Just a quick note to let people know that I decided to update my July goals. I added a part where I list how far I've gotten in my N3 practice books:

Completed chapters of N3 practice books:
新完全マスター漢字：第６回
日本語総まとめ：語彙：第１週３日目

I think I'll start feeling more confident about the exam if I start making regular progress thru each of the books. So for example, while I've done a lot of the vocab in my vocab book, it's been scattered thruout the book, taking the easy words . This month I'm going to try and finish the whole of the first week, which will give me also let me do more of the practice tests (for each day, as well as the first weekly review).

I think that before the test I'd like to finish at least a few chapters of my other remaining books (N3 grammar, listening and reading comprehension). I doubt I'll have enough time to finish, or even get mostly thru, all of them. But going thru even a few chapters of each of them will probably be really helpful in preparing me for the exam.

uaifestival Wrote:Hello folks,

we are getting close...NP3 test for me.

Oh hey, me too. Good luck

Anyway, I've been practicing my listening skills during the 3 months after my first post in this thread by playing visual novels. I have also started to watch my first anime series without English subtitles (it doesn't have one in the first place though since it's not a popular anime in the west. So I have to read first the related chapters from the manga and then watch the anime). I can only understand short sentences and some middle ones. I'm actually very happy that I've improved this much, and can't wait for the day that I can finally understand about everything. Still, I wonder if my listening skills right now is enough for the test. I passed the mock test from 日本語能力試験 模試と対策 N3 a month ago but the last few sections from suo matome's listening book were pretty hard to me.

@ariariari, how long have you've been studying? Oh and just wondering, why do you want to learn Japanese?

In total, I've been studying for about 3 years. I first started studying when I moved to Japan several years ago to do JET. The first year I didn't learn much. Many JETs have the same experience: the combination of not having access to professional teachers and having your job being to speak English kind of cancels out the benefit of actually living there. Year 2 I found a great teacher and learned a ton. At that time I probably had language knowledge at about the N4 level, but really excelled at speaking.

Then I came back to the US and had no chances or need to use Japanese, so it atrophied. Last year I went to a free conversation class for JET alumni. It was fun. Then I got an offer to give a talk a conference in Japan, and I set the goal of giving it in Japanese, which I did. That was in December.

When I came back I was on the fence about whether to continue or not. I certainly don't want to live there again. For a while I was just continuing out of habit. But then once I was able to read and discuss NHK Easy News articles with Japanese people I felt that it opened a whole new world for my relationship with the language and people. For example, on JET I was constantly barraged with people wanting to talk about language, foreign culture, self introductions, etc. NHK Easy News has kind of given me a whole new set of things to talk about. So I guess my plan now is to at least ride the wave until the N3 exam. I'll see whether to continue it after that.

thanks guys..
Today I had the last lesson with the actual teacher and we went throughmy mistakes on the mock test.
(In the third mock test I did even worse than the the second, and my time to the reading is 85 minutes, still 15 more).
She pointed me an interesting channel on youtube for the grammar, nihongonomri, here the link

I bet you already know it; I `ll take it as a starting point for the next session preparation.
Thanks aiariari for the informations.

Today I took the JPN3 test for the first time. It was at Komaba campus in Tokyo.
Time: not enough.
The first stint i was doing well then suddenly they called the time was up.
What? Any warning..say 5 minutes or 1 minute before?
I watched my answer sheet, there were 15 unmarked questions that I was already answered on the paper test...in the last part I was focused on the uncertain ones.
"put the pencil down" they said me and I did it.
The lady was going toward the back of the class and I was on the first place on the front,
I took the pencil and hurriedly I marked some answers down, but I left 6 unmarked...considering my actual level...6 are too many!
I was a bit nervous after that, and I showed to them at the end of the sting. Not a japanese custom, quite rude and unpolite.
...Luckily 30 minutes of break let me calm down.
The second section. Regular, time was up and I did not answered only to three grammar questions, I scored them totaly by chance.
Third section is my strong point so it was ok.
The curious thing about the listening section is that I never have doubt about the right answer but my score are not perfect. I hope the result will show scores by sections.
From now on I`ll be more relaxed and just enrich my vocabulary first...along with some readingof things related to my work. The reason of my listening skills is that I am working for a japanese company and almost everybody speaks japanese to me...the funny thing is they think I understand them!
...after the test I walked to the campus and I spoke with only one person, a thai woman who had the same bad experience of me about the lacking of warning about the approach to the end of the time for each session.

Great job everyone!

uaifestival Wrote:Today I took the JPN3 test for the first time. It was at Komaba campus in Tokyo.
Time: not enough.
The first stint i was doing well then suddenly they called the time was up.
What? Any warning..say 5 minutes or 1 minute before?

I feel for you. They should have given you a notice. They did that where I took the test. At the same time it points to the importance of knowing the format and the circumstances of the test. JLPT Bootcanp did a good write up about things to consider. When I tried taking the N3 last December a guy asked if we weren't meant to get out ability to speak tested, as we rounded up after the listening section!

As for the test I found it difficult, but at least easier than the last time, so I guess I have improved somewhat. This time I at least made it t through all the reading questions. At listening I began to lose concentration though. It didn't help that the room was super hot and humid. I sweated to the extent that the papers stuck to my arms when I leaned on them.... Anyways I just really hope I managed to pass this time!!!

Good job everyone

I took my exam at Malaysia. Here, they gave warning about 5 minutes earlier.

First section: I did fairly well, but I realized that I made some mistake like answering 原困 instead of 原因, and picked 少しずつ instead of どんどん for a word that has similar meaning as 次第に

Second section: I've been reading lots of VN so I don't have so much problem with this. But the paragraphs are a lot than I thought.

Third section: Lucky for me, the test is easier than the ones in sou matome's book. Though, I'm ドジっ子 so I might ended up getting more wrong answers than I thought. And I kinda lost attention to at the last section of listening test too.

I think I might pass this, but I've been hit by bad luck this week so who knows.

@ariariari: Oh wow, that sounds amazing. I think you might just make it at December

Does the registration for next jlpt open after we get the result? I want to try for N2 if I get good result for N3.

[RawToast]

@CK_Byuu: I beleive you get the result before registrations open for the next test. Pretty sure I got my winter result weeks before the summer registrations opened.

@uaifestival: I've had a similar experience and managed to pass. It sounds like you need to spend more time reading, which will help speed up your the vocab and grammar sections

CK_Byuu Wrote:First section: I did fairly well, but I realized that I made some mistake like answering 原困 instead of 原因, and picked 少しずつ instead of どんどん for a word that has similar meaning as 次第に

hey, you were right if you picked 少しずつ for 次第に lol. 次第に is like 少しづつ、だんだん、徐々に (gradually) whereas どんどん is rapid change. Anyways it sounds like you did well! Otsukare~

thanks to all the out-ers, anyway I would like to write formal complain for this lack of time warning.
It is really an irrational and silly thing and it should be left out of a well pondered test.

Yes, raw you are right. Before starting the preparation for the test I did not spend a minute in reading in Japanese, since it is a very demanding activity, and time consuming.

Thanks everyone who posted their experience on the test. It's very motivating for me!

@uaifestival, a big purpose of this thread was to try and find some good reading material for N3 prep. My teacher recommends reading NHK Easy News articles out loud. Ideally you can read them out loud to a native speaker, then hear them read it out loud, and then discuss the article.

Man oh man, this NHK Easy News article started out so easy, but making it to the end was such a struggle for me:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k1001014...21000.html

Lots o new words. I've added all the new ones to Anki already. I'm hoping to be able to read the article out loud without any furigana at my language group tomorrow night. But we'll see. It might have to wait until next Monday.

ariariari Wrote:Man oh man, this NHK Easy News article started out so easy, but making it to the end was such a struggle for me:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k1001014...21000.html

Lots o new words. I've added all the new ones to Anki already. I'm hoping to be able to read the article out loud without any furigana at my language group tomorrow night. But we'll see. It might have to wait until next Monday.

FWIW, I know this feeling. I remember tackling News Easy articles and realizing that each one contained a new treasure trove of unknown vocab.

The good news: If you keep at it, it gets better!

Good luck!!

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:

ariariari Wrote:Man oh man, this NHK Easy News article started out so easy, but making it to the end was such a struggle for me:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k1001014...21000.html

Lots o new words. I've added all the new ones to Anki already. I'm hoping to be able to read the article out loud without any furigana at my language group tomorrow night. But we'll see. It might have to wait until next Monday.

FWIW, I know this feeling. I remember tackling News Easy articles and realizing that each one contained a new treasure trove of unknown vocab.

The good news: If you keep at it, it gets better!

Good luck!!

Thanks dude. The article totally seduced me with the katakana at the beginning. Support from the forum is always helpful! Maybe I'll set the goal of reading it with furigana this week, and without furigana next week. Sometimes I forget that there aren't any rules against spending more time with a Japanese text than with an English text

Lil halfway-thru-the-month update to keep me motivated:

Compared to the end of June:
mature grammar cards: 383 (today) - 370 (end of June) = +13
mature kanji cards: 632 (today) - 608 (end of June) = +24
mature vocab cards: 4,040 (today) - 3,994 (end of June) = +46

The only surprise in the above stats for me is how much the kanji count went up. I thought that that would have leveled out by now, but it hasn't. It's also nice that I finally broke 4,000 mature vocab cards.

I'm about to have my second lesson on JOI for the month. I also finished another lesson in my vocab book. I also read a fairly-challenging NHK News article out loud at my language group.

[RawToast]

ariariari Wrote:Thanks dude. The article totally seduced me with the katakana at the beginning. Support from the forum is always helpful! Maybe I'll set the goal of reading it with furigana this week, and without furigana next week. Sometimes I forget that there aren't any rules against spending more time with a Japanese text than with an English text

My iTalki tutor suggested the following site as an alternative to NHK News after mentioning how boring the news can be:

http://language.tiu.ac.jp/materials/eng/yomi/index.html

There are more things to read here:

http://language.tiu.ac.jp/materials/eng/index.html

Quote:The only surprise in the above stats for me is how much the kanji count went up. I thought that that would have leveled out by now, but it hasn't. It's also nice that I finally broke 4,000 mature vocab cards.

Keep it up! So that's a mature vocabulary of ~2000 words? 6 months or so to go, and your somewhere between half and two thirds of the way My mature cards are slightly behind at 1830 (1696 +134) but my Kanji count jumped to 740.

Thanks dude!

Yeah, your count is totally right. Honestly, sometimes I think I'm the only one who actually likes reading the japanese news. I have some Japanese friends here, and talking with them about the new 100 man yen grapes is just fun for me.

BTW, I just applied to the Satogaeri Program. If I get it, I get an all expense paid trip to the town where I did JET for 2 years. That would be awesome for me. I got a letter of recommendation from the person who ran the conference that I spoke at in Tokyo last year. I should find out in a few weeks if I get it. It would be awesome if I got it.

As I said before took the test in December 2014 and failed by 5 points, I think I failed that time mainly due to low reading speed because of this guessed most of the answers plus my kanji,vocab,grammar was not the best.

That and I left Japan in October 2014 so my motivation to learn Japanese was decreased.
I left Japan, (after 2 years working) because I could get more money and work with no overtime. ( Japanese engineering work ethic is pretty bad)

Took it again in July this year, I think I may have passed it this time, kanji/vocab have improved, but I found the grammar and reading sections were difficult and ran out of time again.

The first time I used the sou matome books only, I found them good, especially the grammar with notes in English.
The second time I used kanzen master books, except grammar, there was no English notes so I found this book useless.

I also read all nhk web news easy articles everyday (at least twice for every article) since early 2014, but I have found that it did not help me during the test. I think that it is because of time issue during test and when I generally read using nhk web news or kanzen master I take my time to read them. Also I probably rely on rikai-chan too much.

Another big thing for me during the reading part of the test is the content of the article, If I can figure out what the article is about quickly then I can find the answers quickly, if not I know what they are asking for but cant make sense of the article ( maybe due to time and rush) so probably pick wrong answer. This happened to my during July test

If I fail again I will be generally be pissed off, but will take again in December, and somehow whether I pass or fail try to improve reading speed. Any suggestions? my current idea is after reading nhk web news easy article is to read the standard news article that is linked with the nhk news easy article . I like nhk web news easy, I (think) I improve while keeping informed of current issues.

redshoulder Wrote:As I said before took the test in December 2014 and failed by 5 points, I think I failed that time mainly due to low reading speed because of this guessed most of the answers plus my kanji,vocab,grammar was not the best.

That and I left Japan in October 2014 so my motivation to learn Japanese was decreased.
I left Japan, (after 2 years working) because I could get more money and work with no overtime. ( Japanese engineering work ethic is pretty bad)

Took it again in July this year, I think I may have passed it this time, kanji/vocab have improved, but I found the grammar and reading sections were difficult and ran out of time again.

The first time I used the sou matome books only, I found them good, especially the grammar with notes in English.
The second time I used kanzen master books, except grammar, there was no English notes so I found this book useless.

I also read all nhk web news easy articles everyday (at least twice for every article) since early 2014, but I have found that it did not help me during the test. I think that it is because of time issue during test and when I generally read using nhk web news or kanzen master I take my time to read them. Also I probably rely on rikai-chan too much.

Another big thing for me during the reading part of the test is the content of the article, If I can figure out what the article is about quickly then I can find the answers quickly, if not I know what they are asking for but cant make sense of the article ( maybe due to time and rush) so probably pick wrong answer. This happened to my during July test

If I fail again I will be generally be pissed off, but will take again in December, and somehow whether I pass or fail try to improve reading speed. Any suggestions? my current idea is after reading nhk web news easy article is to read the standard news article that is linked with the nhk news easy article . I like nhk web news easy, I (think) I improve while keeping informed of current issues.

Thanks for posting. It's humbling to see that someone who worked in Japan for a few years still finds N3 difficult.

Regarding help for the grammar part, I like taking lessons at The Japanese Online Institute. The group lessons are designed to teach a few N3 grammar points each lesson, and they always conclude with a few JLPT-style questions of each grammar point. Plus, I learn several new words each lesson, and add them to Anki. Even though I passed N4 last year, I found the grammar section to be extremely difficult. I think that the group lessons on JOI is doing a better job preparing me for that section than what I did last year. We'll see in December whether it works or not.

If you've been having trouble with the reading comprension on the exam multiple times, you might consider getting 1-1 tutoring specifically for that. Here is a list of teachers that specialize in JLPT prep on italki.

redshoulder Wrote:...try to improve reading speed. Any suggestions? my current idea is after reading nhk web news easy article is to read the standard news article that is linked with the nhk news easy article . I like nhk web news easy, I (think) I improve while keeping informed of current issues.

Three suggestions, none of them tested:
- listen to the nhk easy audio track or watch the video to get an idea about the content before reading the article.
- get an audio track which also has a word for word transcript. Read the transcript as along with the audio track.
- try reading simpler material which is easy for you to read fast.

The idea for of these suggestions is to reset the speed which you consider a normal reading speed. I've found that even when studying anki cards, I settle into a certain speed that I am comfortable with and is hard to change. But if I change the nature of the material(e.g. mixing long sentences with vocabulary cards), I can reset the speed that I read everything. I mention this because you said you spend time reading to make sure you get it correct, which I believe is good practice. But maybe an equally important exercise might be finding a way to force yourself to get comfortable reading faster.

Thanks for the suggestions they are helpful. Yes I watch the video first, from there I can guess the content of the article and I find I can read a bit faster then, just reading the article alone. I find the audio track a bit on the slow side so I find listening to them to be a bit of a drag but will consider listening to them again.

Yes I find N3 to be difficult, that or my learning progress has slowed down.
After a year of living in Japan N4 was a breeze especially the listening and grammar.
However studying after work was challenging especially after overtime till all hours.

One thing I miss about learning in Japan was the (reinforcement or recall of new information learned) that if I learned something new recently such as kanji etc I would be able to spot it and this gave me motivation to continue studying.
Such as looking for hand soap and recalling 泡 etc.

I generally don't use anki for long reading sentences because I find that after a few turns from reading the first few words you remember the rest of the sentence so you are reading from memory rather than actual reading.

redshoulder Wrote:I generally don't use anki for long reading sentences because I find that after a few turns from reading the first few words you remember the rest of the sentence so you are reading from memory rather than actual reading.

I used to worry about that. But I think knowing something about what I am reading is a good exercise provided I pay attention to every word and not just breeze past them. Of course mixing that in with fresh material. I also start the sentences with a 30 day interval, so I'm not seeing them often enough to memorize them verbatim.

Quick update: I just signed up for my 2nd trial lesson on italki. I'm adding new vocab every day, and every week I learn some new grammar points via JOI. But I really just don't feel like I'm getting enough prep for the listening and reading parts of the exam. So I decided to sign up for a lesson and write a note that that's what I'm looking for. The teacher gave a very enthusiastic reply that she can totally help me with that. We'll see how it goes! The lesson is scheduled for Thursday night.

ariariari Wrote:Quick update: I just signed up for my 2nd trial lesson on italki. I'm adding new vocab every day, and every week I learn some new grammar points via JOI. But I really just don't feel like I'm getting enough prep for the listening and reading parts of the exam. So I decided to sign up for a lesson and write a note that that's what I'm looking for. The teacher gave a very enthusiastic reply that she can totally help me with that. We'll see how it goes! The lesson is scheduled for Thursday night.

Who is your lesson with (if you don't mind sharing)?