So, I just finished a JLPT N2 practice test and, despite doing quite well on the plain vocabulary questions, I completely bombed the 'production' style questions (the cloze-delete/fill-in-the-blank questions). Many of the questions had a couple of similar answers that I had to choose from and they were generally grammar bits (i.e. だけあってVであって). My tutor helped me to understand the differences between the choices and said she would get a book for me to read and do practice problems with; is there a best way to practice and study these problems?
NOTE: I'd rather not use Anki in this case; I have a tendency to memorize the question and answer when I have that much context, rather than the form of the question.

I also sucked at the simile/paraphrasing questions. Suggestions for Anki decks or other study methods for these would be welcome as well.
At least I know why I didn't do as well as I'd have liked on the reading comprehension part... Granted, I was running out of time by then, so I didn't have time to analyze them properly.

I'd like to get through this N2 level stuff in the next couple months, since I'm aiming for N1 this year.

TL;DR
I suck at pretty much every question type other than vocabulary (and reading comp.); please tell me a good way to practice.

If you've Anki'd sentences with all the N2 grammar points and can comprehend them at a glance, I think the cloze deletion questions become much easier.

For N1, I went through the Kanzen Master grammar workbook and also studied a few hundred questions using JLPT iOS apps, and that was enough to get 100% on that section.

Other than that just keep reading and getting a feel for the nuance of these expressions. I found that there were enough hints in the sentences to make the correct choice stand out when I knew each of them well.

This probably isn't the answer you want to hear and I often get bashed for this advice but here we go...!

I would suggest just reading more. As I've said elsewhere, I had a professor at Kobe University who always liked to say "The JLPT N1 isn't hard. It's just incredibly normal (Japanese). It's not trying to trick you- it's simply asking, "Have you seen this pattern enough times to know it by heart? A Japanese native has." I'm sure the same thing can be said for other levels as well. At least most of N2..!?

You can know the grammar by heart but be completely incapable of actually using it if you haven't seen it in action enough. As jimeux said, if you've seen them enough times, there are fairly clear hints in most of the sentences that should point you to the correct answer. Extensive reading should help with everything on the JLPT by making natural Japanese second nature!

Thank you for the replies.

As far as extensive reading goes, I do that already (maybe not as much as I should, though). Maybe the question is: how do I notice these patterns? Everything made perfect sense once we went over it, but when I was taking the test, it didn't jump out quite as much (enough to eliminate an answer or two, but no more).
Should I try intensive reading with small passages?

I guess I might be trying too hard to find something to improve faster, but that could be a waste of time on its own...

@jimeux
I'll look at those resources you mentioned, and I might try sentences again. I think my biggest problem is grammar, so I'll go after that.

@drdunlap
I definitely don't know the grammar by heart, so maybe I need to work on that. I definitely wouldn't be able to recite the book by heart though! I'm nowhere near dedicated enough to do that!
I've been meaning to read more novels lately... I guess it's time I did that.

I'll work on what y'all suggested; your replies have helped me to understand what I need to work on, so thank you again.

drdunlap Wrote:This probably isn't the answer you want to hear and I often get bashed for this advice but here we go...!

I would suggest just reading more. As I've said elsewhere, I had a professor at Kobe University who always liked to say "The JLPT N1 isn't hard. It's just incredibly normal (Japanese). It's not trying to trick you- it's simply asking, "Have you seen this pattern enough times to know it by heart? A Japanese native has." I'm sure the same thing can be said for other levels as well. At least most of N2..!?

You can know the grammar by heart but be completely incapable of actually using it if you haven't seen it in action enough. As jimeux said, if you've seen them enough times, there are fairly clear hints in most of the sentences that should point you to the correct answer. Extensive reading should help with everything on the JLPT by making natural Japanese second nature!

I'm not going to "bash" you but I will disagree; passive reading doesn't really train you to tell the difference between close patterns. Also there's a trap you can fall into at higher levels -- it's easy (and probably natural) to train yourself to skip what you don't know and get as much meaning as you can out of something without having to stop. Sometimes you need some outside prod telling you "hey, pay attention to this" to get into all the corners of what you're reading.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

drdunlap Wrote:This probably isn't the answer you want to hear and I often get bashed for this advice but here we go...!

I would suggest just reading more. As I've said elsewhere, I had a professor at Kobe University who always liked to say "The JLPT N1 isn't hard. It's just incredibly normal (Japanese). It's not trying to trick you- it's simply asking, "Have you seen this pattern enough times to know it by heart? A Japanese native has." I'm sure the same thing can be said for other levels as well. At least most of N2..!?

You can know the grammar by heart but be completely incapable of actually using it if you haven't seen it in action enough. As jimeux said, if you've seen them enough times, there are fairly clear hints in most of the sentences that should point you to the correct answer. Extensive reading should help with everything on the JLPT by making natural Japanese second nature!

I'm not going to "bash" you but I will disagree; passive reading doesn't really train you to tell the difference between close patterns. Also there's a trap you can fall into at higher levels -- it's easy (and probably natural) to train yourself to skip what you don't know and get as much meaning as you can out of something without having to stop. Sometimes you need some outside prod telling you "hey, pay attention to this" to get into all the corners of what you're reading.

After studying grammar, extensive reading is exactly what gave me the ability to tell apart similar patterns. Seeing them "in the wild" time and time again...
The isolated explanations often just confused me. But maybe that's just me!
Also I totally agree with the "high level trap." It's a dastardly devil.

But anyhow different strokes for different folks, I suppose!

Don't get me wrong, reading should be the majority of what you do. I think if you're having trouble with the JLPT, JLPT prep books are probably the best way to go. But that's studying for a test.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Don't get me wrong, reading should be the majority of what you do. I think if you're having trouble with the JLPT, JLPT prep books are probably the best way to go. But that's studying for a test.

Indeed it's 'studying for a test'. As odd as this may sound to some, this year of studies is going to be focused more on passing this test than actual Japanese; obviously my Japanese will improve as well (since I'm clearly not all that good with grammar and need to work on my listening), but beyond reading for fun and maintaining my vocabulary decks, I'm not all that focused on working 'in the wild'.

I'm using the ゼッタイ合格！ practice tests and was already recommended the Kanzen Master series (and should be working from some 国語 workbook in a couple weeks); are there any other books/resources you'd suggest?

yudantaiteki Wrote:Don't get me wrong, reading should be the majority of what you do. I think if you're having trouble with the JLPT, JLPT prep books are probably the best way to go. But that's studying for a test.

Oh, I know! Sorry, I'm quite bad at explaining myself!



I had one JLPT grammar book myself.. but I just read it once, put the grammar points (each with their respective example sentences) into Anki and was done with it. The rest of my practice(?) for the JLPT was reading. I guess I push reading extra hard because I keep seeing people study so hard for the JLPT who fail to do well and end up wondering why. Letting Anki show you the grammar points (with their example sentences) over and over in spaced-repitition style while you get busy reading books and newspapers has always seemed like the best way to me. That's why I did it! Although, I was never much worried about the JLPT to begin with. I just figured all those novels I was reading would take care of things for me.


Still, to all the people studying for the upper levels of the JLPT, if what you're doing doesn't seem to be working, I leave you with my story as a reference!

Looking at 国語 explanations is also a good call. The Japanese explanation always makes far more sense.

As for... other resources..
Unless you think it would have different grammar points and the like I don't actually think another JLPT grammar book would do you much good. Unless the one you have doesn't explain things very well. That's why I immediately suggested reading in this thread.

I think the JLPT grammar book I used was called "1回で合格 日本語能力試験 N1 文法対策."

Do you have any specific examples of things that tripped you up?

Though my mistakes feel kinda silly after reviewing, here's a couple examples from the sections I did worst in (all questions are from ゼッタイ合格！日本語能力試験完全模試N2):

[問題４　１６]
彼の昇進の　（　）　には親の力がある。
１　背景　　２　影響　　３　評価　　４　判断
(On this one, I eliminated 3 and 4 because they seemed wrong immediately; ended up choosing 2 twice, because I couldn't remember what 背景 meant at the time and 影響 seemed close enough. I really haven't done many of these, so I think it's just getting used to the question format... Only got one out of seven correct.)

[問題６　32]
しみ込む
１　真っ赤な夕日が校舎にしみ込んでいる。
２　この着物の花の色は、いい色にしみ込んでいる。
３　大根にタコの味がよくしみ込んでいておいしい。
４　泥棒はここから家の中にしみ込んだらしい。

(If it wasn't obvious, this problem set is word usage. After realizing しみ was 染み, I once again eliminated the answers that made the least sense; I chose 1, thinking it was best, but found that 3 was the correct answer. The reasoning being that the infusion of octopus flavor into the daikon was しみ込む while the evening sunlight wasn't 込む, but more like paint on the surface. To me, my poor performance on this (1/5) suggests that, while I might be able to read something and interpret it, I haven't properly internalized nuances even to the point that I could pick the best of four answers.)

[問題７　３４]
３時間並ばされた　（　）、前の人のところでチケットは売切れてしまった。
１　ために　　２　うえで　　３　くせに　　４　あげく

(Same as 問題４, but with more grammar-type words instead of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. I actually got this one right, but only through process of elimination, since I could tell what the sentence said and felt the first three choices didn't make sense. I think this is just poor grammar ability on my part, which is why I keep asking about it.)

After that, there's a passage with similar questions to 問題４ and 問第７ (bits missing from the passage, fill them in), which I also did poorly on.
Finally, there were reading comprehension questions. I was pressed for time (less than ten minutes left to read and process about five pages of text; not that I got to them all before I ran out of time), but I still think I didn't do well enough on what I got to (but I know how to work on that: read stuff and ask myself questions about it; only problem is checking whether I'm right or not).

I guess I should try putting grammar into Anki after all; how did you set up the cards? Should I have the grammar point on the front with the example sentence and put the explanation on the back?

sholum Wrote:I guess I should try putting grammar into Anki after all; how did you set up the cards? Should I have the grammar point on the front with the example sentence and put the explanation on the back?

Yeah mine were set up like that. Front = grammar point + example sentences. Back = explanation (in Japanese) + rough English translation.

sholum Wrote:Though my mistakes feel kinda silly after reviewing, here's a couple examples from the sections I did worst in (all questions are from ゼッタイ合格！日本語能力試験完全模試N2):

[問題４　１６]
彼の昇進の　（　）　には親の力がある。
１　背景　　２　影響　　３　評価　　４　判断
(On this one, I eliminated 3 and 4 because they seemed wrong immediately; ended up choosing 2 twice, because I couldn't remember what 背景 meant at the time and 影響 seemed close enough. I really haven't done many of these, so I think it's just getting used to the question format... Only got one out of seven correct.)

I took the old L1 many years ago but as I remember, this was the hardest section. Ten years later the answer (at least to this one) is fairly clear but this is very hard to study for.

Quote:[問題６　32]
しみ込む
１　真っ赤な夕日が校舎にしみ込んでいる。
２　この着物の花の色は、いい色にしみ込んでいる。
３　大根にタコの味がよくしみ込んでいておいしい。
４　泥棒はここから家の中にしみ込んだらしい。

(If it wasn't obvious, this problem set is word usage. After realizing しみ was 染み, I once again eliminated the answers that made the least sense; I chose 1, thinking it was best, but found that 3 was the correct answer. The reasoning being that the infusion of octopus flavor into the daikon was しみ込む while the evening sunlight wasn't 込む, but more like paint on the surface. To me, my poor performance on this (1/5) suggests that, while I might be able to read something and interpret it, I haven't properly internalized nuances even to the point that I could pick the best of four answers.)

Even now I'm not sure why #2 isn't good; clearly it's just not idiomatic.

Quote:[問題７　３４]
３時間並ばされた　（　）、前の人のところでチケットは売切れてしまった。
１　ために　　２　うえで　　３　くせに　　４　あげく

(Same as 問題４, but with more grammar-type words instead of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. I actually got this one right, but only through process of elimination, since I could tell what the sentence said and felt the first three choices didn't make sense. I think this is just poor grammar ability on my part, which is why I keep asking about it.)

Sort of the same boat for me. If you had given me あげく out of context and asked what it meant I'm not sure I would have been able to remember. 1 and 3 are clearly wrong; 2 has some plausibility but it just doesn't seem quite right, so I think that prodded me to dredge 挙句の果てに out of my memory.

(This is only N2, I'm glad I don't have to take N1 again at this point!)

I'll just throw in my two cents here. I, too, suck at those questions. I took N4 last year and was floored by them. I had never encountered that style of question before (outside of a practice test I took) - my teachers had never introduced them to me, and my score reflected that I was completely clueless on them.

At my level reading more is not really an option because I can't read things like books.

My lesson was to take the failure as a lesson - I'm just really week at grammar. I put in some effort that and found some new techniques to learn and reinforce grammar. I'm hoping that this will help for N3 next year - we'll see!

1　真っ赤な夕日が校舎にさし込んでいる。
２　この着物の花の色は、いい色にとけ込んでいる。
4　泥棒はここから家の中にしのび込んだらしい。

Fixed?

Is it bad to say that I'm a bit relieved that others have trouble with these problems?

@yudantaiteki
Regarding 染み込む, I remember my tutor saying that 2 isn't exactly wrong, but it's not really used either. Considering that the directions say もっともよいものを選んでください (or something like that), it must be that 3 is more correct than 2. Don't quote me on that, though, because I can't remember exactly what she said about it.

@ariariari
I'll update this if I find a good resource for practicing these problems. And yeah, I still have problems reading novels, just due to the amount of description for any given subject. I don't know what you think about manga, but it's much easier to read than novels (but you don't get all the practice you'd get from a novel).

@anotherjohn
I've no idea. I don't think 込む is necessarily required, since it's part of the question, not the answers.

sholum Wrote:I don't think 込む is necessarily required, since it's part of the question, not the answers.

I just meant to suggest alternative ~込む words that fit the other sentences, the point of the question presumably being that there was indeed an appropriate choice in each case.

sholum Wrote:... it must be that 3 is more correct than 2

"The colours of the flowers on this kimono are soaked into a nice colour."
I guess the 'nice colour' could be the background or something but that still sounds odd and it's a stretch not required for option 3.

sholum Wrote:Is it bad to say that I'm a bit relieved that others have trouble with these problems?
...
@ariariari
I'll update this if I find a good resource for practicing these problems. And yeah, I still have problems reading novels, just due to the amount of description for any given subject. I don't know what you think about manga, but it's much easier to read than novels (but you don't get all the practice you'd get from a novel).
..

Do you have a recommendation for a first manga to try and read? I've never read any before.

anotherjohn Wrote:

sholum Wrote:... it must be that 3 is more correct than 2

"The colours of the flowers on this kimono are soaked into a nice colour."
I guess the 'nice colour' could be the background or something but that still sounds odd and it's a stretch not required for option 3.

花の色 (color of flower); I'd have thought 花の柄 would be used to refer to the shape of flowers... Then again, I can't think of any color that's specifically 'flower'-like...

@ariariari
It depends on what you like, but here are a couple easy things that are already established:
ながされて藍蘭島（あいらんとう） - it's one of those young people slice-of-life romcoms with a fantastical setting; it's actually a pretty fun read, in my opinion, but I can't say it's for everybody.

コイネコ - Basically the same description as above. Will probably get weird(er) looks from people in public though... starts off light, but gets a bit of a serious undertone after the first few volumes. This one doesn't have furigana, but it doesn't use a lot of kanji either.

ぬこづけ！ (http://www.hanayumeonline.com/magazine/magazine12.html) - it's adorable for adorableness' sake: basically the manga version of cat videos. Over-consumption could lead to diabetes.

Pretty much any shounen action manga (I burned out on these long before I started reading in Japanese, so I can't suggest anything specific).

As far as things that are easy that I can recommend, that's about it; most of the more mature stories I can think of use much more advanced language.

This recommendation is more because I'm a huge fan than because they're good for beginners to read, but:
Pretty much anything by Mizukami Satoshi (especially 戦国妖狐, スピリットサークル, and 惑星(ほし)のさみだれ) - an exception to what I stated above (well, for one of them, the rest are published in seinen magazines), this guy writes some incredible stories (and is very good at character development). I can't say they're particularly easy to read, but I don't think they're too hard to push through, if you really wanted to.

Like I said before, though, it's mostly down to taste; I like a variety of things though I generally prefer fantasy to realism; also, I have a thing for odd, comedic stories (reminds me of another fun series: O/A. It's already complete and only 35 chapters long, if that's preferable, don't know what the Japanese level is, though).
Basically, you may or may not find any of these enjoyable.

Just remembered that there was at least one thread about this a while ago; might be worth looking up.

EDIT: formatting
EDIT: A manga recommendation thread:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10869

sholum Wrote:@ariariari
It depends on what you like, but here are a couple easy things that are already established:
...

Thanks!

I bookmarked this thread. I'll probably revisit it when I'm ready to read my first Manga, which if I had to guess would be in the 2nd half of this year. Right now I'm just focused on the N3 vocab and grammar.

[RawToast]

ariariari Wrote:Do you have a recommendation for a first manga to try and read? I've never read any before.

よつばと　is frequently recommended as a simple slice of life manga. If you google around there are Anki decks for the sentences and vocab.

The mega thread has plenty of suggestions.

sholum Wrote:So, I just finished a JLPT N2 practice test and, despite doing quite well on the plain vocabulary questions, I completely bombed the 'production' style questions (the cloze-delete/fill-in-the-blank questions). .....I also sucked at the simile/paraphrasing questions. Suggestions for Anki decks or other study methods for these would be welcome as well.
At least I know why I didn't do as well as I'd have liked on the reading comprehension part... Granted, I was running out of time by then, so I didn't have time to analyze them properly.

I'd like to get through this N2 level stuff in the next couple months, since I'm aiming for N1 this year.

TL;DR
I suck at pretty much every question type other than vocabulary (and reading comp.); please tell me a good way to practice.

Maybe you need practice translating from English into Japanese. Is English to Japanese written translation currently part of your study plan?

(btw--what does "cloze-delete" mean?)

john555 Wrote:(btw--what does "cloze-delete" mean?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test

Vempele Wrote:

john555 Wrote:(btw--what does "cloze-delete" mean?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test

Thanks. I took a look at the wikipedia article.

Personally I think translating whole sentences from English to the target language is better.

The article gives the following example below. Meh.

A language teacher may give the following passage to students:

“ Today, I went to the ________ and bought some milk and eggs. I knew it was going to rain, but I forgot to take my ________, and ended up getting wet on the way ________. ”

Students would then be required to fill in the blanks with words that would best complete the passage. Context in language and content terms is essential in most, if not all, cloze tests. The first blank is preceded by "the"; therefore, a noun, an adjective or an adverb must follow. However, a conjunction follows the blank; the sentence would not be grammatically correct if anything other than a noun were in the blank. The words "milk and eggs" are important for deciding which noun to put in the blank; "supermarket" is a possible answer; depending on the student, however, the first blank could either be store, supermarket, shop or market while umbrella or raincoat fit the second.

john555 Wrote:

sholum Wrote:So, I just finished a JLPT N2 practice test and, despite doing quite well on the plain vocabulary questions, I completely bombed the 'production' style questions (the cloze-delete/fill-in-the-blank questions). .....I also sucked at the simile/paraphrasing questions. Suggestions for Anki decks or other study methods for these would be welcome as well.
At least I know why I didn't do as well as I'd have liked on the reading comprehension part... Granted, I was running out of time by then, so I didn't have time to analyze them properly.

I'd like to get through this N2 level stuff in the next couple months, since I'm aiming for N1 this year.

TL;DR
I suck at pretty much every question type other than vocabulary (and reading comp.); please tell me a good way to practice.

Maybe you need practice translating from English into Japanese. Is English to Japanese written translation currently part of your study plan?

(btw--what does "cloze-delete" mean?)

If you think translation practice is going to help with the N2 or N1 test, you're sorely mistaken.

RandomQuotes Wrote:

john555 Wrote:

sholum Wrote:So, I just finished a JLPT N2 practice test and, despite doing quite well on the plain vocabulary questions, I completely bombed the 'production' style questions (the cloze-delete/fill-in-the-blank questions). .....I also sucked at the simile/paraphrasing questions. Suggestions for Anki decks or other study methods for these would be welcome as well.
At least I know why I didn't do as well as I'd have liked on the reading comprehension part... Granted, I was running out of time by then, so I didn't have time to analyze them properly.

I'd like to get through this N2 level stuff in the next couple months, since I'm aiming for N1 this year.

TL;DR
I suck at pretty much every question type other than vocabulary (and reading comp.); please tell me a good way to practice.

Maybe you need practice translating from English into Japanese. Is English to Japanese written translation currently part of your study plan?

(btw--what does "cloze-delete" mean?)

If you think translation practice is going to help with the N2 or N1 test, you're sorely mistaken.

Why?

I would think there would be a positive correlation between the ability to translate from English into Japanese and the performance on virtually any Japanese test.

I.e., someone who's a whiz at translation will probably do better than someone who "just can't do it because it's too hard".