to change something, but not sure what I guess. About a year and a half ago the big change I made was into reading. Don't know what to mix up now to make sure I'm improving instead of simply maintaining my ability.

Now, I can't speak for any of those who achieved those results in such a short time span. But my impression is that some of the key is spending a lot of time studying Japanese. In some of those 'N1 in a couple of years' there is often a passing remark about spending several hours a day on Japanese. My impression is that the key is to succeeding in learning Japanese fast is not so much the method, but the hard work and dedication.

(And if you really do put many hours a day into it, please don't take any offense)

Hinsudesu Wrote:

TheVinster Wrote:How do people reset their study methods? I don't like studying specifically for tests, so I mean studying the language in general. Both of these threads just made it seem like they suddenly became awesome in comparison to how long it's taking me. I need to change something, but not sure what I guess. About a year and a half ago the big change I made was into reading. Don't know what to mix up now to make sure I'm improving instead of simply maintaining my ability.

Now, I can't speak for any of those who achieved those results in such a short time span. But my impression is that some of the key is spending a lot of time studying Japanese. In some of those 'N1 in a couple of years' there is often a passing remark about spending several hours a day on Japanese. My impression is that the key is to succeeding in learning Japanese fast is not so much the method, but the hard work and dedication.

(And if you really do put many hours a day into it, please don't take any offense)

Yes I think this is a very important point, I reached N1 in 12.5 months but I probably studied 7-9 hours per day on average. From the point of study methods, I didn't do anything special, just the regular lots of vocabulary+ delayed start into reading.

hyvel Wrote:I actually have a similar issue with my English. It's probably quite decent, but I've kind of stopped actively trying to improve. Consequently, I feel as if I haven't really improved in the past few years (other than picking up a few more words).

I feel the same about my English. I just use it regularly on pretty much all of the media except for Japanese that I consume but I never do active studying. It's quite frustrating when you think you have fluent understanding and then don't know 50+ of the RTK keywords . Maybe if I would have something like Rikaisamas import to Anki feature for English vocab then I would slowly start picking up new words, but the ones that I occasionally stumble about are always too rare and thus I forget them a few days after the dictionary look-up.

@vileru: I had already thought about it, I'll probably do that. Thanks for the suggestion.

@Hinsudesu: in order to achieve such a result, putting a lot of time into it every day is mandatory.
Actually the key is both, method and dedication. The latter is simple to figure out, you simply 'go japanese' all the time you have.
But that alone is not enough. Given the fact that you want to use a lot of your time to improve your language skills, you will also need a good method, so that the time you're investing will be focused on what really makes you grow.

Hinsudesu Wrote:

TheVinster Wrote:How do people reset their study methods? I don't like studying specifically for tests, so I mean studying the language in general. Both of these threads just made it seem like they suddenly became awesome in comparison to how long it's taking me. I need to change something, but not sure what I guess. About a year and a half ago the big change I made was into reading. Don't know what to mix up now to make sure I'm improving instead of simply maintaining my ability.

Now, I can't speak for any of those who achieved those results in such a short time span. But my impression is that some of the key is spending a lot of time studying Japanese. In some of those 'N1 in a couple of years' there is often a passing remark about spending several hours a day on Japanese. My impression is that the key is to succeeding in learning Japanese fast is not so much the method, but the hard work and dedication.

Yeah, I was going to pipe in on this earlier. Not to downplay anyone's impressive accomplishments, but I worry that focusing too much on such stories can de-motivate others who aren't progressing as quickly. You'll progress proportionate to the amount of time you're able to dump into it. I envy those who have 6 to 8 hours a day to devote to Japanese practice; not everyone is able to do that.

I joined this forum on 5/2012, shortly after deciding I wanted to get real about my Japanese studies. It took me about 2-1/2 years to pass N2. Given my schedule, I was able to devote anywhere from 2-4 hours to this on most days while also balancing a full time (and sometimes more than full time) job, and raising four children. Given that, I'm very happy with that result.

For me, the key for the next year is going to be stepping up my game even further and finding those areas where I can sneak in Japanese immersion into the cracks and crannies of my life. That's why there's now a TV in my bedroom blaring TV Japan almost daily :-D

Indeed, as another testament to the "time and effort are key" take on things: I've been at this for a few years now and I'm only now getting to studying for the N1 this year (and I'm actually mostly studying N2 material right now).
I usually only study for a couple of hours a day at the most, since I'm paying to shove other material into my brain as well and have to make time for that.

However, that doesn't mean that the methods of the successful aren't worth looking at; I started studying basic Japanese before I even joined this forum and, up until I started following the advice here (use RTK if you can't remember kanji, use Anki, read Tae Kim's guide, no romaji after you learn the kana, read, etc), I really wasn't making much progress, even on stuff that is generally considered low-hanging fruit here.

@z1bbo
Don't know if this is any kind of consolation, but RTK keywords aren't always all that common in today's English (even a avid-reader and native speaker like myself met a number of new words through RTK).
At least one keyword might not even be a 'real word', depending on your desired definition of 'word': the 'decameron' keyword seems to actually come from the title of a story collection (known as "The Decameron"), for which the author (a 14th century Italian man) stuck two Greek words together to make a new one. The keyword makes sense if you've studied classical roots (and is explained in RTK), but it could be argued that it's not even a real word (especially in English).
Can't think of any other notably odd examples, but it at least gives a good idea of the oddness of some of the keywords.