Mine came in the mail today, thankfully (get to save my ink, though I had already printed the directions and test information).

I'm going to be at the Atlanta site. The consulate is nearby, so I might see what information I can gather from there before I head back home. I can't tell from their website if that's a place that has any kind of information available on location or if its somewhere I'd need to contact in advance to get anything...

Well my admission voucher showed up today and reminded me that I signed up for this.
I havn`t studied since mid-october.

I am so screwed.

(2015-11-22, 4:35 pm)jakep Wrote: Well my admission voucher showed up today and reminded me that I signed up for this.
I havn`t studied since mid-october.

I am so screwed.

We'll get through this together. By playing Dota.

Anyone else taking the JLPT at Rikkyo University in Saitama? The orientation of the directions they give in the ticket is upside down-- ie North is on the bottom. Just a heads up!

Washington DC here. Gotta drive 5 hours to get there, too. But Georgetown is always a really good host, in spite of any complaining I may do. The seats are comfortable, and the room is warm. (More than I can say about the time I took the JLPT in Nagoya. That was unpleasant.)

I had to get a different hotel this time, because my usual one is undergoing renovations. Boo. But the new one is right next to it, so no biggie. And triple points. Yay.

ご健闘を祈る！

(2015-11-22, 6:01 pm)TheVinster Wrote:

(2015-11-22, 4:35 pm)jakep Wrote: Well my admission voucher showed up today and reminded me that I signed up for this.
I havn`t studied since mid-october.

I am so screwed.

We'll get through this together. By playing Dota.

Jake is betraying Dota and the JLPT by something he called "school". Can you believe that?

Anyone else taking the JLPT in Seoul?

(2015-11-24, 6:13 am)ikore Wrote:

(2015-11-22, 6:01 pm)TheVinster Wrote:

(2015-11-22, 4:35 pm)jakep Wrote: Well my admission voucher showed up today and reminded me that I signed up for this.
I havn`t studied since mid-october.

I am so screwed.

We'll get through this together. By playing Dota.

Jake is betraying Dota and the JLPT by something he called "school". Can you believe that?

Anyone else taking the JLPT in Seoul?

I actually did play a few games of dota with him after that post though.

Can't tell if I am feeling good about N2 or if I am using it as a cover-up for overwhelming dread

(2015-11-24, 4:11 pm)angelneko Wrote: Can't tell if I am feeling good about N2 or if I am using it as a cover-up for overwhelming dread

You are feeling good. Save the dread for just before the exam and the moments before you get your results.

Based on no JLPT but about 100 or so university courses.

(2015-11-23, 3:33 am)datrukup Wrote: Anyone else taking the JLPT at Rikkyo University in Saitama? The orientation of the directions they give in the ticket is upside down-- ie North is on the bottom. Just a heads up!

This sounds like the standard way of printing maps in Japan. North has no meaning, they try to orient the map so that if you need to go left on the map, you go left. It's confusing at first but you get used to it since all the guide maps in parks, cities, etc. seem to be the same.


Anyone else taking the N2 somewhere in Shinagawa-ku? Took the J-CAT again last night and scored just over 200, so ぎりぎり...

Anyone got any recommended Japanese podcasts or net talk radio? I listened to an episode of Session 22 yesterday on the way to school and it went decently enough I suppose. I usually don't listen to podcasts or talk radio even in English, and especially while driving, so I wasn't used to following along while trying to drive. But I was able to follow along with the conversation for the most part.

I would like to try listening to listen to a half hour to an hour (at the least) of conversation style podcasts or net radio until the 6th because I need to seriously get used to listening to Japanese again. That and my grammar are going to be my weakest parts, I think... so I plan on working through my grammar exercise book as well.

Besides that, I've been going through a few hundred vocab a day for the past few days just to refresh myself on words and Kanji I haven't seen in a while. My deck is around 1750 words, so I should be able to cycle through them all once or twice before the test.

I really wish I would've started a few weeks sooner on all of this... But I finally got a week free from school thanks to Thanskgiving now though, so better than nothing I guess.

Edit: I've rediscovered the wonders of iTunes Podcasts. I'm going to give a few of these a try.

Does anyone know the breakdown of first part of the exam? Like how many of each type of question (grammar, kanji, etc)? 
Also how many 長文? 

I have looked at past exams from 2000 - 2005 and there were 3 長文 with 3 questions each. Sound right? Just wanna make sure i am prepping realistically 

(2015-11-26, 10:09 am)angelneko Wrote: I have looked at past exams from 2000 - 2005 and there were 3 長文 with 3 questions each. Sound right? Just wanna make sure i am prepping realistically 

Sounds about right for what I remember of my N1 in 2014. I don't think it should be be much different from what you're expecting there. 頑張ってください♪(^O^)

After finishing the other 2 Drill & Drill books, and the listening section of the 3rd (just started the reading portion), I'm pretty confident I'm failing N1 for the 3rd time. I've never felt so pissed off at myself.

(2015-11-26, 10:09 am)angelneko Wrote: Does anyone know the breakdown of first part of the exam? Like how many of each type of question (grammar, kanji, etc)? 
Also how many 長文? 

I have looked at past exams from 2000 - 2005 and there were 3 長文 with 3 questions each. Sound right? Just wanna make sure i am prepping realistically 

Here's what was in my practice exams for N1:
Kanji & Vocabulary:
#1 Kanji Reading: 6
#2 Contextually-Defined Expressions: 7
#3 Paraphrases: 6
#4 Usage: 6

Grammar:
#5 Sentence Grammar 1 (Selecting Grammar Form): 10
#6 Sentence Grammar 2 (Sentence Composition): 5
#7 Text Grammar: 5

Reading Comprehension:
#8 Short Passages (200 characters): 4
#9 Mid-size Passages (500 characters): 9
#10 Long Passages (1000 characters): 4
#11 Integrated Comprehension: 3
#12 Thematic Comprehension (1000 characters): 4
#13 Information Retrieval (700 characters): 2

Going to do my last mock exam later today (as in, 'today' proper, instead of at three in the morning... don't know why I woke up this early). I've only been saying I'm going to do it for two weeks or so, after all... Really hoping I do well at the reading section this time; that's my worst section, surprisingly, considering almost all of my Japanese exposure is reading.
With only a bit more than a week left, I'm starting to get really nervous, especially with finals being the week after... And now I get to do a fun project involving a detailed diagram of the Ringworld, among other things (which should actually be fun, but it'd be nice if I weren't trying to do that on top of everything else).

I've seen so much variation in difficulty (for me anyway) in mock tests among publishers, that I'm not too worked up about how I do on any one particular test. I've passed two easily, and just barely flunked two. Were the easy ones TOO easy? Were the hard ones TOO hard? No idea.

But I do have some good ideas on what to keep working on.

Now if I can only find the motivation to work on them. So tired after Thanksgiving prep, and the post-Thanksgiving hangover, that I don't want to do anything right now.

(2015-11-27, 3:48 pm)rich_f Wrote: I've seen so much variation in difficulty (for me anyway) in mock tests among publishers, that I'm not too worked up about how I do on any one particular test. I've passed two easily, and just barely flunked two. Were the easy ones TOO easy? Were the hard ones TOO hard? No idea.

But I do have some good ideas on what to keep working on.

Now if I can only find the motivation to work on them. So tired after Thanksgiving prep, and the post-Thanksgiving hangover, that I don't want to do anything right now.

This is my fear... that false sense of confidence I get from certain mock exams.

I have used the スピードマスター series since N3 and their review questions are a joke.

I have heard Kanzen Master is a pretty accurate representation of actual test difficulty. I quite like the series But any way... 1 week left guys, final stretch, let's go!

I've been using the ゼッタイ合格！ books. Compared to the sample exams in my learning oriented books (like the まとめの問題 sections in 'Try!'), the tests in these are difficult (enough that I still haven't finished an N1 mock exam within the time limit). I'm hoping that it's actually more difficult than the actual test, at this point...
It's been a while since the last one though, so I'll say if I still think that in a little while... Just need to take it first...

Ah yeah, the ゼッタイ合格 book is pretty tricky. So is the UNICOM one (it's hot pink IIRC.) Meanwhile, the one by 3-A (it was #3 out of 4) and the one by ASK publishing (vol. 2 of 2) were easier from my POV.

I feel like while 完全マスター is pretty good, there are other, better books out there in terms of explaining stuff in a way I get more easily. I really like the books by J--リサーチ (publisher), especially their N1 grammar review and their vocab building books. Their N1 grammar book spends the first half just reviewing everything from N4-N2, which isn't a lot of the test, but often shows up in the grammar section as "Those Grammar Points I Totally Whose Meaning I Totally Forgot, Because They Aren't In Kanzen Master N1 Grammar." :\

Also, 3-A has a good N1 reading book that's been really helpful this week. It hits the highlights of reading comp, and then buries you in practice problems. The explanations are simple and don't overburden me with a lot of useless info.

The problem I run into is that when I hit the long reading passages, I'm not particularly tight on time, but I FEEL like I'm tight on time, so I tend to rush through them and skim too way much, leading to rushing through the questions and picking stupid answers on my part.

So I think I'm going to go back to my old stand-by of flipping the test-- doing the long essays first, then the short essays, then the long grammar, then the short grammar. Basically, get the really thorny stuff out of the way, so I don't have to worry about how much time I have left.

I'm doing another mock test on Monday, I'll see how it goes. Crap, which one should I do? If I do an easy one, I'll get overconfident. If I do a hard one, I'll get too down on myself. Oh god, I hate this test. XD

Took the last mock exam I have (for 言語知識 and 読解 anyway)... Not looking too good:
言語知識:
33/61
読解：
16/63 (*13/63 if I hadn't done some last minute random answers, which I will do on the actual test, if I don't have time to answer them all)

I was looking over my last score too, and found that I somehow added ten points on the 言語知識 part, so this is actually better than my last score (only by four points though)... Even with a gracious 41/64 for the listening section (which is five points higher than my last recorded score), I'm still missing fifteen points to pass, by my book's standards (105/188 total). I might take the listening part tomorrow, to see if it'll save me.

This week, I'll retake the first two from that book. Hopefully it's been long enough that I won't remember the reading parts. Not that I think it'll do me any good in terms of knowledge, but it might give me that extra bit of familiarity with the reading part that I can at least pass it.

What's killing me is that I'm so close to 'passing'! Five or six correct answers in the right places would be enough, and considering the number of questions on the test, that should be nothing!

(2015-11-28, 2:36 am)rich_f Wrote: So I think I'm going to go back to my old stand-by of flipping the test-- doing the long essays first, then the short essays, then the long grammar, then the short grammar. Basically, get the really thorny stuff out of the way, so I don't have to worry about how much time I have left.

Yeah, I always liked to do that back when I was doing the old JLPT2. My feeling was that the long essays were worth a lot of points, and if you did get into time trouble it was better for that to be 90% of the way through the short grammar questions (just guess the last 10%) than 90% of the way through a long essay (where a lot more points are riding on fewer guesses, so the law of averages doesn't help so much).

So I just took the mock JLPT N2 exam that I have (the official one). I was able to blaze through the 言語知識 questions in about 13 minutes and I got 41/54 of the answers right (up slightly). Apart from the 用法 questions, the 言語知識 questions were never really a big issue for me so I'm not too surprised by that one. The 読解 part took me another 30 minutes and I got 15/21 of the answers right on that section (down slightly).

I know the official mock N2 exam is supposed to be easier than the real thing, and I did it before back in April (but I've forgotten most of it I think), so I'm expecting the times to go up and scores to go down a bit. My scores didn't really change all that much at all since the last time I took it in April, though, which is a little disappointing. On the plus side, I think I probably took a lot longer to finish it the last time I took the mock exam, so I would have of time to go back and recheck everything. On the real exam, I am definitely going to take more time to read the essay prompts and questions since I tripped myself once or twice on prompts I had difficulty understanding entirely.

Another plus is, I feel like my work with the 新完全マスター series books (grammar and reading comprehension in particular) helped me A LOT. I remember taking educated guesses a lot the last time I took the mock exam, but this time I was able to pick out more things that I felt like I definitely knew.

I think I have another mock exam in one of my books so I'm going to go through that. I don't think I've done it before so it should all be fresh material (hopefully).

Edit: I just took the second practice exam I had. I got 37/54 on 言語知識 part and 17/21 on the 読解 part. I think this practice exam was a lot harder than the official practice exam I took this morning. I still got a pretty similar score overall though, so I can't complain. It took me about 12 minutes to get through the first 50 questions (so, everything before the 文章の文法 "fill in the grammar in the writing passage" section at the end of 言語知識), and then roughly another 40 minutes to finish the last 15 questions filled with mostly reading prompts.

I need to go through the listening parts of these practice exams but I don't feel like going through the hassle right now.

So I took a mock N1 test this weekend, and here are my results:

Language Knowledge：31/60

Reading Comprehension: 24/60

Listening Comprehension: 40/60

Meaning I got a 95/180, missing the pass mark by 5 points.  This is actually a lot better than I was expecting to do.  I've still been reviewing N2 material, planning on going for N1 in earnest in summer.  But now it seems like I actually have a small chance of passing.

Anyone have any tips on how I could squeeze out 5 more points in the next week?  (Study strategies, etc, etc).

(2015-11-30, 1:35 am)Kuma_sensei Wrote: So I took a mock N1 test this weekend, and here are my results:

Language Knowledge：31/60

Reading Comprehension: 24/60

Listening Comprehension: 40/60

Meaning I got a 95/180, missing the pass mark by 5 points.  This is actually a lot better than I was expecting to do.  I've still been reviewing N2 material, planning on going for N1 in earnest in summer.  But now it seems like I actually have a small chance of passing.

Anyone have any tips on how I could squeeze out 5 more points in the next week?  (Study strategies, etc, etc).

I think the only area you can really improve within this time frame would be reading.

I would say go back to reading comp and see where you went wrong. Did you misread the question? Or you just didn't know key words/grammar that were essential to the text?