The scales I refer to are:

1. IELTS (the international standardised test of English language proficiency), a scale of 1 to 9.

2. TOEFL iBT, a scale of 0 to 120.

3. ACTFL scale (used by the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages),

4. ILR or FSI scale (developed by the Interagency Language Roundtable)

5. CEFR(The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages)


What do you think the equivalents of JLPT 1-4 are in these scales?

My estimation:

JLPT 1 = IETLS 6 = TOEFL iBT 80 = ACTFL Advanced Plus = ILR 2+ = CEFR B2

JLPT 2 = IETLS 4-5 = TOEFL iBT 60 = ACTFL Intermediate - High = ILR 2- = CEFR B1

JLPT 3 = IETLS 3 = TOEFL iBT 40 = ACTFL Intermediate - Low = ILR 1 = CEFR A2

JLPT 4 = IETLS 1-2 = TOEFL iBT 20 = ACTFL Novice - High = ILR 0+ = CEFR A1

Since I have no familiarity with any of those other scales, I'm not going to make up some numbers.

Perhaps a more useful scale is to compare it to other Japanese tests.

Easy > Hard
JLPT > JTEST > JBIZ > Nihongo Kentei > Kanji Kentei
(assuming a top score on hardest level)

Level 1 on JLPT is still a pretty minimal skill level, especially considering a good many of the people who pass only barely squeak by the 70% mark. A near perfect mark on JLPT1 is upper intermediate at best in my opinion. Since it doesn't test production ability at all and the listening comprehension section is a joke, it could even be beginner level depending on the person. A person with high score could still realistically be completely unable to have a basic conversation, write any kanji, or understand tv/movies.

Jarvik, what is JTEST and JBIZ?
And where would you place the BJT (Business Japanese Proficiency Test) on the scale?

Jarvik7 Wrote:Level 1 on JLPT is still a pretty minimal skill level, especially considering a good many of the people who pass only barely squeak by the 70% mark. A near perfect mark on JLPT1 is upper intermediate at best in my opinion. Since it doesn't test production ability at all and the listening comprehension section is a joke, it could even be beginner level depending on the person. A person with high score could still realistically be completely unable to have a basic conversation, write any kanji, or understand tv/movies.

On the other hand, someone who hasn't passed JLPT1 might be able to understand nearly all conversation, write most all of the kanji and understand tv/movies with no trouble. My Japanese teacher is a good case- he's took the JLPT1 2 or 3 times maybe 10 years ago and didn't pass it. Does that make him bad at Japanese? Not at all- he functions at a very high level when he comes to Japan, he just didn't put in the time to study the nuance of the tests.

I have another friend who looked at the material for the JLPT1 and said...screw it, 2 is good enough. He's been living in Japan for 5+ years and has a Japanese degree. He lives in Japanese day in and day out, and when I talk to him in English it often takes him a while to get back into English mode because he's so firmly in Japanese mode all the time.

Both of these guys have no problems reading a Japanese contract or complicated Japanese material either. I don't know a lot about the JLPT1 to be honest, but it sounds like a lot of upper-level grammar that is used rather rarely, and a lot of tricky questions where every nuance of those rare structures needs to be known. That's likely why you get a lot of people squeaking by with a 70%.

To say that JLPT1 is pretty minimal seems off to me, given these two examples. That doesn't mean it's hard either- my girlfriend (who hasn't been to college) looked at the level 1 material and said she can understand it all even if she doesn't use it, but I guess she was forced to study that stuff in High School, where as people like my friend and teacher can make a choice to avoid things that have little to no use for them.

Is it me, or would the best way to gauge a person's skill in Japanese is to compare how they did on the test against what 200 Japanese 14-15 year olds did on the same test? I'm assuming that the JLPT is testing what they expect of a person entering high school, right?

Think about it: 200 Japanese school kids in the 9th grade take the JLPT Level 1. You have to score within a certain level of how they did on average on the test. Another way to look at it is you must rank within a certain percentage of their score.

Apply the same concept to the JLPT2 but compare against 200 Japanese 6th graders.

Is there any language certification that attempts something like this.

Downside: Which students do you pick? Those entering "elite" high school, vocational high school. Do you pick a nice spread of grade averages?

Nukemarine Wrote:I'm assuming that the JLPT is testing what they expect of a person entering high school, right?

Nope. You can't ask kids that have just gotten out of junior high to take the JLPT1- there is a lot of stuff on there they haven't studied. Pretty sure there is stuff on the JLPT2 they haven't studied either, as most of my kids (中学生）don't know how to use keigo properly at all. (not that they'd have problems at all passing lvl2)

The best way I've seen it stated is- JLPT1 should be easy for any adult that has graduated high school.

captal Wrote:Both of these guys have no problems reading a Japanese contract or complicated Japanese material either. I don't know a lot about the JLPT1 to be honest, but it sounds like a lot of upper-level grammar that is used rather rarely, and a lot of tricky questions where every nuance of those rare structures needs to be known. That's likely why you get a lot of people squeaking by with a 70%.

To say that JLPT1 is pretty minimal seems off to me, given these two examples. That doesn't mean it's hard either- my girlfriend (who hasn't been to college) looked at the level 1 material and said she can understand it all even if she doesn't use it, but I guess she was forced to study that stuff in High School, where as people like my friend and teacher can make a choice to avoid things that have little to no use for them.

I accept that the JLPT1 grammar is a little bit rare compared to the easier kyuu (since it's a lot of written and formal grammar while almost everything in earlier kyuu is conversational), but JLPT isn't a grammar test, it's only one part of one section. If one cannot answer the listening, reading, kanji, or vocab parts, then they don't have good skills. The questions aren't tricky (unless you consider giving two similar answers tricky, say 僧 vs 層) and don't overly focus on minute nuances.

Holding JLPT certification definitely isn't proof of ability, but being unable to get certification is proof of lacking ability, in my opinion. JLPT1 should be easy to pass even for a middle schooler, even if they don't get a full score. re:your students, you don't use language on JLPT, you just have to comprehend it. Even if you can't understand it, you have a 25% chance of getting it right from a complete guess. There is absolutely nothing rare on JLPT2, so if someone cannot pass that then they have serious gaps in knowledge.

Length in Japan is meaningless. One of my bosses has been here 20+ years, has a Japanese husband and half kid, runs her own business, and still has pretty poor Japanese (can't read kanji at all, failed 2kyuu years ago). One can get by pretty easily with a low level.

JTEST is only a bit harder than JLPT1. The scoring is point based unlike the stupid kyuu system of JLPT*. There are only two tests and depending on your score you are assigned a letter grade. To get a score of 特A (near perfect) you have to know a bit more advanced vocab and grammar and be able to write some sentences. To get a high score on Nihongo Kentei (meant for Japanese students) you have to know much much more than on either of those tests. JBIZ is the same thing as BJT, the company was recently sold. It is also only a bit harder than JLPT1, but wisely uses a point system. It focuses on polite language and oral speaking ability (role playing).

*It's stupid because someone with a 70% score gets the same certificate as someone with a 100% score, despite them having an obvious difference in ability.

captal Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:I'm assuming that the JLPT is testing what they expect of a person entering high school, right?

Nope. You can't ask kids that have just gotten out of junior high to take the JLPT1- there is a lot of stuff on there they haven't studied. Pretty sure there is stuff on the JLPT2 they haven't studied either, as most of my kids (中学生）don't know how to use keigo properly at all. (not that they'd have problems at all passing lvl2)

The best way I've seen it stated is- JLPT1 should be easy for any adult that has graduated high school.

Here's where you missing the big picture: The Japanese students taking the test are not supposed to study for it. They are the control group. Anyone that does better than the bottom xx% of the control group (the 14-15 year old Japanese kids) should be of high enough quality in Japanese.

Everyone graduating a Japanese High School would probably have no issue with a test like the JLPT, but those getting into High School might. That means you have a better distribution to point at that says: if you did better than this, you're the type of guy we're looking for.

Thing is, I like tests where it's not about how well you do on the test itself. It's about how well you do on the test compared to others. What's wrong with being compared against natives of a language on a language proficiency test?

@Nukemarine: Relative scoring is good for things such as entrance exams, where a school wants the top x% of students in that academic year, but it's useless for something like a certification exam. What if a bunch of dumb people (ex students from a really bad language school going as a group) took it one year and got the same certification as a different year when a bunch of smart people (a bunch of Japanese majors from a top school) took it? It would be a completely meaningless metric at that point, even worse than the current kyuu system. If anything there should just be 2 or so tests (1/2kyuu and 3/4 kyuu), and your certification just shows your score out of ~1000 or so instead of a rank (like TOEIC).

If you really want to compare, JLPT offers statistics on scores divided by year, testing location, etcetc.

In any case, I certainly wouldn't be satisfied with having the language ability of a 14yr old native.

captal Wrote:One of my teachers keeps saying my Japanese is better than the students at my school because they don't know how to use proper Japanese. I teach in the middle of the country, in an

お世辞

Never believe in a Japanese person's flattery. You may know some things they don't, but you likely aren't better than them overall.

ex: My (jp) girlfriend is always telling people that I am better than her at Japanese. In reality I just know more kanji than her. She of course knows more jukugo/vocabulary, grammar, can write more characters and write them better, has a better accent, expresses herself more naturally, knows more idioms, is better at polite language/keigo, etc.

Sorry, post got cut off by my bad internet

Jarvik7 Wrote:Holding JLPT certification definitely isn't proof of ability, but being unable to get certification is proof of lacking ability, in my opinion. JLPT1 should be easy to pass even for a middle schooler, even if they don't get a full score. re:your students, you don't use language on JLPT, you just have to comprehend it.

One of my teachers keeps saying my Japanese is better than the students at my school because they don't know how to use proper Japanese. I teach in the middle of the country, in an area with a pretty strong dialect though. After an English listening test last Friday, the same teacher said that some of the students didn't understand the questions, which were in Japanese. My kids aren't a good sample- I've had several teachers tell me that the kids at my school are a bit slow, and that they score quite poorly compared to most areas of Japan. It's unfortunate for the few bright kids who sit in class bored out of their minds.

I'm not sure why my teacher (who has taught Japanese for 30+ years) couldn't pass level 1 when he took it in the late 90s. Maybe it's the same reason my Junior High English teachers suck at English- they only know Junior High level English and below. He only teaches Japanese to a certain level (around 2級). Not too comparable because if my English teachers go to any English speaking country they would massively fail as they don't understand me if I speak at a native speed, and people from the midwest of America have a pretty easy to understand accent. My teacher is fully functional as an adult when he's in Japan. A few times I've been with him he hasn't been able to read a rare kanji or two, but that's about it.

Nuke- that'd be interesting, but I doubt the Japanese government wants to fund the project. Maybe we could get our hands on some Japanese high school entrance exams I wasn't saying your idea was bad, just that JLPT1 isn't meant for someone entering high school.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

captal Wrote:One of my teachers keeps saying my Japanese is better than the students at my school because they don't know how to use proper Japanese. I teach in the middle of the country, in an

お世辞

Never believe in a Japanese person's flattery. You may know some things they don't, but you likely aren't better than them overall.

I'm sure most of it is flattery, but really I think she's insulting the students more than anything. She doesn't really like teaching, or the school she is at now. Sorry, my post got cut off as you can see- now you can read everything I wrote

Also, re: Nukemarine

If you want to compare yourself with natives, take Nihongo Kentei, or try the study soft for it on DS.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Also, re: Nukemarine

If you want to compare yourself with natives, take Nihongo Kentei, or try the study soft for it on DS.

Theres nihongo kentei soft on the DS?

mezbup Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:Also, re: Nukemarine

If you want to compare yourself with natives, take Nihongo Kentei, or try the study soft for it on DS.

Theres nihongo kentei soft on the DS?

http://joshinweb.jp/game/7130/4571242830077.html

Let's not confuse the issues, which there are many, being tossed about here. Jarvik, just based on what I can see from the JLPT, it looks like they're trying to test you on a level compared to Japanese school kids anyway. JLPT 4 is the first grade, 3 is the third, 2 is the sixth and 1 is the ninth grade. I base this wild ass guess on how they introduce kanji and vocabulary.

My argument would be, if you really want to know how a person stacks up to a 9th grader, test them against 9th graders. The problems about the 200 people picked being "morons" while the next year they're "geniuses" should be reduced based on how you pick the pool.

So it's not about comparing test takers against each other. The test takers are compared against Japanese. In a way, that helps remove problems where some tests are more difficult than others since the native ability will adjust the bar naturally.

However, yes, if I really want to know how I stack up against natives, taking and passing a test designed for natives is a great milestone.

captal Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:

captal Wrote:One of my teachers keeps saying my Japanese is better than the students at my school because they don't know how to use proper Japanese. I teach in the middle of the country, in an

お世辞

Never believe in a Japanese person's flattery. You may know some things they don't, but you likely aren't better than them overall.

I'm sure most of it is flattery, but really I think she's insulting the students more than anything.

Yeah, you hear this a lot from Japanese people and what they usually mean is that you're not using slang or casual contractions or dialect. Particularly out in the country if you're speaking 標準語 they may say you sound better than the students.