Just took the N1...didn't go all that well. I only passed the N2 in July and barely had the time to study since then. I've only finished studying all the grammar points of N1 but they're not that solid in my mind yet. I was surprised by how much harder the reading part was. I could barely finish reading all of it but I'm not sure about the last long text as I had to rush it.

I'm probably going to retake it next year in December, and give myself a break from the constant JLPT focused studying.

N1 was hard. Seemed harder overall than the practice test I took. I crammed all the N1 grammar in the grammar domination anki deck, but it seemed very few of them showed up in the dedicated grammar section. I feel like I could've done alright on vocab and grammar, though.

Reading, was tough. Didn't finish, had to just guess for the last 4 or so.

Listening was also tougher than my practice test. I was really hoping to do well here. So, I guess we'll see.

I'm just going to proceed pretty confident that I didn't pass. Oh well, here's to next summer!

Good luck and safe travels to everyone who is taking N2 and N1 today! I couldn't get any sleep last night and now I've got to hit the road to get down to DC within an hour or two.

Time to put some more たまむすび on my iPod so I can practice my listening on the way down.

Good luck everyone, though most of you are probably in the test or done by now. I leave for my one hour drive to Cal State LA in an hour. Anyone else throw any last minute kanji or vocab into anki this morning?

みんなお疲れ様～

I feel like the 言語知識・読解 section was a LOT easier than I was expecting. There were a few things that tripped me up, but I feel pretty confident overall that I got a pretty decent score. I finished it in just over 60 minutes, so I spent at least a half hour checking and then double checking everything. Listening, on the other hand... I probably should've asked the proctor to turn up the volume, but it sounded ok during the preview. It became more difficult to focus with the sound of rustling papers and small sounds from other people.

I'm expecting a low score on the listening since I feel like I guessed on half of them. All I need is above 19 points and then I feel pretty confident that I will have passed N2.

How did it go for everyone else?

お疲れ様！
Hope everyone had a good test experience.
Personally I got my butt kicked but hey.


I lived off my Kanzen Master vocab book and I feel like it helped me with about 10 words on the whole exam. Not cool.

The volume was probably a little too low for N1 in DC, too. But it didn't really matter anyway, the content of listening was harder this year than last year, especially 問題4. (The 14 rapid response questions.) Those were freaking hard for me this year, and usually they're brain-dead easy. 問題1 and 2 seemed okay, but 問題3 started to go south about mid-way for me, then 4 was a mess, and 5 was a further mess.

I don't think I passed. If I did, it's like 101/180. Vocab/grammar didn't seem too terrible, except for 20-24. I have no idea what those words were. The ★ questions weren't terrible, but felt trickier than usual, too. Oddly enough, 25-36 (the usual kind of grammar in my mind) seemed really easy to me, so did the grammar 41-45 (fill in the blank for the essay.) Reading-wise, that stupid mountain question pissed me off. I understood the passage pretty well, but the questions.... ugh. There were a few like that in the reading section. It felt harder than pretty much anything I did prep-wise.

I'd say the Mock Exam I took that was closest to this was the UNICOM one. That was a butt-kicker, and this felt about the same as that.

Memo to prep book publishers: your stuff isn't hard enough. Make it harder.

Totally failed for the 3rd time. Not sure where to go from here. Based on this I haven't progressed in several years. This has all but destroyed my motivation at the moment.

(2015-12-06, 6:49 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Totally failed for the 3rd time. Not sure where to go from here. Based on this I haven't progressed in several years. This has all but destroyed my motivation at the moment.

It's possible it's not your Japanese skills, but your endurance skills. The JLPT is part Japanese test, part endurance test, and your Japanese skills will likely be lower after you've spent hours in a hot room filling out circles, then if you were happily chatting with friends, or absorbed in reading a page turner. Getting stressed and tired definitely lowered my Japanese level during the test. If your endurance needs work, then you'll likely get tired out too soon & it won't matter what the questions are.

Are you thinking in Japanese during the test? I found that getting used to thinking in Japanese while reading it helped my comprehension speed immensely.
What do you think was your weakest section? Maybe I could give some advice or something. (I passed N1 in 2013)
Anyways, don't give up! I'm sure you'll pass it!^^

I actually didn't take the JLPT this year (I took and passed the N2 last year in Atlanta by some divine miracle), but I'm aiming to take the N1 in Japan while I'm studying abroad at 岡山大学 this coming semester.  

I just wanted to chime in and say that I didn't think I'd passed the test at first, either, so for those of you who think you might've failed... don't give up hope!  ...Yet.

Also, the listening section on the N2 was brutal last year, so I feel everyone's pain.

How many of you knew the first word in the vocabulary section.
I had never encountered that 1st word anywhere.
Kindly let me know.

(2015-12-06, 6:48 pm)rich_f Wrote: Reading-wise, that stupid mountain question pissed me off. I understood the passage pretty well, but the questions.... ugh. There were a few like that in the reading section. It felt harder than pretty much anything I did prep-wise.

I agree.
That mountain question was a very hard one.
The good thing was, I kept it for the end.
The 4th Choice, I barely had time, So I took a wild guess and marked 3 as the answer.
At the same time we were ordered to put down our pens.
The test was really hard..............

I believe I found the answers to the N2 exam. It's the same site that has some mock exams as well.
I wrote my answers on the back of my test voucher and checked on this website:
Questions 1-32 (Vocab):
http://jp.hjenglish.com/new/p758469/
Questions 33-54 (Grammar):
http://jp.hjenglish.com/new/p758470/
Questions 55-75 (Reading):
http://jp.hjenglish.com/new/p758468/
Listening Section:
http://jp.hjenglish.com/new/p758471/

I don't know which questions are worth double points but according to these answers I got:
Vocab: 15/32
Grammar: 5/21
Reading: 3/20
Listening: 12/32

I almost didn't post my scores because I am ashamed of how bad I did. It was harder than expected.
I had a lot of personal stuff happen in my life which caused me not to study and focus on other things but I am feeling really down after this exam.
Almost nothing I focused/studied on was on the exam and I was surprised at how many vocab words were on there that I didn't know.

I know now what I need to focus on, grammar and reading..

Anyway, gotta get back into gear and focus for next year! Studying starts now for N1!!!

Wow. I wish I had a way to check my answers. At the very least, I remembered how I answered the very last question on the listening section: 4 2. And I totally got that right.

I don't suppose there's actual questions are anywhere, is there...? I'd totally be able to remember what I wrote if I saw the actual questions.

(2015-12-06, 7:08 pm)Bokusenou Wrote:

(2015-12-06, 6:49 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Totally failed for the 3rd time. Not sure where to go from here. Based on this I haven't progressed in several years. This has all but destroyed my motivation at the moment.

It's possible it's not your Japanese skills, but your endurance skills. The JLPT is part Japanese test, part endurance test, and your Japanese skills will likely be lower after you've spent hours in a hot room filling out circles, then if you were happily chatting with friends, or absorbed in reading a page turner. Getting stressed and tired definitely lowered my Japanese level during the test. If your endurance needs work, then you'll likely get tired out too soon & it won't matter what the questions are.

Are you thinking in Japanese during the test? I found that getting used to thinking in Japanese while reading it helped my comprehension speed immensely.
What do you think was your weakest section? Maybe I could give some advice or something. (I passed N1 in 2013)
Anyways, don't give up! I'm sure you'll pass it!^^

I mean yes it's partially my endurance. By the time I got to the listening section I was already quite sure I failed and lost any ability to focus. Perhaps it was the guy who had his head down after he finished 50 minutes early during the first section that screwed with my head. I agree when it deos come to endurance, however, because I often can't focus when reading Japanese on the computer. I'm often clicking back and forth between tabs every few sentences. Something I need to fix.

My weakest section for sure was listening. Much as it awlays is. How many people are waiting for the question to start, then it does, and after you realize, "Oh crap, it's not reading off the options and the dialogue is already over." Because that happened to me for every single one.

I won't give up but I'm not taking JLPT again until my Japanese drastically improves in listening in particular. I can't keep up the embarassment of failing it. I don't have many things, but Japanese is my thing. Everyone that knows me is aware which makes it that much more demoralizing when the self-realization of my ability occurs. While I was sitting in the diner grabbing dinner before my train I did a lot of thinking. I've seriously hit a brick wall in my learning and I just need to take a risk and figure out a job there, or a language school until a job, etc. Hence some of my recent threads. Going to start revising my resume in Japanese and get things moving on that.

(2015-12-06, 10:09 pm)zx573 Wrote: Wow. I wish I had a way to check my answers. At the very least, I remembered how I answered the very last question on the listening section: 4 2. And I totally got that right.

I don't suppose there's actual questions are anywhere, is there...? I'd totally be able to remember what I wrote if I saw the actual questions.

I haven't found those...
Earliest I could find was 2008.

If someone finds it I would love to see it as well so I can review my answers.

Does anyone that took the N2 remember this one vocab word?
It was all in katakana and every other character was ン
It was something like ワンチンワンチン although that wasn't it.
I've never seen it before and it really stuck out at me but I can't remember what it was...

(2015-12-06, 10:24 pm)spleenlol Wrote: I haven't found those...
Earliest I could find was 2008.

If someone finds it I would love to see it as well so I can review my answers.

Does anyone that took the N2 remember this one vocab word?
It was all in katakana and every other character was ン
It was something like ワンチンワンチン although that wasn't it.
I've never seen it before and it really stuck out at me but I can't remember what it was...

Disappointed.

You're talking about from the reading section, right? I think I know what word you're talking about but I skipped over it after reading the footnote since it wasn't an important word. :\
Do you remember what context it was in again (or the English meaning)?

The words only new words I remember are: たくましい and かつて (I feel embarrassed by that one since I've seen it a million times but never memorized it).

(2015-12-06, 6:49 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Totally failed for the 3rd time. Not sure where to go from here. Based on this I haven't progressed in several years. This has all but destroyed my motivation at the moment.

I wonder why


Not like I did any better though. Not used to going to a real-not-community-college and I did not really spent much time studying.

The first half of the N1 seemed pretty easy, compared to my mock exams (except the star questions; they seemed harder than what I'm used to; they also tried to trick me by changing the location of the star...); I even managed to get through all but four questions (the last long reading passage) of the 読解 portion, though I basically guessed on a lot of them, especially the comparison one (which I was doing in the last ten minutes); the information finding question (last one) seemed more difficult to me than usual, but my back was starting to hurt by then...

Listening was... different. The media setup in our room sucked; it was integrated with the projector system, and it overheated four questions into the listening portion (it had been turned on before the test started); after the tech guy came and rebooted it, the problem then became the cheap ass speakers they had installed (or maybe they were just installed poorly; either way, highs sucked and there was some kind of line interference, probably internal). It was plenty loud, but it wasn't very clear; there wasn't any static on the line, but it was fuzzy; for the first few questions, this wasn't a big deal, but then they started telling all the voice actors to slur like drunks (exaggeration) or something and then added that artificial fuzz for the radio and tv announcers... Made that last question killer (doesn't help that I suck at names to begin with; even if I'd heard it properly, I'd still have had a lot of trouble remembering who was who by the time the question came). The quick response questions (問題４), I went mostly by the tone of the question and the content and tones of the answers.

Don't know if I passed or failed; it seemed easier than normal, but the desks (I'll complain about these in a bit, don't worry ) and sound system did a lot of damage to my performance.

All in all, it was everything surrounding the test that was horrible, the test was comparatively easy, I think (won't know until the results come out).
First off, driving to Atlanta. Traffic was relatively light (what with it being a Saturday instead of a weekday), but it took about five hours to get there... and that was with someone else driving and me navigating (so no missed turns).

Hotel was supposed to be non-smoking; some leprechaun smoked in the room they put us in (probably the guest before us; within a couple of days at least); employees decided that the best course of action would be to spray tons of aerosol scents in there and hope we didn't notice (or care). Had a headache ten minutes after getting there... probably more from the aerosol spray than the tobacco stench. In the end, it stunk of both tobacco and air 'freshener' ('fresh' would be if the damn windows would open... makes you wonder which direction they were worried about people going when they designed it)

People are too loud. Interestingly, most of the people taking the N1 were fairly quiet (except one guy who... apparently hasn't taken a standardized test before... or who's nerves manifest by being unable to follow basic directions). Everyone that was taking the other tests were significantly louder (of course, just by the difference in number, this would be true, but I think it was true for the averages too).

The desks were horrible! Surprisingly, the chairs weren't that bad, as far as desks go; not only did the backs have a spring, they actually had some resistance to them, so you could rest your back if you leaned back, instead of ending up in the lap of the person behind you. However, the 'desk' portion (if you could even call it that) was tiny (somehow they had smaller ones, though)! Worse, it was too low, so that nice chair back went unused for all but the break period! I'm not even that tall! If I was still fat, I'd probably have had a hard time squeezing in there, it was so low...

As I mentioned, my lower back was killing me by the end of it (and I don't have back problems at all), which made the five hour trip home that much more 'pleasant'...

Oh, and thankfully they had a clock in the room, because I realized I hadn't set my watch back an hour right before the test(stupid DST, why do we even use you anymore?), and when I went to pull the adjusting pin to set it, the whole damn post came out, leaving me without a watch (probably part of the reason I got so slow at the end of the reading portion, since I was looking up every few minutes to see how much time was left).

Now that I'm done ranting, I'm looking forward to my test results. I think I might actually have a chance. I'd really rather not do this again next year, but I will if I failed...
Now, February can't come fast enough.

But first I have to get through finals week... (Hopefully) This will be the last y'all hear from me this week.

(2015-12-06, 10:24 pm)TheVinster Wrote:

(2015-12-06, 7:08 pm)Bokusenou Wrote:

(2015-12-06, 6:49 pm)TheVinster Wrote: Totally failed for the 3rd time. Not sure where to go from here. Based on this I haven't progressed in several years. This has all but destroyed my motivation at the moment.

It's possible it's not your Japanese skills, but your endurance skills. The JLPT is part Japanese test, part endurance test, and your Japanese skills will likely be lower after you've spent hours in a hot room filling out circles, then if you were happily chatting with friends, or absorbed in reading a page turner. Getting stressed and tired definitely lowered my Japanese level during the test. If your endurance needs work, then you'll likely get tired out too soon & it won't matter what the questions are.

Are you thinking in Japanese during the test? I found that getting used to thinking in Japanese while reading it helped my comprehension speed immensely.
What do you think was your weakest section? Maybe I could give some advice or something. (I passed N1 in 2013)
Anyways, don't give up! I'm sure you'll pass it!^^

I mean yes it's partially my endurance. By the time I got to the listening section I was already quite sure I failed and lost any ability to focus. Perhaps it was the guy who had his head down after he finished 50 minutes early during the first section that screwed with my head. I agree when it deos come to endurance, however, because I often can't focus when reading Japanese on the computer. I'm often clicking back and forth between tabs every few sentences. Something I need to fix.

My weakest section for sure was listening. Much as it awlays is. How many people are waiting for the question to start, then it does, and after you realize, "Oh crap, it's not reading off the options and the dialogue is already over." Because that happened to me for every single one.

I won't give up but I'm not taking JLPT again until my Japanese drastically improves in listening in particular. I can't keep up the embarassment of failing it. I don't have many things, but Japanese is my thing. Everyone that knows me is aware which makes it that much more demoralizing when the self-realization of my ability occurs. While I was sitting in the diner grabbing dinner before my train I did a lot of thinking. I've seriously hit a brick wall in my learning and I just need to take a risk and figure out a job there, or a language school until a job, etc. Hence some of my recent threads. Going to start revising my resume in Japanese and get things moving on that.

For listening, there's a few things I did.

If you're having trouble processing the information, find some Japanese talk radio channels on tunein.com. If you're listening when Japanese radio is likely to be offline due to timezone differences, jump into the middle of podcast episodes. If possible, try to find something with more than one person talking. Treat what you hear as a detective game. Find out: What are the people talking about? What does Person A think about the topic? What about Person B? Do they agree or disagree? Why?

And similar questions. If you figure this out in a short amount of time, even better.

If you're having trouble keeping up with the words being said , find someone who speaks really fast (I used this guy. His "TJM" videos are made up of short summaries of news stories, although he doesn't do them as often as he used to.), watch a few videos of them, then rip the audio to MP3 and play it in the background while doing other things. If "really fast" becomes the default speed for you, then everything else, including JLPT listening tracks, start to seem slow.

Last, don't worry about "understanding" what you hear. It's the difference between straining to understand someone far off, and hearing them normally. We're often "straining" when hearing a foreign language, but that won't cut it on N1, it takes more time then just hearing, and you'll be too slow. Sometimes when you strain you hear even less than normal, and sometimes the best way to listen is just letting the sounds wash over you. The way to switch from straining to hearing is to play as much Japanese stuff in the background as possible. If you leave a room with Japanese audio playing and then come back, ask yourself the detective game questions as soon as you get in the room. Don't worry if you don't understand something. Let the sound wash over you and work with the words you understand now to figure out the questions' answers. Oftentimes the "Oh, crap! The question's over." feeling is because you were straining to hear, and that takes a little longer than just hearing whatever sounds come your way.

For endurance, make your practice tests as realistic as possible. No extra breaks, sit in your most uncomfortable chair, at your tiniest, most desk-like table, with a water bottle and watch near, etc. A real classroom is even better if you can manage it. Do not focus on anything else. Other people can be the most distracting thing, but sometimes they finish quickly because they've given up passing this time & you'll see them there again next year. You never know, and the only person you are competing with is yourself. Practice shutting out distractions while taking practice tests.

Anyway, I know what you're going through all too well, since I used to be not all that great at listening. What works for one person may not work for everyone, but good luck & hopefully some of that helps a little! I'll be rooting for you!

Yesterday's N2 questions and answers seem to be up at:

http://jp.hjenglish.com/riyucihui/p758518/
http://jp.hjenglish.com/riyuyufa/p758531/
http://jp.hjenglish.com/nenglikaon2/p437000/

Edit: It seems first part is complete. Based on that it seems I passed the vocab part at least, but it was the easiest section...

@kanttuvei
Thanks a lot man. I can't remember what I wrote for 3 of the questions in the vocabulary usage section (where they don't give any Japanese in the answer), but for vocab anyway, I got at least 26/32 right. That's not including the 3 I don't remember, so I got a max of 29/32 on the vocab.

It's hard to grade my reading section, but I think I got a passable score. One of the questions I can't remember what I answered, and it was hard to grade that section because half of the answers are just Chinese explanations. Reading the Kanji was enough to jog my memory, though.

Vocabulary: 27/32 (84.38%)
Grammar: 19/22 (86.36%)
Reading: 15?/21 (71.43%)
Listening: 19?/32 (59.38%)

I think a 19/32 should be passing for the listening section... It's just under 60% right, which should at least net me more than 19 points I would hope. I definitely want to work on my listening next year even though I don't know if I care about taking the N1 yet. Might take it just to try it out.


Here's the correct link to the listening section: http://jp.hjenglish.com/new/p758606/
Here's also the page where they gather all of the N2-related information including answers and explanations (in Chinese, though): http://jp.hjenglish.com/new/p737600/

Edit: I went through the last section on vocab again and I'm pretty sure I know what I missed now. So I think I got a 27 (or 26) on that section. Still pretty good! I grinded a few hundred Anki cards within the 2 hours I had to study before the test while I was waiting.

[s0apgun]

@Vinster you should definitely come to Japan. I didn't know my listening sucked until I came here and it has improved dramatically. In the end, the JLPT isn't as important as you think. Lots of foreigners living here function with an intermediate level of japanese with no problem and many companys dont know what the JLPT is... they just care that your resume says business level japanese

Thanks for the full link. Should be at least >= 50% from the reading section (9 answers difficult to check because of Chinese-only, so not counting them). So before the final verdict end of next month, I guesstimate 85-100(max) points. Almost pass or almost fail, doesn't really help

(2015-12-07, 6:51 am)kanttuvei Wrote: Thanks for the full link. Should be at least >= 50% from the reading section (9 answers difficult to check because of Chinese-only, so not counting them). So before the final verdict end of next month, I guesstimate 85-100(max) points. Almost pass or almost fail, doesn't really help

Which questions couldn't you check?