[Zgarbas]

By any chance is there anyone who practiced using the old tests before taking the reformed ones/people who took the old exams and then the new ones? How do the old ones fare compared to the new ones?

I was curious regarding the relevance. From what I gathered the N2/N1s are more difficult than the old versions, is there even a point in having practice tests on the old papers to asses my skills for future exams?

AFAIK, while they supposedly made N1 harder, they lowered the passing marks to compensate. Looking at wikipedia, it used to be 70%, and it's now 100/180≈56%. If you take this into account, i.e. rate yourself by the old marks, then if you want to use the old tests as a ballpark gauge of ability, why not?

Of course, if you have access to newer practice tests, you might as well use them instead. I had some old ones, and I think the test format was a bit different as well?

[Zgarbas]

Couldn't find any new tests (I guess it's because of that NDA they make you sign), just a bunch of old ones. Ran a quick mock exam with one and it was way easier than it should have been, which is why I was wondering =/ (I mean, I think last December's N4 had more trick questions than the N2 paper I did...maybe it was a lucky year?)

Well, if nothing else, there are some sample questions on their website, although it's pretty short. Admittedly, I scored plenty worse on the test than on the sample questions, but I was in pretty bad shape at the time.

I think there were also a couple of textbooks with practice tests available... 合格できる？ Here is one for N2.

@astendra: i think the old tests were graded on an absolute scale but the new tests have reading and listening graded on a relative scale.

Well, that would make sense. But since we are talking about practice tests, how would you "scale" a 模試 result? ;p

[Zgarbas]

I use paranoia to compensate for the lack of scaling . For every wrong answer I cancel out 2 right ones. So if out of 10 questions I miss 1, I rate myself 70%. I don't think(hope) the scales can affect the answer value any more than that.

Firstly, because of the change in the scoring system you can't really say clearly what % of questions you need to get right on the new test to pass. Scoring 100/180 ~ 56% does not mean that you only got 56% of questions correct. This means that you can't really grade the papers accurately by yourself.

The new test still has a lot of questions like the old test so obviously practicing old tests is helpful for those questions. There are some slightly different style questions though that you'll need to get hold of a new test to try.

I tried the new N1 after practicing old papers and one new paper. For me the old style was a bit easier in that you could pick up a lot of easy marks at the start if your kanji reading ability was good. The new one seemed to have more reading sections.

Something to aim for when taking the old tests might be to focus on getting over 70% on each of the sections, not just overall.

I think drill books are probably a better bet for studying than past tests. It might be helpful to look at some of the tests in order to get used to their format, but I don't think studying the content is that worthwhile. The test changes so much from year to year that it's just not enough content to be a good judge of whether or not you'll do well on the upcoming test.

Thanks for that, erlog. So I guess I am better of getting the revised editions of the Kanzen Master. I just justified spending on Amazon again