desmar84,
Based on practice tests I would say:

N5: Too Easy) Genki 1 = N5

N4: Normal difficulty) Vocabulary and kanji will definitely NOT be an issue and the grammar really isn't that hard. For me the hardest thing about that level was conjugating verbs and adjectives.

N3: Doable, But Difficult) I don't think vocabulary or kanji will be an issue, but listening may give you a hard time if you don't get enough practice. (It's something you can't just cram :\)

I would recommend level N4. I don't think it's worth it to study for a test and then fail it because you rushed yourself. Start listening now, and take a practice test (remember old JLPT 3) a month. There is one free online practice test for the new format but that's all you get.

I think it's best to study in this order:
*When studying watch a Disney movie in Japanese or some music music. It doesn't matter really as long as it's somewhat interesting.

1) Kanji, you only have to know 300 kanji! You should become familiar with the meanings, then onyomi (Skip the kunyomi for now). You don't have to memorize all the readings, just one for each kanji. This really helped me make my Japanese connect.

2) Niche expressions, here is a list of expressions that will probably be on the test.
http://www.jlptstudy.com/N5/index.html
http://www.jlptstudy.com/N4/index.html
(You have to understand the expressions from he previous level too. )

3) Vocabulary, you seem to be on the right track. After familiarizing yourself with those kanji it should be really simple. After finishing KO try to write down the words from the list you don't know and add them to your deck. Smartfm works well too.

After all that, all you have left is grammar. I personally used Tae kim with Genki1-2. I think they complimented each other nicely. I found this link, it may help later on.
http://www.e-japanese.jp/grammar3.htm

Good luck!

Thanks for the helpful reply gyuujuice.

I see what youre saying about listening being my downfall but Im currently living in Japan and have a Japanese girlfriend, although none of these seem to have made me anymore fluent in the language

Are there any resources out there to practice the listening portion of old JLPT tests?

Also, I dont know too much about the ins and outs of the test but if I were strong in Kanji and Grammar and weak in listening, is it still possible to pass the test or do you need a certain score in each area to pass?

Thx

You're welcome! ^__^

1)
Listening comprehension is strange, you just have to keep pursuing it and learn new words. (It's my theory that the more words you learn the more you your brain will be able to make sense of the sounds so increasing vocabulary has helped me quite a bit.)

2)
LOTS, Here is the official practice tests (NJLPT not the old ones)
http://www.jflalc.org/?act=tpt&id=25
(N4 MP3)

Something I just found by google:
http://japanese.human.metro-u.ac.jp/mic-...index.html

3)
I think it USED to be that way but you need a 60% in the listening section as well as the other sections. For N5 and N4 there are 3 sections I believe: Listening, Kanji and vocab, grammar. (I'm not sure for this level but I know you need 60% in each of those areas.)

Looking at the test now, yep the listening part is definitely the most difficult. They are so tricksy.

BTW, the results of July's JLPT should be arriving around now.
Anyone got the results?

Yup, passed N3. Not by much mind.

edit: actually I passed easily with the new scoring system

I killed it this time. N2, fourth sitting.

1st - 45% fail
2nd time - 55% fail
3rd time - 65% pass
4th time - 87% pass

Guess I should start with the N1 study.

wondering if more production cards (N3 level) would be a good idea. Do you put an english word or a japanese hiragana word in the question field?

lanval Wrote:wondering if more production cards (N3 level) would be a good idea. Do you put an english word or a japanese hiragana word in the question field?

All of my cards are recognition. Just a full Japanese sentence on the front and readings, definitions, and other notes on the back.

I experimented with grammar production cards for a while but dropped it.

lanval Wrote:wondering if more production cards (N3 level) would be a good idea. Do you put an english word or a japanese hiragana word in the question field?

Specifically for JLPT, the test is all reading and listening so production cards are kinda unnecessary. But if you want to produce Japanese (speaking and writing), then I've found they help.

Well at Yamasa I' ll need speaking and writing ;P
Besides I feel like with reproduction only, it takes a long time until I recognize the words fast AND the meaning pops up straight away. Just takes a lot more time to write...
So, Eng- Jap. or Jap-Jap?

lanval Wrote:Well at Yamasa I' ll need speaking and writing ;P
Besides I feel like with reproduction only, it takes a long time until I recognize the words fast AND the meaning pops up straight away. Just takes a lot more time to write...
So, Eng- Jap. or Jap-Jap?

Use recognition cards to study for the JLPT and production cards to study for the things you need to know in language school.

I wanna do some old JLPT2kyuu tests, can I use the new grading system (N2) on them? Will that work? Anybody has a link to the new grading system for me?

I already passed 2kyuu mock tests 1,5 years ago. I wanted to take N2 in July this year, but missed the application deadline, so I'm finally going to take it this December (although I already started studying for N1 a while ago). If I pass I might try N1 in July (1st try XD probably fail) next year.

chochajin Wrote:I wanna do some old JLPT2kyuu tests, can I use the new grading system (N2) on them? Will that work? Anybody has a link to the new grading system for me?

I already passed 2kyuu mock tests 1,5 years ago. I wanted to take N2 in July this year, but missed the application deadline, so I'm finally going to take it this December (although I already started studying for N1 a while ago). If I pass I might try N1 in July (1st try XD probably fail) next year.

You can't really apply the new scale to old tests. You can find the new scale on the front of the JLPT website.

I think it's safe to say that if you can pass the old version of the test you will get roughly the same score on the new version. There isn't really a huge difference in the formats.

I finally found an excellent N2 practice book with a lot of the ★-style problems to work on.

UNICOM's ドリル＆ドリル book (ISBN 978-4-89689-476-9) has 75 of them to throw yourselves on. Most of the other N2 books I've looked at have done a terrible job of giving me enough ★-style problems to work on. (Like 15-20 max.) 75 ★ problems is a gold mine, considering how new they are, and how hard they are to find in these kinds of books. (Unless I'm just missing something.)

There are also 300 regular grammar-style questions, and 50 of the new "read the passage and answer the grammar question" style questions.

So 425 questions to fill you full of joy, or something.

The other neat thing is that there aren't just answers in the back, there are answers with explanations, and a discussion about each question. (There's a smattering of EN in there, but not enough to be annoying. You need your JP skills.)

The only downside is that the book is really hard to find online. When I bought it from Amazon.co.jp, they were really low on copies, and BK1 was already sold out. If you're in Japan, you probably won't have problems finding it, but if you're outside of Japan, well, I'm sure someone will get more copies soon. (Maybe get Kinokuniya to order it for you.)

Two thumbs up.

where abouts does core 2000 put you on the new jlpt system?

I passed N2, but not with flying colors. I was right around 60%. Nevertheless, I'm happy to be in the club!

I feel like the first time I passed Max300 on heavy in DDR... is that bad?

Finally, a whole bunch of study books have come out for N3, the new mystery level. I bought the 日本語総まとめ vocab and grammar books from Ask publishing, and will see how I get on with those.

I'm interested: has anyone had a look at or started using any of these new N3 exercise books or study guides yet?

Yeah, i worked through the アルク　文法トレーニング N3 book. I recommend it. Japanese only, with lots of great SRSable example sentences.

Can anybody give me tips on how to get better with the reading section in general and the one for N2 in particular?
I do have the Kanzen Master 2kyuu reading book and I think it helps, but I also realized that I still need lots of practice. I think the reading section is my weakest section right now.

Not only do I fail to solve the problems in time (my biggest problem), but I also get only slightly over 50% correct. That's not enough at all.

I know that most people here always just suggest to do a lot of reading, but I'm looking for more specific tips than just that.

Thanks a lot in advance

chochajin Wrote:Can anybody give me tips on how to get better with the reading section in general and the one for N2 in particular?
I do have the Kanzen Master 2kyuu reading book and I think it helps, but I also realized that I still need lots of practice. I think the reading section is my weakest section right now.

Not only do I fail to solve the problems in time (my biggest problem), but I also get only slightly over 50% correct. That's not enough at all.

Hmm, if you're only getting about 50% correct even when you have enough time I think it's worth trying to analyse why you're getting particular questions wrong. Did you get stuck because you didn't have enough of the key vocab to understand the piece, was the grammar too complicated, was it a problem of not being able to answer a "what was the author trying to say" kind of question, or something else? If the questions you're getting wrong are generally wrong for the same reasons then you know what you need to focus on. (If you can't work out the right answer even with access to dictionary, grammar reference, etc, you can always ask here.)

For the time-limit issue, I think that the fundamental fix is more practice in reading as fast as you can. It's worth acquiring the knack of skim-reading, ie not worrying too much about whether you didn't quite know a particular word and just trying to pull out the information you're after. It often helps to read the questions first so you know what you're trying to answer and what you can ignore.

pm215, thank you very much for your suggestions!
In the Kanzen Master book is a "placement" test in the beginning and I finished it with a total of mere 54% !!
論説文 being the type of text that I struggled most with (got only 16%!!), followed by 説明文　(57%).
They suggest to start with the text type you struggled most, but also say if you have low scores in all sections to start with the short text sessions at the beginning of the book. I decided to do the latter.

Actually I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm really strict on the time they suggest for each problem (usually only 3-5 min.) and if I almost run out of time, I just quickly answer it. Maybe I shouldn't do that for now?
Grammar shouldn't be a problem at this point as I focused on that the last few months. Not sure about vocab.

Any other suggestions?

If I wanna test if my vocab is good enough, do you have any suggestions other than actually doing a mock test?

chochajin Wrote:Actually I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm really strict on the time they suggest for each problem (usually only 3-5 min.) and if I almost run out of time, I just quickly answer it. Maybe I shouldn't do that for now?

At some point you need to be able to do these questions quickly, but if you can't do them going slowly then you have an underlying problem that needs to be addressed before you try to speed up, I think. If you can do them slowly then I guess most of your issue is speeding up and reinforcing things you sort-of-know into really-knowing...

Quote:If I wanna test if my vocab is good enough, do you have any suggestions other than actually doing a mock test?

You don't need to do an actual test, you just need to have a large enough collection of "reading test style questions I got wrong" that you can go over them and identify for each one what the thing was that caused you to answer wrongly or not to know the answer...

The new passing levels are posted here:
http://www.jlpt.jp/e/guideline/results.html

55% to pass N1 (100/180), 50% to pass N2 (90/180), and 52.8% to pass N3 (95/180), apparently, and you only need to get 19/60 right per section.

Damn if I know what it means.

@chochajin Are you reading Japanese newspapers, specifically the editorial pages? Since that seems to be what you're having problems with, maybe reading some more will help you get more comfortable with the format/style of them, and pick up some of the vocab you're missing.

If the vocab on the usual pages is a little too much, try the Mainichi kids' section:
http://mainichi.jp/life/edu/maishou/index.html

It's geared more to 6th graders. Copy the text, remove everything in (), then read the text to see if you can understand it. (Tip from Tofugu, actually.)

So did I get that right? If I get 19/60 or more (which is far less than 50%) in the reading section for N2, then I didn't fail that section and didn't fail the whole test, right?? That doesn't sound too bad then o__O;

@rich_f and pm215: Thanks so much for your suggestions
Thus far I haven't been reading newspapers, no. I'll try that ^-^

I passed N2! 76% which im stoked about cos I was unsure if I would pass or not.

Man it's crazy reading the pass criteria... only 50%?? And the sectional pass is only ~33%? I'm definitely going to sign up for N1 and i'm thinking I might even be able to pass it.