Womacks23 Wrote:The damn keigo at the mcdonald's drive thru had me lost today. Minus 50 points on my Japanese.

The super keigo still confuses me, so I've been trying to buff up my keigo a little lately.

これが正しい敬語 http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%81%93%E3%82%...ref=sr_1_6

is a pretty good book for only 500ish yen. It's written for Japanese, but it's pretty easy to just pick up. It contains 127 phrases along with setting and explanations, so it's not "textbooky" at all.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I haven't taken 3, but I showed my 4kyuu book to one of my private students (who is a gyaru and I suspect a kyabajo - not normally known for intelligence), and she knew almost all of the 4jijukugo.

Know as in she knew what they meant? Remember that on the test you have to write in the missing kanji. (IIRC, the difficulty of the 4ji jukugo jumps a lot at level 3)

Quote:The majority of bushu are extremely obvious, and even if you guess you have a 25% chance of getting it right.

They purposely put the hard ones on the test, though. They're not going to ask you for the bushu of 語 or something like that.

Quote:Your average university educated adult is not going to have any trouble passing 3kyuu I'm sure, even if they can't get a 100% score.

I think that actually your private student would have a better chance because she's still in school studying the kind of stuff they test on the kanken. If you've been away from school for 15-20 years, I'm not sure you would know it that well.

I was showing a previous 3kyuu test to some college educated native speakers at my school, and they had some trouble with the material. I think that the average college educated native speaker could pass up to jun-2 kyuu with minimal studying, but I think going into the test cold would give some people problems. Regular level 2, though, is hard for native speakers even if they study.

All the JLPTs are easy to most grown adults in Japan. If you can read the newspaper just fine, you can absolutely pass the JLPT. This is also the reason why Japanese people are not allowed to take the JLPT (what would be the point? Everyone would pass)

nest0r Wrote:What are you doing Thora?

oops. I think I just asked a philosopher what "knowing" means. I got off easy. phew!

Womacks23 Wrote:The damn keigo at the mcdonald's drive thru had me lost today. Minus 50 points on my Japanese.

To me it was actually a lot harder when the employees decided they needed to speak to me in English... which happened more often than not.

I think personally i'll just wait until i'm ready for JLPT 1. Which will be in a full year. (Almost 6 months now have actively studying)

ocircle Wrote:All the JLPTs are easy to most grown adults in Japan. If you can read the newspaper just fine, you can absolutely pass the JLPT. This is also the reason why Japanese people are not allowed to take the JLPT (what would be the point? Everyone would pass)

I was talking about Kanken, not JLPT.