Good luck! Level 5 is my aim (for now...). Ah, to have the kanji skills of a 6th grader, lol.

I've got Kanken DS 2

I got it about 2 years or so ago, must have been just before version 3 came out.

Slacked off, and just getting hard into Japanese again now, hopefully I can start actually using it soon :p

I don't know anything about the DS consoles. Are there any options / versions of it that make a difference for using it with KanKen DS 3?

No, any kind of DS can run KanKen 3 just fine.

Wee, i passed ６級 (err in the game, not real life)... with a score of 141 lol (2 off a fail). Ok, clearly i have some work to do if ５級 is my goal.

Those 森林 上下 漢字 出題 ones are a prick. I can usually tell if it's one of the first two, but i have a seriously hard time telling the last two apart. I mean, i can see why 金額 is 漢字 because it's an amount that happens to be money, but jeez. Resisting the urge to SRS such pointless information lol.

Just got the DS and Kanken 3 yesterday. Kinda stumbling around and can pass 10級 but a question on 9級. What is the section where it asks to select イ or ア related to とめる and はねる? I thought maybe it was the stroke the character stopped on, or something like that? I thought 止める means to stop, and はねる I'm unfamiliar with but seems to mean to reject or to hit? A bit confused.

That said - the game is very addictive and more fun than Anki reps. I'm hoping I'll just pick up vocabulary along the way rather than getting readings but being hazy on meanings.

とめる is when the stroke just stops, はねる is when it has a flick at the end. I was playing for months before I got round to asking someone what they meant..!

Aha! Thanks - never would've gotten that. Back to practice 9級.

Are people who are doing this usually using an SRS like Anki? Mezbup - seems like you didn't do that until the later sections? I now can pass 10級 with about 14x's and 9級with about 13x, but I'm hopeless on 8級. I'm also concerned that a lot of 10級 and 9級 I know the readings, but haven't needed to look up or learn the meaning. In other words, I can figure out how to write 日光 and pro'ly could guess at the meaning. Yet 夕立 I could get the reading pretty fast, but never could've guessed the meaning if I didn't look it up.

Or anyone using renshuu.org or similar sites to prepare for a level?

haplology Wrote:Are people who are doing this usually using an SRS like Anki? Mezbup - seems like you didn't do that until the later sections? I now can pass 10級 with about 14x's and 9級with about 13x, but I'm hopeless on 8級. I'm also concerned that a lot of 10級 and 9級 I know the readings, but haven't needed to look up or learn the meaning. In other words, I can figure out how to write 日光 and pro'ly could guess at the meaning. Yet 夕立 I could get the reading pretty fast, but never could've guessed the meaning if I didn't look it up.

Or anyone using renshuu.org or similar sites to prepare for a level?

I've been SRSing words, just like from anything else i read, but that's all. I was contemplating SRSing the 森林, 上下 etc sections but now that i've got the hang of them, i rarely get them wrong. Same with the radicals.

I'm currently attempting to pass 5級 (can reliably pass 6級 but not with a good mark). But i don't really have any plans to take the real test, so cramming useless knowledge seems like a bit of a waste. It's just a fun game to me.

Maybe mezbup can answer this question for me.

Have you noticed an increase in the level of your overall usable Japanese from doing the Kanken studying the way you have? Like I'm currently doing KiC sentence flash cards in Anki, and even after being only up to lesson 36 I notice a dramatic improvement in my ability to read Japanese text in stuff like novels, video games, and news articles. Also doing a lot of listening to reinforce has allowed me to be able to understand quite a lot of Japanese at native speed.

So I guess a simpler version of my question is: In what areas has your Japanese improved thanks to your Kanken studies? I'll assume that your overall Japanese level has improved with your Kanken level, but I'm just interested in how it has.

I'm going to be studying with Kanken DS3 thanks to this thread laying out how to work it into the rest of a study regimen in a balanced fashion, but I want to know what I have to look forward to.

Also, what level of the Kanken does it become acceptable for a foreigner to take? Like you'd be taking level 10 with a bunch of Japanese children it seems like. Also, are all tests held at the same time or could you conceivably take 2 tests of different levels in a single day. Like say I was shaky on my level 5 stuff, but I was fairly solid with level 6. Could I take both 5 and 6 in the same day to kind of hedge my chances of passing?

I can answer your last question. Yes you can take two levels on the same day as long as you pay for the 2. It s sure for to consecutive levels like 5 and 6 but less sure if you want 5 and 7...but what would be the point...right

erlog Wrote:Also, what level of the Kanken does it become acceptable for a foreigner to take? Like you'd be taking level 10 with a bunch of Japanese children it seems like. Also, are all tests held at the same time or could you conceivably take 2 tests of different levels in a single day. Like say I was shaky on my level 5 stuff, but I was fairly solid with level 6. Could I take both 5 and 6 in the same day to kind of hedge my chances of passing?

Kanken corresponds with Japanese school grade levels. First graders start out at level 10 and high school seniors finish out school by giving level 2 a shot.

So no matter what you're going to take the test with Japanee children. At level four you start taking it with junior high kids so if you are uncomfortable with taking the test with elementary school kids I'd start there.

So, started playing this again this week after not playing in a while.

Attempted my first 4級... Wow, that's some step up from 5級. Somehow managed to scrape out 103/200 (nearly 40 points off a pass?), although it felt like i was getting most of them wrong. I swear there were a couple of sections where i didn't get a single one. I'm only barely passing 5級, so i'm not ready for 4級 yet, but wow...

Looking back on my earlier posts, apparently 5級 was my goal for this year... so w00t i guess.

Is anyone else still doing this? What's your progress?

zigmonty Wrote:Anyone still playing this game? I picked up version 1 at a Book Off in Kyoto... Meh, 3 Deluxe would have been better, but it was a impulse buy. Anyone know if the old version is enough to study for the real exam, or has it changed since? My focus is on N1, but this game is awfully addictive, and i might as well take the actual exam if i think i can pass it.

Just got my second pass on level 7, gonna try a level 6 tomorrow.

Got version 1 at Book Off too since I felt embarrassed about not being able to write anymore, but I find it to be inefficient compared to Anki and impossible to control what the program is giving me to learn/practice.

I'm learning a how to write a few compounds for each Jouyou kanji at the moment (using this method http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=8528) and the kanji count for my deck is over 600 after a week.

I'm not really aiming to pass Kanken or anything, just trying to get to a level of writing that matches my reading and speaking ability.

I am taking level 9 this Sunday. I did level 10 in the summer. It was very strange to be in the room with about 100 7 year olds. Half were looking at me because I am a foreigner, the other half because I am as old as their fathers.

I use the DS for the test practice. I use the Kanken Step books for studying. There are about 3 example sentences for each Kanji character in the book, and I put these into Anki.

I find learning the vocab and compounds from the books has been a good step for me after finishing RTK. I started studying for level 10 when I hit about 1600 Kanji in RTK.

I'm taking level 3 on sunday in Paris (France). Lately i scored between 170 and 180 on my mock exams on the kanken ds deluxe. It should be alright. Then prep for the level 2. I wont take the 準2級 since it seems not so hard to go straight to the level 2.

I thought the same thing at first, but the jump between jun-2 and 2 is actually quite large.

The differences are:
- You need 80% instead of 70% to pass
- You need to be able to write all Joyo kanji, not just up to level 4
- The 4-ji jukugo questions are harder (for jun-2 you have to write 2 of the kanji from katakana in a sentence, 2 you have to fill in 2 missing kanji with no context or readings, although there's a "bank" of 10 possibilities. Also you have to connect them with the correct meaning in the next part.)
- You need to know the high school readings and ateji

I did think it would be so different but i ll work harder ^^
Writing the kanji isn't an issue a I can write more than 2500.
But the yojijugo will be an issue...I ll need to learn more of them. For the level 4, I already started to lean them by heart with their meanings.

Thx a lot for your explaination. I know now what kanken has in store for me ^^

Anyone doing this atm? Decided I'd give it another good run as my kanji learning seems to have stalled around the N2 mark...

Currently at:
９級 134
８級 124
７級 105

Wanna get passes up to ６級 for now I guess.

I've been getting back into doing a little bit every day for the last two weeks, but I'm not in serious kanken mode at the moment. I think I'll start ramping up at the end of the year once I've reached a good plateau for my Chinese and French studies.

I hope to be having a crack this year on the DS, though I prefer　なぞっておぼえる 大人の漢字練習

I also just got back into this after passing N1 and needing something to study in my spare time.

I'm working on the DS game and just passed 4kyuu yesterday. I'm hoping to pass the 2kyuu by next year.

When I was in the bookstore yesterday I noticed they had the new STEP books out -- they've now changed things so that Level jun-2 includes all the old Joyo kanji (minus the 5 that were removed) and Level 2 adds the kanji that were recently added to the Joyo list. So now there's a bigger divide between levels jun-2 and 2 than there was before.

I'm running Kanken DS3 Deluxe here as part of my study ritual, and I'm liking it. It's not perfect. I would rather have this stuff delivered in a more SRS-friendly way, but I think it's pretty great all round. It seems like it's more than enough to get up to speed on the levels you would feel embarrassed or funny about paying to take in person. When it starts getting into ３級 territory is I think when I'll start looking into more typical ways of gaining proficiency. My goal is a pass on 4級 and ３級 with a fail on 準２級 this summer, and then maybe another fail on 準２級 in December.

Study for this kind of stuff as a foreigner is tough because there's not a lot of material to go from. The drill books are all kind of predicated on the idea that you're reviewing stuff you already learned through normal schooling. The school books are all targeted at the glacial pace the Japanese school system moves at.

So I really worry about the idea of being able to learn by studying for these tests, and that's why I'm not prioritizing this as heavily as I am my reading practice.