Am I fooling myself? I'd sorta like to register in July and take the test this year, but I'm not quite sure I'll be ready. Here's what I've done so far:

I've finished Heisig's RTKana
I'm on Chapter 20 of Japanese for Busy People
I'm on Lesson 55 of 60 of Pimsleur's Japanese II
I'm on chapter 39 of RTK1, will be done by the end of the month.

I've put all of my other studies on hold to finish RTK1. My plan has been to finish RTK1 by July 1st, then dive back into Busy People and Pimsleur. I'm going to start using Anki for JLPT4 vocab, I think. If I use 2001 K.O. to brush up on the kanji, will I be ok enough at the vocab to blunder my way through JLPT 4 this year? I study at least 3 hours per day, but usually much more.

Any advice is appreciated. I'm open to anything although honestly I'll not be changing textbooks, as I have enough money invested in the Busy People series. Thanks in advance for the words of advice!

JLPT 4 should be very attainable with what you've done and the months ahead. I would even try for three.

Looks like your listening and grammar skills might be the weakest (just from reading what you've done), so brush up on those.

Have you seen this site? http://www.jlptstudy.com
It looks very helpful for preparing for JLPT. Check over the materials and see how confident you feel about it. If its easy for you, maybe check into level 3 instead. If its hard for you on the other hand, at least you know what to work on.

You might like to try doing a past paper to see how far below the pass mark you are. For example, I found this for 2006's JLPT 4: http://jlpt.info/jlpt/jlptexamine.do?year=2006&level=4
[from a quick listen the audio from the listening part doesn't seem to match the questions, though :-(]

If you do try past papers, make sure you adhere to the time limits! I dunno about 4, but JLPT 2 certainly is tricky to do in the time limit, so part of the preparation is getting used to how fast you have to answer questions to get them all done in the time allowed.

Honestly I think that grammar will be ok, assuming I can get the work done in busy people. I don't see a problem there, as I have all of the materials and there's a list of exactly what chapters correspond to the JLPT material. I think my struggles might be the listening and the actual vocab, since I've not yet begun to learn compounds. When I saw the vocab list with the kanji mixed in with the words I kinda freaked out. Hopefully once I get done with RTK1 I'll have time to sit down and learn that vocab the proper way. i'm sure I know all or most of the words in kana already.

*edit: Typoes ~_~*

Uhm, about the gramar thing I believe it is nice studying it _after_ you understand it by the sentences or some other way. At least I feel opressed by "new" grammar and "liberated" by old grammar (grammar that I first saw trought pimsleur more specificaly).

pm215 Wrote:You might like to try doing a past paper to see how far below the pass mark you are. For example, I found this for 2006's JLPT 4: http://jlpt.info/jlpt/jlptexamine.do?year=2006&level=4
[from a quick listen the audio from the listening part doesn't seem to match the questions, though :-(]

The audio on 4kyuu page starts partway through question #7 for the 3kyuu test. 3kyuu page is the same audio. (First 7 questions missing)

Are the answers on that page somewhere? I didn't notice them if they were.

I just noticed you can type other years and get more tests. But no audio for 2007.

You should be fine; with what you've done so far, and a 3-hour a day study regiment, by December you won't even break a sweat on level 4.
Doing all of RTK for level 4 is, of course, overkill, but powering through it like you're doing works well for a lot of people.
Here's a good way to study the vocab & compounds a bit while still focusing on RTK. Look at the vocab list on <www.jlptsudy.com>. If you're using flashcards (or an SRS) then for each word, of course, you need to know three things: 1) the meaning 2) the pronunciation / kana 3) the kanji. To learn new words, just study 1 & 2. Don't worry about #3 at all yet. Just study いく　<-> go, ねこ <-> cat, etc. Both directions, E-J and J-E.
Then, every so often, look through the words that you know well. Check their kanji. If a word is written entirely with kanji you know well from RTK, you can add the kanji to your flashcard pile (ie 行く -> いく・go, 猫 -> ねこ・cat).
This way is really efficient when combined with RTK.

Just bear in mind that at this point, the time spent with RTK is something that's going to pay off down the road, not so much for the level 4. You should have plenty of time to do both RTK and the level 4 study, but sometimes people hit a [temporary] wall in RTK. If you haven't finished by your July 1st deadline, then I would say, don't worry about it, and turn to your other Jgo study. You can still work on RTK, but think of it as something you're doing in your spare time as a break from your main study.

I'm taking 4kyuu in Arkansas if anybody is going to be I sure would like to meet some of you guys I'm on frame 700 and wouldn't be able to pass 4 if it were not for the constant encouragement I get from this forum its truly a joy to be apart of this comunity.