jonjimbo2000 Wrote:I don't know much about the test having never taken it but one of my students passed the 一級 when he was in second grade in junior high school.

His English is really good too. Guess he must be a language genius.

Jarvik7 Wrote:He must have been a robot. I find the story highly unlikely unless he is autistic or something though. He'd make national news easily if he passed 1kyuu in 2nd grade 中 and would know much more Japanese than any of his teachers. Maybe he meant 英検?

So I checked with my teachers and he did pass the 漢字検定一級 but it was in third grade of junior high (although he goes to a secondary school but its the equivalent).

His English writing is amazing too. He is far ahead of his classmates. He has passed 英検二級. He is now in fourth grade (equivalent to first grade in senior high).

[Katsuo]

Jarvik7 Wrote:@Katsuo (or anyone else):

Do you have a list of yojijukugo separated by kyuu? I can't find anything on the interwebs.

Does the KanKen body produce lists of yojijukugo by level? I haven't seen any. This spreadsheet has lists for levels 3 and 4 (many are in both), but the selection comes from prep books I have for those levels. (The examples, etc. come from other sources.)

The official kanken yojijukugo dictionary says the kyuu at the end of each definition. Still not a list though :/

[Katsuo]

Jarvik7 Wrote:The official kanken yojijukugo dictionary...

Is that a book? (can you give me more details so I can check it out, thanks)

http://www.amazon.co.jp/漢検-四字熟語辞典-日本漢字教育...4931237991

Woah, long time since I posted in this! Guess progress has been a little slow going atm.

Well my highest score so far has been about 190/200 and I seem to be consistently achieving at least 180 - 185 which is a score i'd be happy with at least. Seen close to 80% of 6級 and will be sitting the exam (confidently) on the 7th of Feb.

I'm up to something crazy like 100 hours of use and 23,000 ~ 24,000 questions later?

For the most part having to SRS some stuff for it is killing the motivation. Though it's kinda necessary...

I'm sitting at 87% and averaging 190 Just got my highest score of 192 and all going well I should get a 200 at the end of the week which I aim to have seen 100% by.

That leaves me 1 week before the test to go through the entire 6級 again and try average 200!

Well it's test day today. I've been averaging 117/120 which is pretty much 195 and bear in mind that's with no chance to look over my answers! I've seen like 95% and I'm pretty much sick of it for now. Haha.

It's 5am and the test is at 1:30pm. I haven't slept because that's just how it goes most nights tbh and I know it will affect my performance but I have a whole hour to do the test so I will triple check it. So long as I stay away the entire time I shouldn't have a problem. Lucky I love red bull.

I think my plan after today is to give a break for about a month and then resume with level 5, knock that off and then head for level 4 and probably sit that. I could go for level 3 next time around but I think it'll stress me out too much with too much going on at that time.

Interestly enough I've put in about 105 study hours (probably more like 130 incl. SRS time) to get to this point. So really it's been quite an involved process so far.

Good luck today. I've enjoyed reading this discussion, following your progress.

合格した！Results don't come out for 3 months (starting to hate that) but I know that damn test well I know that I only got 2 wrong and I know which ones they we're! So that's 118/120 (roughly 197/200) so long as I don't get marked down for bad handwriting!

Seriously guys, if you wanna pass kanken, buy KanKen DS3 and use it with Anki. I was prepared so well for that test it wasn't funny. Another guy in Kanji club was sitting 6級 with me and he says he definitely didn't pass. KanKenDS3 + Anki = a winning formula!

Mike, who's pretty much top dog at kanji club took 4級 and he's confident he passed it so in 6 months time he's going for 3級. I was in the middle of tossing up whether to go for ４級 or ３級 next time and he thought there was no way I'll pass 3級 so we bet a box of beers on it Haha. What on earth have a got myself into??? At any rate if I aim for 3, I'll get 4 for sure and heck I might even get 3! I feel like I can achieve it and I've really got to just がん・ば・る

Afterwards we went and watch a Japanese band put on a jazz concert in the domain (what timing) and it was a really fun day

Next time will be hectic.

To anyone who took the test recently, お疲れ様. Looks like your hard work really paid off.

On an unrelated note, I'm curious about the features that are new to Kanken DS 3 and would appreciate if someone here could enlighten me.

After owning the first two Kanken DS games and the original Tokoton yadda yadda yadda Kanken, I don't think I could justify buying another Kanken game, but I can't help wondering if some of the issues I had with the earlier ones were "fixed" in the latest iteration.

These are some of the problems I had with Kanken DS 1 and 2. Were any of them addressed in Kanken DS 3?:

Question repetition
The versions I have don't provide any way to systematically work through all of the questions. Questions seem to be presented at random, and once I reach a certain level of familiarity with a particular 級, I find that 90% of the questions are ones that I know backwards and forwards, 7% are ones that are still shaky for me, and maybe 3% are questions I can't remember ever seeing. I know wishing the game would act like an SRS is asking a bit much, but at that point it's really not a productive use of my time. Even the original とことん had no problem dividing questions into [not yet seen], [correctly answered], [failed]. Is Kanken 3 any better about this?

No indication of synonym/antonym questions
It doesn't take much to figure out that on the synonym/antonym sections, the first 5 questions are antonym questions and the last 5 are synonyms, but when reviewing failed questions, there's no indication of which is which, so it becomes more a matter of memorizing the questions than actually knowing the answer in a general sense.

Menu navigation
In training mode on Kanken DS 2, after completing a set of drills on a particular level, you're presented with two options - Try Again (which allows you to do the same section and level again with different questions) or Finish, which takes you all the way back to the starting menu. This seems counter-intuitive and I wish there were a Back button to let me pick a different exercise from the same level.


I know these are only nitpicks, but I think my experience with the game would be greatly improved if they were remedied. Were any of them addressed in Kanken DS 3?

I'm also curious about what this My Kanken feature is all about. That wasn't present in any of the previous versions.

はい、お疲れ様です。

The only real difference is the 問題集 is TWICE the size. lit.

My KanKen is the review section where problems you have failed and marked for review can be reviewed and done with what you like

Ur gripes with 2 remain in 3 but the real difference is in the question pool being doubled in size gives you better coverage of what's likely to be in the real test.

I know well what you mean about after awhile feeling comfortable with 90%, shaky on 7% and 3% feeling totally new. Though, it's a good format that actually works, especially if you see near 100% of the questions on each level. I think I answered 6000 problems in prep for 6級 and entered 590 items into my SRS. KanKen didn't need to be the SRS because it kinda was in a way well and truly drilling home that 90% while SRS was bringing up the rear to try knock off that pesky 7% ~ 9%.

I've got to sit 3級 in 6 months so I'm not going to use Anki for 5級 or perhaps 4級 (only on the writing and reading sections) but I will use it on 3級 (if I make it there) because the sheer repetition of the questions in the practice tests alone is enough to get you passing with a good score by the time you've seen them all. I think SRS speeds the process up a little in some ways and slows it down in others... so bit of a mixed bag for me really but KanKen DS's format is absolutely brilliant for KanKen study.

Awesome job Mezbup.

I took a month off from Kanken studies to blow through another 2,000 vocabulary (basically what would be the third volume of 2001KO) but now I'm trying to pick away at it again. Currently at about 17% of level 8. I'll be happy if I can finish it by the end of this month.

BTW you would you be willing to share your Kanken anki deck?

We need some community action to make some kanken decks! Inputting all this vocab from the 4kyuu step book was killing me, especially since half of it won't come up in the IME.

My KanKen deck in Anki is just stuff that I personally needed to learn so it won't help anyone else but I'm kinda with Jarvik on maybe doing a project to get the vocab for the levels into a nice juicy deck.

@jarvik: approx. how many vocab words are there in the 4級 step book? I have to learn all the vocab for ５級、４級 & ３級 in the next 6 months and I think I should learn all the vocab first as a matter of course. Hence, I'm pretty interested in doing something like this.

So I just went over to renshuu.org and copied all the vocab for 5級, ４級 and 3級 into notepad and imported it neatly into Anki (though now there's some effing duplicates in my deck but I'm weeding them out).

A total of 1700 vocab I need to know for all 3 levels. That's not including 四字熟語 or the 対義語、類義語 section... I just added all the vocab to my vocab deck and am going to try and power through it as quick as possible. KanKen is really a test of vocab when it comes down to the wire so I think if I study all the vocab first and get it out the way then I should blitz through the tests faster.

Renshuu.org doesn't even cover 1/4 of the required vocab for each level, to my disappointment. I went through it for 4 kyuu and I still had somewhere around 1000 new words to add just from one of my prep books (and that's not counting words I already knew).

For some math:
kk4 has 316 characters. Each character in the official step book has 5-10 example jukugo, plus the kunyomi words, and isn't a definitive list. I have no idea where renshuu got their vocab list but it's ridiculously incomplete and contains a bunch of nonsense crap that isn't on the test, like 桃色遊戯. I doubt a euphemism for sex is on a test meant for 12 year olds.

If you want to buy the 3,5kyuu step books I'll help you make a vocab list. I can't share my kk4 stuff with you since I only added what I didn't know, and I didn't tag it.

Yeah, I was afraid it wasn't a complete list. At least it's a start... I also know quite a bit of vocab from those levels already but yeah there's crap loads I don't know. I do trust in the DS to pick me up on words I don't know or aren't on that list.

I know a guy who has all the prep books that I'm sure he'd lend me. So it's a possibility. Then there's all the 四字熟語... I just checked Katsuo's spreadsheet earlier in the thread and it lists ~330 which is heaps. Man if I can pass this test in August I'm going to consider it a miracle.

Why do you have to pass 3Q by August?

A: I made a bet B: I want a challenge C: I got all the time in the world D: So I can go for 1.5級 the next time round. (2kyuu more like). E: It pushes me to learn things I wouldn't have learned otherwise

Besides... if I aim for 3級　I figure I'll get 4級 as a minimum right?

That sounds like quite a challenge!
Are you going to split the time you study 5,4, and 3級 equally? or just try to get to studying 3 ASAP?

Congrats for doing so well in 6級 too.

mezbup Wrote:A: I made a bet B: I want a challenge C: I got all the time in the world D: So I can go for 1.5級 the next time round. (2kyuu more like). E: It pushes me to learn things I wouldn't have learned otherwise

Besides... if I aim for 3級　I figure I'll get 4級 as a minimum right?

I haven't been following all the updates, but I'm curious. With your experiences so far with studying for the test, would you recommend it to other people learning Japanese? aka is it helping your "real" Japanese too?

I personally have a goal of trying to pass various levels too, but I figure I'll wait until I spend a few years at a Japanese university, then tackle it.

I'm going to study through each level to get a passing grade on it and this time what I'm doing is any vocab I learn from it is going into my vocab deck (though i'm not really liking that cos it feels like it's from a list, which it kinda is).

I think it's broadening my knowledge of kanji and Japanese in general. There are other ways to spend improving your Japanese but kanken is a great challenge that you have to learn a lot of different things for and those things can definitely bring benefits.

Also I have to learn like 300+ 四字熟語 so that'll help me learn some of those!

It's up to the individual really. For me I'm doing it to keep myself oriented towards a particular goal so I'm always really motivated and driven to learn heaps and seeing as KanKen is actually very well known in Japan, it's a worthwhile goal.

Why do you have to learn 300+ 四字熟語?

For 3,4,5 kyuu combined it's probably somewhere closer to 1000 yojijukugo.