Listening 73
As usual, I have problems with listening (to native material) in general. However, this felt surprisingly easy compared to the N1.

Vocabulary 72
I thought it was easy and breezed through it for the most part. I guess it wasn't as easy as I thought. There's also that 30s time limit, which sometimes makes me feel very nervous.

Grammar 70
I thought this was easier than N1 to be honest (it helps that there isn't that "re-arrange the 4 words" problem present in N1), but I'm already starting to forget a few patterns that I learned...

Reading 80
Ha! Well, confirms again that my reading >> all other abilities >___>. Clearly need to switch to improve other skills for balance. I felt that the reading was harder than N1, particularly some passages talking about archaic stuff and using hard-to-read kanji proper nouns (which I promptly skipped over). I have no problem reading most modern Japanese work although I regularly encounter unknown words (so I can't really say I understand *everything*)

Total 295

聴解 / Listening 49
語彙 / Vocabulary 48
文法 / Grammar 50
読解 / Reading 42
合計 / Total 189

3.5months of RtK + 0.5months of Tae Kim + 4 months of crawling through Visual Novels

聴解 / Listening 77
語彙 / Vocabulary 77
文法 / Grammar 78
読解 / Reading 66
合計 / Total 298

WTF happened there with the reading?

Grammar took a huge jump thanks to erlog's JLPT Grammar Domination deck.

Having done no production whatsoever, my vocab score is limited by the "same kanji" questions. At least this time I never timed out.

聴解 / Listening 74
語彙 / Vocabulary 82
文法 / Grammar 48
読解 / Reading 79
合計 / Total 283

I made a nice leap since 6 months ago, in the meanwhile I've read a bunch of novels and listened to a lot of good stuff.
My grammar score is freezed at 48, and that's a pity because I could have increased my overall score with low effort. I'm going to take a peek to that Grammar Domination deck
That Vocabulary score is really cool, I went through that section like a breeze.

Thanks again to the guys that recommended this test

I also just retook J-Cat after 6 months. Made a decent jump in all categories and this time I met my goal too (wanted at least 200 points), although barely. My grammar score little more than doubled.

聴解 / Listening: 50 (+17)
語彙 / Vocabulary: 57 (+12)
文法 / Grammar: 47 (+24)
読解 / Reading: 53 (+16)
合計 / Total: 207 (+69)

Looks like my methods are working out pretty well. I mostly just read, read, read, anki vocab and practice grammar patterns in my writing and speech. Made practically no efforts into improving my listening comprehension and yet it increased as much as my reading score. Interesting.

If my score improves as much next time, I think I might be ready to try the JLPT N1 by next winter.

Since my goal is to make a 300+ in the J-CAT this year, I asked a college-educated native Japanese speaker to take the test to see how accurate it is. The following are his results:

Listening 83
Vocabulary 99
Grammar 78
Reading 53
Total 312

He complained that the reading sections had too much Hiragana and that caused him to stumble. However, even if we took the average of his other scores and replaced his Reading score with it (87 points), he would still have scored a 347-- just shy of 日本語母語話者相当.

.

I find myself with an incredible amount of free time recently and thought, "taking a test sounds fun!!"
Maybe I'm broken.

Anyway, for reference, I passed the N1 about three years ago with a 169/180 so I didn't really have any business taking this other than to waste some time and see if I'd forgotten any of the tricksy test-nihongo used to trip up silly foreigners like myself. But whatever. It must be because I have more important things to do and procrastination is the name of the game.

Here are my JCAT scores.

聴解 / Listening 81
語彙 / Vocabulary 91
文法 / Grammar 94
読解 / Reading 86
合計 / Total 352

Apparently I'm a native speaker. Woohoo.
I'm curious as to what went wrong on Listening as I got a perfect score there on the N1 and the recordings here were just as robotic... Guess I can't really watch all of One Piece again to boost my listening one more time. I'll have to think of something different...

Although, looking at datrukup's Japanese friend's scores, maybe there's something fishy with the listening section. I can't imagine a native getting less than perfect on that listening. Although, I can't really imagine a native speaker getting a 53 on that reading section either. The wall o' hiragana ends fairly quickly if the system sees you answering quickly and correctly. The harder passages themselves contained some technical, historical and otherwise less-than-normal jargon but the questions were all fairly simple and didn't really require any knowledge of technology or history or the like to answer.


I should really update my blog or something else productive with all this free time.
Or do all those pressing things I actually need to do...

... nah.

I decided to take N1 for the first time this July and have just started studying for it. I came across the JCAT and gave it a spin, hoping to use it as a benchmark for where I should focus my studies. I was pleased with the results and it certainly gives me more confidence when going into the actual test.

聴解 / Listening 83
語彙 / Vocabulary 68
文法 / Grammar 59
読解 / Reading 63
合計 / Total 273

Anyway, it's nice to see a community of other people in a similar situation and I hope to browse around and pick up those upper-level study tips that many of you post. I tried to go through Heisig back in the day and I last used this site probably in 2008 and only ever made it about half way. I'd like to try again but I tend to get burned out. Kanji just doesn't interest me enough to keep me going. But I really want to get to a high level of reading and I know comprehensive kanji recognition is the only way to accomplish that. I guess it's time to try again.

Wow, you guys are doing great!
The listening section was a breeze... or so I thought lol. Oops.
Listening 24
Vocab 62
Grammar 26
Reading 42
Total 154

I've been religiously adding vocab cards in Anki everyday since ~3y (now just a bit over 14k words added) and I began reading novels last year. I'm a bit disappointed by the score, but I guess overall N3~N2 makes sense. Also I felt like I did well, esp. on the listening part, so whatever! Can't wait to try again in 6 months

セクション スコア
Listening 52
Vocabulary 70
Grammar 57
Reading 77
合計 256

Somehow I'm surprised that I got the score I was expecting. I was actually hoping it would tell me I underestimate my abilities so it's a somewhat disappointing result. I really struggled with the time limits for some questions and the constant need to pay attention throughout the whole test.

セクション スコア
Listening 21
Vocabulary 34
Grammar 25
Reading 36
合計 116


I was looking for a way to decide whether or not I'd aim to JPLT N4 or N5, even though it's going to be on December I'm a little bit afraid N4 might be too hard for me. Definitely will try to get better at my listening ability which is what I struggled the most! I felt I didn't have much time to answer the grammar questions, need to be faster at reading as well!

セクション スコア
Listening 73
Vocabulary 76
Grammar 76
Reading 77
合計 302

Going for N1 this winter.
It's weird how balanced my scores are, because I thought I got all the listening stuff while there definitely were a few questions in all the other categories I didn't get (I mostly let the time run out instead of guessing in those cases)

Tamba Wrote:合計 302
Going for N1 this winter.

Based on this score, I'd guess that you should easily be able to pass N1, assuming you know its quirks. My score on J-CAT was markedly lower (270-ish maybe? can't remember exactly), and I still managed to pass N1 comfortably soon after.

I finally got around to taking the J-CAT for the first time, and scored basically lined up with my projected score, but my distribution was different than I had thought it would be. Prior to taking it, I was expecting my listening and my reading to be reversed.

セクション スコア
Listening 74
Vocabulary 58
Grammar 70
Reading 53
合計 255

I first started learning Japanese in 2009, but have gone some long stretches of hardly studying since then, and it's hard to have any idea of how much time I've really put in.

Listening 49
Vocabulary 45
Grammar 44
Reading 38
Total 176

I felt like I was sort of guessing on most of the questions...