We already have a thread on the 2014 JLPT Preparations, and some people are using it to post their scores. But I thought it would be nice to create a separate thread dedicated to just scores and reflections. For example, everyone on the earlier thread seems to have passed their tests. But if you look at the pass rate stats that the JLPT publishes you can see that most people don't pass. So it makes sense that a bunch of people here didn't pass either. I'm interested in hearing people's honest impressions on what did and did not work for them in terms of exam prep, and also their general impressions of the test.

I passed the N4.
Scores by scoring section
-Language Knowledge (vocabulary/grammar), reading: 67/120
-Listening: 32/60

Reference Information
-Vocab: A
-Grammar: B
-Reading: B

Total Score: 99/180

To be honest, the exam was wildly different than I expected and was led to believe. Basically, it was much harder. A lot of people glibly told me that N4 would be too easy for me. I think that this is because I speak well, having lived there for a while. But I did not find that to be the case at all. In particular, I found that the grammar section was incredibly difficult. I found the grammar questions to be very succinct, and designed so that you either knew it or you didn't. I didn't know most of it, which infuriated me. I'm not sure if I ever knew those points, or just forgot them. But it was what it was. Also, I basically had no practice with the sentence construction questions, which hurt me a lot.

What worked well for me was using Anki for vocabulary and RtK Lite for kanji. I'm pretty sure that I got all those questions right.

When I first took the test I was upset at how long it was and how tired I was. (I gave a presentation in Japanese the day before, and went out with the conference people drinking until late at night the day before). Tiredness was an issue the moment I woke up that morning, and as hour after hour of the test wore on it became a bigger issue.

I originally used tiredness as an excuse to explain away my poor reading and listening scores. But the truth is, I did no specific preparation for those parts. My reading practice consisted of emails and occassionally struggling thru NHK Easy News articles. Listening practice consisted of speaking with friends and conversation exchange practice. However, reading and listening on the JLPT are very different than that. Basically, I found that they constructed longer and more convluted passages and conversations than I am used to having, about topics I was not used to having, and then asked questions on them in Japanese. I wasn't prepared for that, and it showed.

So overall, I guess that I'm glad that I passed - it's certainly better than failing. But I'm not at all proud of my score. I've already changed my study methods to incorporate feedback from this test. Basically, I'm much smarter about studying grammar now. And after improving my "N3 Language Knowledge" I'm looking forward to doing some JLPT-specific listening and reading practice.

ariariari,

Do you think that doing written translation from English into Japanese would have helped with the grammar section?

john555 Wrote:ariariari,

Do you think that doing written translation from English into Japanese would have helped with the grammar section?

Probably anything would have helped lol.

More seriously, if the translation exercises related to the grammar points, and I did it on a regular basis, I think that it would have helped. I took a class 1 night a week for 6-9 months before the exam, and we burned thru Genki 2. We did weekly homework. But all the homework only covered the grammar points we covered that week.

We took bi-weekly tests, but all the tests were exclusively writing kanji vocab.

So come exam time I probably had forgotten dozens of smaller sentence patterns (e.g. 〜なら〜、〜はずです) simply because I never used them after learning them.

Repeating scores from prior thread, and adding my reflections:

Test: N2

Vocab/Grammar: 42/60
Reading: 47/60
Listening: 52/60 (Wha?)
Vocabulary: A
Grammar: B

TOTAL: 141/180

Impressions: Hard. In particular, listening felt more difficult than I expected. I was shocked by my score; I thought i flubbed that section spectacularly.

I'm a little surprised I didn't do better in grammar, but not all that depressed about it. I was thrown by a few of the four-part ordering questions.

I still found sections of the reading portion really difficult. JLPT reading texts are dense, and required pretty much every drop of my concentration. This was the first year I actually managed to complete this section with time to spare.

I originally thought I would take a break from the JLPT this year, but I've changed my mind. I want to take a run at N1 and at least see how much further I can get in a year. It'll be cool if I pass, but no big deal if I don't.

What worked:

- Drilling reading with one of my teachers all year. Every week she sent me a new N2 text 20 minutes before our lessons, and had me run through the two or three problems that she sent before our lesson started. This simulation of actual exam conditions was terrific, and realy helped me finish in time with a high score.

Also, it really helped to get a solid feel for the way that the answers to these questions are just a re-wording of the original text.

- Constant reading all year. I read several manga and novels, and read at least two op-eds and news articles every day.

- Grammar. I studied N2 grammar all year by importing the 新完全マスター deck into Anki, which was a tremendous help. I also reviewed grammar with one of my teachers, who challenged me to use the formulas I was learning to express myself.

What I need to do/change for N1:

- Listening. I'm trying to push my listening up to 2 hours/day. I'm dedicating myself to finishing the entire 400+-episode run of 名探偵コナン before going to Japan in April. I'm also increasing the amount of time I watch テレビジャパン.

- Grammar. As soon as N2 started, I added the N1 cards to my grammar deck. I'm currently working on repping those to maturity. I'm going to go through the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar over the next several months and add anything I'm still weak in, or anything that doesn't exist in the 新完全マスター books and the other grammar decks I've downloaded from here, into this deck. I've always shirked at the idea of reading the DoAJG from front to back. However, now that I'm basically refining and filling in the gaps of my knowledge, it feels doable.

- Drilling JLPT questions. I drilled questions for both 読解 and 聴解, but did no drilling for 漢字, 語彙 or 文法. I probably could have elevated my score another 8-10 points if I had spent more cycles on this.

- Figure out how to retain vocab. I don't like Anki for vocab - it results in too much accumulation of cruft and eventual burnout. I want to spend most of my time listening and reading and speaking, not drilling cards. I thought of using Midori flashcards for this, but there are some drawbacks to this that I don't like. I'm currently exploring my options with Flashcards Deluxe on the iPad to see if I can create a better rhythm with that app than I can with Anki. No matter what, I will likely only add around 10 cards/day, and time box my efforts in this area so that it doesn't cut into my listening and reading time.

- Not be all that concerned about passing N1. Now that I have N2 credentials, I don't feel a burning need to pass N1, as I now have something that shows that I know Japanese to a significant level. I need to pass N1 at some point, and it will feel spectacular when I do, but I'm happy with how I'm progressing. I'm starting to engage in my other hobbies from Japanese sources (cooking, drawing, computing, etc.). I have friends (and a possible budding relationship) that I've built almost solely in Japanese. For me, that's the real payoff: that I'm at the point where I can live in and *enjoy* the language.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:What worked:

- Drilling reading with one of my teachers all year. Every week she sent me a new N2 text 20 minutes before our lessons, and had me run through the two or three problems that she sent before our lesson started. This simulation of actual exam conditions was terrific, and realy helped me finish in time with a high score.

Also, it really helped to get a solid feel for the way that the answers to these questions are just a re-wording of the original text.

Well, gems like this are pretty much why I started this thread. I had never heard of a study method like this, but it seems to obvious now that you say it. Can I ask where you take lessons?

ariariari Wrote:Well, gems like this are pretty much why I started this thread. I had never heard of a study method like this, but it seems to obvious now that you say it. Can I ask where you take lessons?

I use iTalki. The teacher with whom I set up this system was Rinko-sensei. Unfortunately, she seems to be on an extended break. Other teachers on iTalki also offer JLPT lessons, and may be willing to use the same format. At the worst, I think most teachers would be willing to work from any materials you send over yourself.

What makes Rinko-sensei great is that she will have me read the entire text, and then after every paragraph, she'll stop and ask me to explain what I just read in simple Japanese. She would then review any indicators in the paragraph that I should be on the lookout for when reading jLPT exams questions - e.g., the use of しかし、ところが、一方で, ただし etc. to signal a contrast in idea or opinion, 。。。ではないか　or 。。。ほうがいい　to signal the author's opinion, etc. Our sessions are JLPT drills, to be sure, but also great grammar review and conversational practice as well.

I passed N2:

Language knowledge: 28/60
Reading: 30/60
Listening: 49/60

Language knowledge felt particularly terrible. Big mix of educated and random guesses there.
Reading was exhausting and difficult. Reading novels doesn't necessarily translate into being able to read JLPT type stuff easily.
Listening was easy. I should have picked up a few more points I think, but I zoned out while it was waffling on. The guy in his car one was especially bad - understood literally everything said but zoned out just when he made the decision on which road to follow.
I thought it really surprising how boringly normal the listening section was. It was all fairly basic conversational stuff - there wasn't much variety - say, newscasts or anything. Given how the reading ranges over a wide variety of topics and formats, it's strange that the listening sticks to one.

I didn't do special study for JLPT. In fact, because I was procrastinating on the special study I had intended to do for it, I did less than I normally would have. I am not very good at this study thing.

I posted in the other thread but I don't mind mentioning again that I passed the N1.

Vocab/Grammar: 52 / 60
Reading: 60 / 60
Listening: 28 / 60
Total: 140 / 180

I did not race to pass the JLPT - I studied what I wanted to in order to do what I wanted to (reading manga and light novels; watching anime, dorama, and movies; playing games. Also nice to be able to read the news or blogs or whatever.) Consequently and unsurprisingly it took me two tries for N2 and two tries for N1.

If you do want to pass the JLPT in a short time, you don't want to be getting your vocabulary from light novels - the JLPT is very practical vocabulary and I'm familiar with a lot of descriptive phrases, dialect (pseudo-dialect really, for those token Kansai and Okinawan characters), medieval martial terms, buddhist and shinto religious terms (mostly when 'borrowed' for magic-using characters but also when the characters interact with those sects). In other words I spent learning time and effort on picking up huge chunks of language that are simply never going to appear in the JLPT. I don't regret that because enjoying the language is my focus and the JLPT is self-measurement and passing it is icing on the cake. If you're like me in that, don't worry - once you have enough experience with the language you'll be able to pass the JLPT too. It just may take a few years of reading great books and watching exciting anime and dramatic movies.

If, unlike me, passing the JLPT is your focus, you'll want to study from the news, essays, the non-science classes in NHK's 高校講座, and JLPT test prep books of course. Make sure to take timed, complete practice tests several times a year. Otherwise, you won't know what you need to work on until you actually take the test! (Plus, familiarity with the layout will let you score higher with the same level of language knowledge).

In general, no matter your focus, I've learned through experience - if you take a break from active daily use of the language, keep up with your SRS reviews ... decay can set in before you know it. I could have passed N1 literally years earlier if I'd just kept up reviews during months where I let decay set me back. (I make sure to review my SRS now for 10-20 minutes every day that I'm not spending an hour or more reading. That's enough to prevent any substantial language decay and make it easy to get back to my books when I have that free time again.)

If you're actively, daily using the language... don't let SRS addiction take too much time away from actual reading, writing, speaking and listening. SRS is great for building and maintaining vocabulary and kanji, but reading speed and listening comprehension only come from large blocks of reading and listening to actual material.

Congrats to those who passed and good luck to those taking the test next year!