Benny Lewis, I want to buy you a steak dinner.

I find this whole thing incredibly amusing, and I thank you for that.  I think it's one of the more interesting things I've ever seen related to studying Japanese.  Granted, learning Japanese isn't exactly Rock-em-Sock-em Robots, but still.

If you want to poo poo the JLPT, that's fine as far as I'm concerned.  I think it's a valuable test, but whatever.  I think a lot of crazy stuff.  We just need some standard for measuring proficiency.  "Fluency" is unfortunately vague.  So poo poo on that too.

Speaking's great, but it's only half the equation.  Three months is plenty long enough to acquire some common patterns and words of vocabulary to substitute in.  I like dogs.  I like cats.  I like goats.  Do you like goats?  Fabulous, me too.

Because it's not just speaking that constitutes ability--it's being able to understand the answer.  You want to throw out the written language?  Fine.  Buh-bye.  But show me that you can understand what's being said and I'll treat you to a steak dinner when you get to Japan.  That's a promise, Mister Lewis.

So here's what I propose:  Listen to the current day's NHK News Easy recordings ( http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ ) and summarize what's being said.  That's it.  Summarize it in any language, I don't care.  The articles are short.  They're spoken slowly and clearly, and around an N3 level.  They cover common, daily subjects.  It's the news, after all.  If you can't understand that much, then you've got further to go before you can claim "fluency."  But if you can, then good for you.  Please come and enjoy a steak dinner.

Last edited by JapaneseRuleOf7 (2013 October 08, 1:54 am)

dizmox wrote:

dtcamero wrote:

the grammar section is full of archaisms that one never comes across in actual written japanese.
all the questions basically come down to the splitting of semantic hairs between 2 similar terms.
and I could go on...

but that being said... if you want to get a job in japan, or to prove you have professional language ability on a resume, you must pass the jlpt. so we struggle forward on the long march toward this silly test.

I would consider the JLPT1 to be at a significantly lower level than having a business level of Japanese, honestly. You would have to study just as hard even if it didn't exist.

I don't remember any archaisms in the test or study materials and all the questions would be obvious to an educated native, it's all standard Japanese, so I don't think it's silly... no more than TOEIC anyway. (similarly TOEIC should be a walk in the park for anyone with a business level of English).

Someone I know was studying for jlpt n1 a couple of years ago and said that the kokugo teachers at his schools couldn't even get the answers right on some questions...

The level of the JLPT N1 is roughly equivalent to a Japanese native high school student.
If a kokugo teacher can't figure out the answers they need to quit their job.

That having been said, there's an obvious level in quality of knowledge, not necessarily quantity of knowledge, that differentiates a native high school student and a person who is studying Japanese as a second language. Understanding Japanese in a Japanese way, enough to pass N1, is apparently quite difficult. Even if the amount of words and grammar in your brain matches/surpasses that of the highschooler.

(I've also seen every grammar point and vocabulary word that I saw on the N1 being used in daily life so that's another nail in the coffin of the "difficult for natives/archaic" myth.)

The most valid and reasonable complaint against the JLPT is its lack of a production section. I found the N1 to be quite a decent test other than that.

ktcgx wrote:

Zorlee wrote:

JLPT N1 is a breeze for Japanese people, let alone teachers. The "JLPT N1 is hard even for natives" thing is a myth.

Ah, so I guess my (Japanese) friends who tell me they don't feel confident about passing it are then indeed morons... lol

No they are more likely just being polite or playing down their ability, I have no doubt they would all pass just fine. I see N1 grammar all over the place and its hardly archaic.

Just to add, *passing* the exam is not in doubt -- what needing 70%? I suspect a Japanese person *might* make a mistake on one or two questions but get the rest correct without any trouble at all. All would get more than 90% with no trouble.

Last edited by NightSky (2013 October 08, 9:32 am)

ktcgx wrote:

Zorlee wrote:

JLPT N1 is a breeze for Japanese people, let alone teachers. The "JLPT N1 is hard even for natives" thing is a myth.

Ah, so I guess my (Japanese) friends who tell me they don't feel confident about passing it are then indeed morons... lol

As has been mentioned in a couple of other threads, they're either a) being polite, or b) confusing it with level 1 of Kanji Kentei. From what I heard not many Japanese people who aren't employed in language teaching or HR have even heard of the JLPT, so when they hear about a "Japanese language test" the Kanken is the first thing that comes to mind, and that test has a pass rate of only 15% or so.

NightSky wrote:

ktcgx wrote:

Zorlee wrote:

JLPT N1 is a breeze for Japanese people, let alone teachers. The "JLPT N1 is hard even for natives" thing is a myth.

Ah, so I guess my (Japanese) friends who tell me they don't feel confident about passing it are then indeed morons... lol

Just to add, *passing* the exam is not in doubt -- what needing 70%? I suspect a Japanese person *might* make a mistake on one or two questions but get the rest correct without any trouble at all. All would get more than 90% with no trouble.

This too. Although the passing mark on N1 is 100 points out of 180.. so ~56%?
The idea of "passing" a test with only a little over half the answers has always baffled me.
A 90%+ on the N1 would be maybe right under C1 on the CEFR scale while being right on the pass mark - 70% would likely be more equivalent to B1 or low B2 or theresabouts. (Minus the production bit, of course.)

drdunlap wrote:

Although the passing mark on N1 is 100 points out of 180.. so ~56%?
The idea of "passing" a test with only a little over half the answers has always baffled me.

Note that the criteria for passing the JLPT is based on a scaled score, not on raw score. That the JLPT requires "a little more than half answers correct to pass" seems to be a common misconception. I'm fairly sure you need (a lot) more than half the questions on the test correct to pass.

As for Benny's adventure with Japanese, I look forward to seeing his results after three months. I remember reading about his similar attempt with Chinese (apparently he really, really didn't enjoy his stay in Taiwan for some reason), so it'll be interesting to compare with how he goes in Japanese. I think JapaneseRuleOf7's proposal to use the NHK Easy News as an ad-hoc listening test is actually pretty ingenious. If Benny decides to take up that challenge (which I doubt), then it'd be interesting to see how he'd fare with that as well.

Last edited by Guoguodi (2013 October 08, 6:17 pm)

Guoguodi wrote:

drdunlap wrote:

Although the passing mark on N1 is 100 points out of 180.. so ~56%?
The idea of "passing" a test with only a little over half the answers has always baffled me.

Note that the criteria for passing the JLPT is based on a scaled score, not on raw score. That the JLPT requires "a little more than half answers correct to pass" seems to be a common misconception. I'm fairly sure you need (a lot) more than half the questions on the test correct to pass.

The scaling changes the weight of each question to keep the test fair. 100 points is still around 56%.

ps mr_hans_moleman, what was your score after sleepytest?

@vileru It'll probably take him forever to learn English though (maybe).

Considering the score required for a pass, JLPT1 is barely native middle school level.
Anyone claiming it's hard for a native adult is just making excuses.

Jarvik7 wrote:

Considering the score required for a pass, JLPT1 is barely native middle school level.
Anyone claiming it's hard for a native adult is just making excuses.

I think it's hard for a native adult to get all the questions right.

Hard for a native adult to get a passing grade? Ludicrous.

Hard for native adult to get 90%? Dubious.

Probably at around 95% or so you would start to distinguish natives who did complete high school from those who didn't.

It's hard for -anyone- to get 100% since a small percentage of the questions are somewhat debatable, but given the thresholds and scaling of the test, that hardly matters for legitimate learners. No grade is given, after all, besides pass/fail.

However, the score required isn't really the deciding factor. If put to it, I could design a language test in English or in Japanese that the majority of middle-schooler graduates would fail even with a 50% passing threshold. It's just a matter of asking hard enough questions to assure that threshold.

If I want a 50% pass rate for a 100 question test with a 50% pass threshold, I just need to ask questions hard enough that 2/3rds of the questions are on average answered incorrectly.

Then if you have an even distribution of 25% (total guessing) to 100% (know every answer), you can place the average student in the bottom of the score range and the above average student in the top of the score range.

The same could be done in theory for PhD candidates in any given language .... but I couldn't dare brag that -I- personally could design that test, I just say someone with enough knowledge of the candidate language could.

I think Eiken is significantly harder than the JLPT from my impression. There's a speaking portion too. If they set the JLPT to be of a similar difficulty there wouldn't be enough test-takers for it to be profitable. It's a niche language after all.

dtcamero wrote:

I couldn't imagine anyone I know that learned english as a second language being able to tango with that thing...

There lots of foreign doctors, scientists, businessmen, etc. in the west though, aren't there? This is the level of English required to be a professional here.

Last edited by dizmox (2013 October 09, 3:21 am)

dtcamero wrote:

haha wow that test is hard! I couldn't imagine anyone I know that learned english as a second language being able to tango with that thing...

Challenge accepted.

25/25 on section 1 in 3 minutes.
25/26 on sections 2-3 in 19 minutes. The one mistake was a typo.

There were two words I didn't know (inculcate and lassitude), but it didn't matter as they were wrong answers in section 1.