Anyone else here take it in Chicago?

@天気がいいから、散歩しましょう -- Yes, I felt all giddy inside when I heard it, too. I'm not sure how other people felt, but:
@random music playing during the listening section -- Yes, we all cracked up. Seriously, wtf? Our proctor came out and was all like, "I'll burn this for anyone who wants it." Yeah, that's definitely a tune I'd put in my iTunes...

How I felt about N1, as my first JLPT...relatively little actual "hardcore for-the-JLPT" study:
Vocab, Grammar = I thought it went OK...decent at least. A few I didn't know, a few I wasn't sure about, but it should be passing

Listening = Not really too bad. I'm sure I fell into some of their snares, and at this point I was really zoning out, so I screwed up some of the "choose the reply to the person" questions.

Reading = WOW this was a bitch. So much reading to be done, and I'm not necessarily too good at time-management. I started to gain confidence again after the monkey question (which I thought was one of the better passages--easier to read, and kind of interesting). But, if I do fail, I'm pretty sure a big factor (if not the only reason) is because the reading section was kinda ridiculous.

I definitely think I might pass, but I definitely think I might fail. It could really go either way, I think. I may have scraped up the minimum passing grade, or I may have just missed it. I think I'm in the 50/50 territory...



Now I might consider tracking down those Chinese forums so I can actually see how I did.

""I'll burn this for anyone who wants it." Yeah, that's definitely a tune I'd put in my iTunes..."

LOL our teacher did the lawn mower dance--thing. XD
Though it did relieve a lot of tension.

[Katsuo]

Checking the Chinese New World site for N1, so far they have a complete grid for the answers, plus reading questions 1-40.

reading 1-25 questions Edit: link now broken
reading 26-40 questions Edit: link now broken
reading 1-25 answers
reading 26-45 answers
reading 46-71 answers
listening answers complete

Edit:
N1/2/3 answers link page.
N1 audio recording
N1 listening transcription
Note: I don't know how safe these sites are virus-wise.

Good grief. I know those are for N1, but even if they put up the N2 answers, I couldn't remember what I put in the bubble sheet if you came at me with a gun, a knife and a dog. Besides, there's no way to know how they're going to curve the exams.

I'm not going to play that game. I'll just go study some Japanese and wait until February.

Oh wait, I gotta get ready for KanKen in February. What am I doing worrying about JLPT? Crap, no time to lose!

seems like the questions were taken down... anyone save the gifs for reading or have the listening transcripts from N1? i can trade moji/goi/bunpou questions, haha.

rich_f Wrote:Last observation: They said to "show up by 12:30 to register," but amusingly, nobody was there to let us into the rooms until 12:40 or so, and nothing really happened until 12:50 or so. Like the paranoid person I am, I was there at 12:15, killing time and getting nervous. I hate that part. It totally throws me off of my game.

Same in Melbourne, although i don't see a problem with it. They told everyone to be there by 12 to register, they never said when registration would actually open.

rich_f Wrote:And now I must do something about my Anki deck. I have 2,100 cards that are due, and they are all full of HATE. ._.

2001 due cards in mine... Not bad considering i only stopped doing reps a week ago.

rich_f Wrote:Last observation: They said to "show up by 12:30 to register," but amusingly, nobody was there to let us into the rooms until 12:40 or so, and nothing really happened until 12:50 or so. Like the paranoid person I am, I was there at 12:15, killing time and getting nervous. I hate that part. It totally throws me off of my game.

Same in Melbourne, although i don't see a problem with it. They told everyone to be there by 12 to register, they never said when registration would actually open.

rich_f Wrote:And now I must do something about my Anki deck. I have 2,100 cards that are due, and they are all full of HATE. ._.

2001 due cards in mine... Not bad considering i only stopped doing reps a week ago.

rich_f Wrote:Good grief. I know those are for N1, but even if they put up the N2 answers, I couldn't remember what I put in the bubble sheet if you came at me with a gun, a knife and a dog. Besides, there's no way to know how they're going to curve the exams.

I'm not going to play that game. I'll just go study some Japanese and wait until February.

Oh wait, I gotta get ready for KanKen in February. What am I doing worrying about JLPT? Crap, no time to lose!

you can't remember your answers????? lucky boy....
I have a real hard time to forget my answers at a test .... "why did I answer that ? I knew it was the other answer . It doesn't make any sense . WHY GOD ? WHY? "

rich_f Wrote:Good grief. I know those are for N1, but even if they put up the N2 answers, I couldn't remember what I put in the bubble sheet if you came at me with a gun, a knife and a dog. Besides, there's no way to know how they're going to curve the exams.

I'm not going to play that game. I'll just go study some Japanese and wait until February.

Pretty much. My plan is just to forget i ever did that test and the results will arrive as a surprise whenever they turn up. I don't plan to take N1 for a while yet, sick of studying to a test. Maybe the year after next. If i failed, i'll resit the N2 next year, but with another 12 months, it shouldn't be hard anymore.

Hmm...　天気がいいから、散歩しようと思ってる
(I guess the exam will be harder to forget than i thought)

ghinzdra Wrote:you can't remember your answers????? lucky boy....
I have a real hard time to forget my answers at a test .... "why did I answer that ? I knew it was the other answer . It doesn't make any sense . WHY GOD ? WHY? "

lol, I feel exactly the same ;_ ;

Just wondering : would it be in violation of the forum rules to post questions of the test and put together a correction ?

rich_f Wrote:And to the guy who thinks he can go from nothing to N1 in a year? Easier to just set fire to your money, unless you have 16 hours a day JUST for Japanese... Good luck to you, but yikes.

I think its me you're talking about although I didn't take N1 but rather N2. Now that I probably failed I can tell you that if it wasn't for my laziness, mentally exhausting full-time job, bad priorities (I'm looking at you grammar!!) and sub-optimal learning methodology I could pass it with ease.

Nothing spectacular about it and I think anyone can do it, especially if they are still in school.

chochajin Wrote:Question to those of you who didn't take the test in Japan: What language did the examiners use when talking to you?

In my case it was a Polish woman speaking in Japanese (I'd definitely call her fluent though her accent could use some shadowing) but I think there were also Japanese supervisors.

zigmonty Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:And now I must do something about my Anki deck. I have 2,100 cards that are due, and they are all full of HATE. ._.

2001 due cards in mine... Not bad considering i only stopped doing reps a week ago.

Ha, one week of negligence only cost me around 950. But it'll go down very fast when I get back to my routine "commute oriented" reps.

thurd Wrote:I think its me you're talking about although I didn't take N1 but rather N2. Now that I probably failed I can tell you that if it wasn't for my laziness, mentally exhausting full-time job, bad priorities (I'm looking at you grammar!!) and sub-optimal learning methodology I could pass it with ease.

My friend went from close to zero (knew hiragana/katakana and some real basics) to almost passing the old 2kyuu in 10 months of living in Japan. He then took it 6 months later and smashed it.

It can definitely be done- but he was definitely a studying machine and able to memorize a lot. For me I don't think it would have been possible- mostly because I don't have the work ethic.

I got all my Anki cards almost down to zero because of the 10+h train rides I had to survive in order to get from and to the test site, so no worries here

And about the "nice weather" thingie.
We had awesome weather yesterday!!! It was a shame that we had to stay inside and take the test actually.
But I did some "sightseeing" before I actually went to the testing location and also took some photos on my way (in order to calm down a little bit ..) (here they are)
Can you believe it's already December when you see these photos? ^^;

No, it wasn't you Thurd, it was some guy who had a bunch of other stuff on his plate, and figured he would go for N1 next year on top of it all, and he didn't know a whole lot of Japanese. (Like N5 level.)

Not saying it isn't impossible if you go completely go nuts and throw everything aside (and if you also happen to live in Japan), but if you don't, and you also don't live in Japan, you add to the difficulty of an already difficult proposition.

And frankly, after talking to some of the folks leaving the N1 test, I just don't think it's reasonably possible to go from "I got nothing" (or not a whole hell of a lot) to N1 in a year (12 months) without flipping your gourd.

If it works for you as a motivational tool, fine... just don't expect to do much else, other than to set fire to the pile of money you're going to use for N1 books, travel, app fees, hotels, etc.

No, it wasn't you Thurd, it was some guy who had a bunch of other stuff on his plate, and figured he would go for N1 next year on top of it all, and he didn't know a whole lot of Japanese. (Like N5 level.)



If its me you are talking about,im a bit above N4 level,i took some sample tests on the JLPT site so i think i know where my japanese level is.i can easily pass a N4,but i got below 50% on the N3,so i don't actually know nothing about japanese,i have been studying for 8 months and i also finished RTK.

Any place where we can find the test questions as well? (N1)

I can't remember which number I picked off the top of my head, but if I had the question booklet I could tell you what I picked for most of them at least.

@phantombk Pardon my morning crankyness.

Here's the TL;DR version: N1 is a great intermediate/advanced goal. Just don't get disappointed if you can't make it in 12 months. Just worry about getting good at Japanese.
---
To pass N1 you will need: a LOT of vocab. What was the old word total requirement for 1級? I just remember that 2級 was something like 6000 words. Either way, you will need much more than that. I'd bet on it being around 10k.

You will also need a lot of grammar. And grammar has gotten trickier. It's no longer the way it used to be, when you could just cram and plug in answers. You have to be comfortable with it to the point where you know all the little details.

You'll need a lot of reading experience, so you can read the passages FAST, because you just won't have any time to finish the exam, otherwise.

Reading and grammar are combined into one section. (In N2 we had 105 minutes to do both.) Lots of long passages with long questions, and long answers. It sounds like a lot of time, but it isn't. It took me 45 min to do the grammar portion (which was really slow, when I think about it), and 60 min still wasn't enough to do the reading. And I read Japanese every day. (I guess I still suck.)

You will also need to be able to pass the listening comp portion, too. (Although you could fudge that and try to squeak by, but I don't recommend that.)

I'm not even going to try to do the math, but you have a lot of work cut out for you.

I suppose theoretically, you could try to squeak by on 2 sections with a 32% score, and try to rock on 1 section to get enough points... but you'd still need the vocab just to understand what's going on.

OK, well, after checking in on our Chinese Brethren, and seeing how they figure the test will be graded, and looking at the answers, I think I just might pass.

I didn't get to check all the reading, but from what I've got, it seems I've already got that covered.
Vocab/Grammar it seems like I did pretty decent. That shouldn't be a problem.
So, without counting 問題１、２ of the listening, or 問題７ of vocab/grammar, I seem to be at around 70 points. That's if I get those 18 problems I can't find all wrong. It can only go uphill from there.

Then, the reading I'd need 30 points -- 1/2 of the questions. That's a quite nerve wracking, but I might get points for those 18 problems I couldn't count. But, out of the 26 reading questions, 9 of them is 20 points = passing.

SO, If I get 9 reading questions correct (which is very possible), and some of those 18 points I can't check correct, then I just might pass this thing...

ghinzdra Wrote:Just wondering : would it be in violation of the forum rules to post questions of the test and put together a correction ?

I hope not - I missed the question papers while the links worked. If anyone finds any working links I'd really appreciate them!

Just signed up for an account so that I can post in this thread.

After more than five years of "my pace" self-study, I took my first JLPT (N2) last Sunday.

Like some of you, I had to make some educated guesses in the reading part as I did not have enough time to go through the long articles again and again. I've not attended a single Japanese language class, and so I was particularly worried about the listening part. I thought it was slightly tough since the rate of speech were way faster than I was accustomed to (Anime).

I think I'll fail this test thanks to the reading section, but at least I can read and understand the articles.

BTW anyone still remember what was the first question in the N2 test?

peterl Wrote:BTW anyone still remember what was the first question in the N2 test?

I think it was 規模 but not 100% sure.

Yes I think so too. 「きぼ」ですね。That's encouraging to know I got at least the first question right.

I wasn't going to post because N5 taking seems to be generally reviled in this forum, but I was interested to see that my N5 experience was so similar to others' N1 and 2 experiences.

Going in, I thought I'd be OK on kanji (thank you RTK), but that my vocabulary was deficient and my grammar full of gaps. Plus I expected to fail the listening section outright. But as it turned out, kanji was barely tested, my vocab and grammar could use more work but were likely passable, and I felt really good about the listening section.

The biggest surprise, and this will surely be my downfall, was that my reading was just WAY too slow. It kept me from being able to finish the first two sections, and I was so flustered about it that toward the end of the second section it interfered with my comprehension. Damn!

Like many others, I won't be too surprised by either a pass or a fail. I think I'm right on the line and it could go either way. Hard to tell because of the Mystery Scoring System though.

Oh yes, and logistically speaking you could certainly take the test in both Tokyo and Honolulu.

As soon as the test ended on Sunday in Tokyo you'd hot foot it to Tokyo Eki, take NEX to Narita with your carryon and previously downloaded boarding pass, catch the 7:30pm United flight to Honolulu*, down a couple of Ambien and get a good night's sleep on the plane, arrive in Honolulu at 8 Sunday morning, maybe take a swim, have a nice breakfast, then make your way to the beautiful University of Hawaii campus, use the map you've downloaded to find the appropriate building, and you'll be all ready to take the test again at 12:30!

How you fool the PTB into thinking you're a different person than the one who took the test in Japan is up to you.

*Round trip "economy" airfare ~$4500