Hey guys,

I just dropped by in Kinokuniya and found a couple of books for the JLPT N3. I'm kind of hesitating between which one to get...

I took a picture of it:
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/479/booksx.jpg

Any help in pointing out which to get would be greatly appreciated.

I liked the sou matome books for when I took 2kyuu. I was just at the bookstore today and it seems there is no reading book for the new N type JLPT yet though.

I got this one:
http://books.rakuten.co.jp/rb/実力アップ！日本語能...m/6468442/

UNICOM books are pretty solid for the JLPT and this one seems better organised than the previous one I used for 3.

The JLPT is coming to my country for the first time this year! In my class we are using Minna no Nihongo. I will study until lesson 25 in the book until the end of the classes (18th june). In my summer vacations, I will study Genki 2 and Minna no nihongo II, with the help of Anki too. Last summer I decided to study RTK, this summer I'll study japanese

I know I can pass JLPT 5 by that time, but since I intend to study from those 2 books in summer, I think I'll try number 4 instead. What do you thinks

This forum should have a sticky thread with all the JLPT related study material. I'm going to search here if there are threads about that, and will look up on google, but if you know any more material please share

(O__O'') ..............
Don't tell me the application deadline for the JLPT 2010 in summer in Japan is already over????!!!!!!! (O__O') ......
Anybody knows for sure? I tried to google it but sometimes I found April 30th, then again May 14th.

You missed it. It was April 30th.

ARGH I'm so stupid. I was so busy studying that I completely forgot about appyling (；´Д｀)
Thanks for the quick reply. Guess I have no choice but to wait for December then (when I actually wanted to try N1, but not before I haven't passed N2 ... ARGH)

You could take jtest in the meantime. It's offered like four times a year and is harder than jlpt1 to get the highest level. It's cheaper too.

I'll think about it. Thanks for the information.
Well, one good thing is that I now can wait and see what kind of changes have been made from JLPT2kyuu to N2 *tries to think positive*
In the meantime I'll start studying for N1 nevertheless, but still take N2 first in December (@_@)

"In the meantime I'll start studying for N1 nevertheless, but still take N2 first in December "

僕も一級の為に勉強しているのに、二級を取るつもりです。＾＿＾
一緒に勉強しましょうか？

I got my application in on the last day, just like last time. This will be my 3rd JLPT attempt.

4 years ago I tried the 2kyuu and failed.

1.5 years ago I tried the 2kyuu and failed.

In 2 months I'm taking the 1kyuu. I expect to fail.

I am studing for N1, I think I can cram the grammar easily but my reading and listening is seriously hampered by lack of vocabulary.
My vocabulary sucks, I guess I am about 40% of the official old JLPT1 list.
So I made a deck for study from the most elementary up. In fact it is just the JLPT2 shared deck + Kore .
With card templates for vocabulary production and recognition, sentence reading, audio to sentence, english sentence to japanese.
In total just little shy of 30.000 cards, in every card's question or answer I would hear the audio for the example sentence.
There is a lot of duplication there, but I thought, duplicates will just reforzate the knowledge and became easy cards so not big deal.

It may work and I would still need to try it but the test is on 45 days and I am definitely not able to go throught the whole thing.
Just as an example. Right now I need to review 500 cards what at my current speed would need 2.2 hours. Just reviewing...

So, I need to cut the number of cards, focus only on N1 till July.


I think I will simplify my deck only leaving these:

For most of the deck:
Jap word -> English word , jap word sound

For kore
jap sentence (Kanji) -> reading, meaning
sentence audio -> Understood it?


Note these 2 important templates I will suspend:

English word -> japanese word (no production!)
Hear sentence -> write it down (no kanji recall!)

I suspend these two hoping that they are in fact not important for N1 (althought they are for real Japanese usage).

Also I am thinking about suspending every fact of Kore not marked in any JLPT level althought I am not sure about it.


Please comment on this plan!!

30,000 sentences?! I don't know where you get the patience.

I was in a similar vocabulary position to you a month or two ago, with a vocab of about 6000, so I just went through the 8300~ item JLPT wordlist on anki to get me up to standard (about 4000 were new, deleted the rest).

If you're nearing N1 standard you shouldn't really need sentences so much I don't think... just go read newspapers and stuff for practice. I just go word in kanji > reading+english meaning.

dizmox Wrote:30,000 sentences?! I don't know where you get the patience.

I was in a similar vocabulary position to you a month or two ago, with a vocab of about 6000, so I just went through the 8300~ item JLPT wordlist on anki to get me up to standard (about 4000 were new, deleted the rest).

If you're nearing N1 standard you shouldn't really need sentences so much I don't think... just go read newspapers and stuff for practice. I just go word in kanji > reading+english meaning.

If one can read news/understand drama's and function decently in Japanese, then JLPT level 1 isn't hard. 30,000 sentences don't sound that big to me, i have done like 12,000+ sentences in these 9months. i'll aim for 30,000 in another full year or so.
Patience is necessary, for me personally I'm working on production now/a lot of reading. I want to be able to speak decently/write decently in japanese. If i only know how to read/understand to a high level it wouldn't mean that much if I couldn't output at the same quality.

Still studying over here with an emphasis on grammar. I'm going to keep beating at the grammar points until the end of this month then I'm switching to just practicing my reading comprehension all day while adding big misses to my anki pile.

I can read and understand a good 90% of the sentences on old 2kyu tests but I have problems putting them all together in the reading section. So I'll end my study with that and take the test.

I don't think I am ready for sentences quite yet.
I'm going to start kanji all over again this month and then do RTK 3. Then I will do Core (With a "C". ) 2000 and Core 6000 for basic vocabulary. Then I will SRS 完全　and　どんなとき. THEN I will start reading like crazy and doing listening practice.

I can't wait for my formal Japanese class to end. It's actually preventing me from learning. I have to do loads of work that I think just waste my time. :\

(Like making verb charts and bingo...)

But chatting with exchange students has helped me feel more comfortable in Japanese. It feels like I could all of a sudden speak Japanese. I guess the only difference is that I received responses and I had to react to them accordingly. -__-

Is 2JLPT grammar the most difficult part of the test? You would think kanji/vocab would be the easiest part for RTKers/Anki-ers. (What do you call someone who does Anki?) I know about 1500-1800 kanji now so I'm not really going to worry about it.

I bought 3 textbooks for listening. (I will review them later)

ta12121 Wrote:If one can read news/understand drama's and function decently in Japanese, then JLPT level 1 isn't hard.

haha oh wow.
have you even taken/looked at a JLPT1 test, even a practice test? the only thing that might help you is reading the news, because of the kanji.

understanding the news and drama = JLPT1 is easy?!

well then hell, i must have written the test

Asriel Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:If one can read news/understand drama's and function decently in Japanese, then JLPT level 1 isn't hard.

haha oh wow.
have you even taken/looked at a JLPT1 test, even a practice test? the only thing that might help you is reading the news, because of the kanji.

understanding the news and drama = JLPT1 is easy?!

well then hell, i must have written the test

sorry if I meant anything bad by it. But I didn't, I just remember reading here that majority of people say that once you've reached a certain level of japanese, like reading novels in full, understanding/following news,etc. Then you should be able to pass JLPT level 1 without that much effort. When the time comes, pretty soon actually. I'll buy JLPT level 1 prep book(current ones) and actively study for them to prepare for December 2010.(Plan on taking it then).
I know one must know 2000+ kanji in order to pass. I don't know that much kanji(not yet). I checked my kanji readings online, one of those checkers. I'm at 1700+ at the moment. I estimate by September I should be fully past 2000+ kanji for sure. Another thing is that I want to be able to read more Japanese people names, sometimes I screw up the readings for that/mix it up,etc. So that's another point i must learn.

Asriel Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:If one can read news/understand drama's and function decently in Japanese, then JLPT level 1 isn't hard.

haha oh wow.
have you even taken/looked at a JLPT1 test, even a practice test? the only thing that might help you is reading the news, because of the kanji.

understanding the news and drama = JLPT1 is easy?!

well then hell, i must have written the test

mind providing the link, I will start studying for it soon. Possible resources as well would be nice, thanks in advance.

http://jlpt.mobi/jlpt/jsp/download_index.jsp　has got the tests from 1991 to 2009. There's other places to get them, but that's the first place that I found when I googled it.

I agree with you that once you reach a certain level of Japanese, then the JLPT isn't necessarily a goal to reach for anymore. I agree that it tests your proficiency, and you should train your proficiency and not you're test taking skills.

What I don't agree with is that understanding dramas = JLPT1

Asriel Wrote:What I don't agree with is that understanding dramas = JLPT1

Of course you wouldn't.

Asriel Wrote:http://jlpt.mobi/jlpt/jsp/download_index.jsp　has got the tests from 1991 to 2009. There's other places to get them, but that's the first place that I found when I googled it.

I agree with you that once you reach a certain level of Japanese, then the JLPT isn't necessarily a goal to reach for anymore. I agree that it tests your proficiency, and you should train your proficiency and not you're test taking skills.

What I don't agree with is that understanding dramas = JLPT1

thanks. I'll take a good look at it. Yea about the dramas it varies i guess, some dramas are so easy to understand while others get me a bit confused here and there sometimes. But nothing to big. What I tend to do is that each day listen/read a few transcribed news topics,etc. I can follow it well, but the names of places still gets me off a bit.So I should focus on soon is names/places.

Ahh, well Jarvik, I guess by "official" I did mean the Chinese scanned copies. That's what I always reviewed before this anyway.

Also, I want to ask those who either passed level 2 or almost passed why they are taking N2 again for a better score? I just failed 2級 (4 points from passing), and I plan to take N1. Do you know how much your Japanese can improve in a year (or half a year for those in Japan)? Certainly enough to make it possible to pass N1 this year.

Anyway, I'm just curious as to the reason. Personally, I am going to just keep going like I am, reading constantly and playing games and watching TV in Japanese, looking up words I don't know and studying them as I go and relying on that to pass N1. Closer to the test I'll probably pick up a grammar guide and take a practice test, but other than that I won't do anything special.

It's possible to go from barely failing jlpt2 to passing jlpt1 in a year, but it takes a lot of directed study. The material is of course harder, the grammar section is more obscure, and the minimum passing grade is higher. Start now.

I want a better understanding of level 2 before I move on to 1.