I just have a quick question about the JLPT scoring for the vocab section. A lot of the questions are 3-7 part questions. If we get 1 part wrong, is the whole question wrong, or are they scored individually? (sorry if this was already asked)

Mine showed up on Saturday, so probably not yet. It depends on how good your usual mail service is. Mine is pretty good.

牛juice -- I'm right there with you. Took some practice tests, on 2Q I got a 90%ish and then I went and did 1Q -- that was somewhere around 50-60%.

Hey, I guess 55% is still passing, right? Maybe?

I'm just going through old exams, and then learning everything in them that I don't know in them. It's basically high-density cramming that will -hopefully- boost me high up enough to pass. Once that's out of the way, I can focus on absorbing the information.
I don't like this -cram- mindset or pace very much, but with less than 3 weeks to the test...gotta do what we gotta do...

Well, I'm starting to think maybe I shouldn't have been so ambitious.
I thought that I (like in Japan) would have all this time to study and prepare, but I'm having troubles getting my actual schoolwork done.

Maybe some sort of fluke will occur and I manage to scrape the minimum passing grade

After taking N2 mock tests (yes N2, not the old 2kyuu style ones) I finally took the "real one" from July this year yesterday ................. and I was shocked!!!!

First of all there were tons of words in it in the vocab/kanji section that are in my JLPT 1 category.
Secondly, the grammar section is way to difficult!! If you studied with the 2kyuu Kanzen Master book like me and then took some N2 mock tests, you'll be shocked, too, maybe.
I was able to solve almost all of the N2 mock test grammar points without any problems because they had problems that you could solve if you worked to the Kanzen Master book, but in the real N2 test it was different.
There, problems like this appeared:

41　仕事の合間にときどき遠くを見る（　　　）、目が疲れにくくなった。
　　１　ようにしたところに　　　　　　　　２　ようにしたところ
　　３　までになったところに　　　　　　　４　までになったところ
42　人間の脳に関する研究で明らかになったことはまだほんの一部（　　　）、その研究
は着実に進んできた。
　　１　にすぎないとすると　　　　　　　　２　にかかわらないとすると
　　３　にすぎないとはいえ　　　　　　　　４　にかかわらないとはいえ
43　会議の目的は新商品のアイディアを自由に出し合う（　　　）が、結局、上司に意見が優先されて終わった。
　　１　ことにあったはずだ　　　　　　　　２　ことにあったためだ
　　３　のにあったはずだ　　　　　　　　　４　のにあったためだ

Yes, they basically have the grammar points in there, too, but all that extra stuff is confusing to me and especially #41 is the type of question I fear most! (Correct answer is #2, but I chose #1 (with the "ni" in it)!!!!
Is there ANY way I can drill for these type of evil questions right now?

And lastly, I'm also confused about the time/pauses during the listenting section.
The CDs that came with my N2 mock tests, always have a few seconds in between each new question and also give you some seconds of reading time for the questions where you're supposed to read the answers first. The "real" N2 audio (well, that was from a Chinese website, though), had no pauses at all!!! That was too exhausting and if you have zero time to think and fill out the correct answer, then ... that will be too tough.

Hope somebody can clear things up for me.
Only 1 more week left until the real thing

I know that the style has changed. All the N2 books that just came out and explain the differences in detail and have many exercises with the new style still are DIFFERENT from what appeared in the "real" test and THAT'S what confuses me

Anyways, thanks for the link to your awesome thread

It's such a shame. Grammar has always been my weakest skill. And now that I thought I finally got a hang of it, this happens. Confidence boost, byebye

Is there any information out there on how the N4 will be graded.  I cant seem to find any concrete answers.

The listening section has pauses for you to process things. The mp3s from the Chinese sites don't because it's pirated and they can't be bothered with such things (hence the numerous typos).

chochajin wrote:

There, problems like this appeared:

Wow... ok. So gone are the days when they tested knowledge of specific grammar points in the grammar section. They're now just testing whether you can understand the grammar in JLPT2-level sentences. Which is a far more nebulous concept. And damn hard to study for.

Are we talking a few questions like this to separate the men from the boys or am i really facing the prospect of getting near zero for the grammar section? Lol. I'm not even sure what grammar point question 43 is supposed to be. I guess i can probably narrow all of those down to a 50-50 guess...

Whatever happened to the idea that the N2 was supposed to be roughly the same difficulty as the old JLPT2? I mean fair enough if they want to make the test harder, but that's not what they said.

btw, are the answers 42 = 3, 43 = 1?

Last edited by zigmonty (2010 November 26, 3:57 am)

zigmonty wrote:

chochajin wrote:

There, problems like this appeared:

Wow... ok. So gone are the days when they tested knowledge of specific grammar points in the grammar section. They're now just testing whether you can understand the grammar in JLPT2-level sentences. Which is a far more nebulous concept. And damn hard to study for.

Actually all three questions quoted here look like they're basically [choose grammar item A or B]+[choose grammar item C or D], giving the four answers as the four possible combinations. So they're harder than if there was just one JLPT2-level grammar point in the sentence, but they are still testing specific L2 points (eg for 41 ように, ところ, ところに which are all in old JLPT2 [with までになる being an invalid answer of the kind they've always thrown in from time to time]).

My take on grammar cards for SRS is to have the front be a sentence using the grammar point, and the back be a brief summary of meaning, relevant particle requirements and cautionary notes. I think if you can recall the latter given the former you ought to be able to answer this sort of question most of the time.

rich_f wrote:

On the upside, studying for N2 has really boosted my Japanese these past few months, so it's not a loss or anything. It's just a bit aggravating to do all of this work and not have anything (possibly) to show for it. I'd rather take a test that just shows people how good my Japanese is on a sliding scale.

Yeah, likewise. I decided to take this test about a year ago as target to shoot for. And it's been awesome motivation in that sense. Since this more or less marks the 2 year point in my studies, i knew it was going to be a stretch to pass (that was the point). If i fail it, i'll just sit it again next year and annihilate it. Having nothing to show for this attempt will suck a bit as there's no chance i'd fail an N3 exam. I probably would have been happy to pay for both exams had they been on separate days. But i don't really need the certificate for anything at present, so an extra year isn't that big a deal.

Usually, it's 上 then 下 when it comes to things like books.

For example, the 凡人社 Intermediate listening drills books: 上 is the first 25 exercises, and 下 is the next 25.

But if you're talking about ability... then I'd think 中級~上 means 中級~上級 and 中級~下 means 中級~下級 (or something like that.) Just a guess, but sort of like lower and upper intermediate levels.

rich_f wrote:

Usually, it's 上 then 下 when it comes to things like books.

This lines up with stuff like 上旬, 中旬 and 下旬.

I think when you're talking about order, 上 is before 下. If you're talking about rank, it's the opposite. That is, 上級 is higher than 下級.