Hmm, I suppose it depends on the individual.  You say listening is hard for you, but for me it's by far the easiest section on the test.  I live in Japan though, so I get tons of listening practice, and I'm used to figuring out conversations even if I can't understand 100% of the vocabulary.

For me the hardest part of N1 is vocabulary, because I've never really been able to bring myself to SRS regularly, and it's hard to learn enough vocabulary without SRS.  I read regularly, but I read fun stuff, so it doesn't really cover a wide range of vocabulary.  If I read more newspapers or magazines I think they would prepare me a lot better for N1.

That said, the part of N1 I did worst on was the reading, but it seems like the N1 reading section in July was hard for a LOT of people.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 September 20, 6:40 am)

I used somatome and Unicom's grammar book. Online vocab list, lots of listening.

Tzadeck wrote:

Hmm, I suppose it depends on the individual.  You say listening is hard for you, but for me it's by far the easiest section on the test.  I live in Japan though, so I get tons of listening practice, and I'm used to figuring out conversations even if I can't understand 100% of the vocabulary.

For me the hardest part of N1 is vocabulary, because I've never really been able to bring myself to SRS regularly, and it's hard to learn enough vocabulary without SRS.  I read regularly, but I read fun stuff, so it doesn't really cover a wide range of vocabulary.  If I read more newspapers or magazines I think they would prepare me a lot better for N1.

That said, the part of N1 I did worst on was the reading, but it seems like the N1 reading section in July was hard for a LOT of people.

Right now I'm struggling with listening because even though I may have seen the words, I haven't really heard the words. I think my understanding/processing is a tad slow too, and when I miss a word or phrase, I dwell on it which makes me miss the next words/phrases.

(FWIW, whenever I took standardized tests in primary school, listening was always my worst subject too. Perhaps it's not a language problem, lol.)

Is there a difference in question-style or different requirements for understanding? Or was it just mostly a vocabulary issue? How about time, did you need to read fast?

@caivano: I feel that after reviewing the answers and re-reviewing the text, I can understand N1 reading/listening. It hasn't been overwhelming yet, but I do spend quite a bit of time on it. I can understand needing N2 vocab and N2 grammar books since you'll be tested on those specifically, but I felt like for reading and listening you could get away with a higher level, unless I'm mistaken somewhere which is what I'm trying to get out of Tzadeck.

@jonuhey: I have...
KM 2kyuu Grammar
Soumatome N2 Vocab

KM N1 Grammar, N1 Listening
Soumatome N1 Vocab
Unicom N1 Reading

I felt like I wasn't able to really do KM 2kyuu Grammar until I built up my vocab from completing KO2001. I also used DJG as a reference since the explanations in KM 2kyuu were sometimes too concise. (You'll have to buy all three, since the book seemed to include sections from basic, intermediate, and advanced.)

For what it's worth, I added my first 2kyuu grammar sentences last November, and I'm just about to finish it up this week. The vocab book took me 5 months. (It says "only 8 weeks" with a vocab section per day, but we SRS disciples know better than that!)




I find this description of the JLPT fascinating and hilarious:
http://www.outpostnine.com/gaijin_smash … -kyuu.html

kainzero wrote:

I find this description of the JLPT fascinating and hilarious:
http://www.outpostnine.com/gaijin_smash … -kyuu.html

That was funny!  I do think the listening part tests your concentration powers as well.  I missed one question completely from just zoning out...

kainzero wrote:

i really dislike those (1)(2)(3)(4) type questions where you have to find out what goes in slot (2). i feel like those are the least practical questions

D: I really liked those. It seems to be testing foreigners to see if we intuitively place Japanese in the same order as natives. A lot of the new test seems to be set up that way and I'm glad for it (I say that, but I've never seen the old test, maybe it's the same? I was thinking that 1,2,3,4 sentence order questions were new, though). It makes studying expressly for the test pay off less and simply mastering Japanese pay off more.

Much like the "grammar" section of N1 in which there's no real grammar questions, simply word usage and expressions that most any Japanese person knows and has seen 10,000 times and we're asked if we, too, can identify how that word or expression is supposed to be used.

Tzadeck wrote:

Hmm, I suppose it depends on the individual.  You say listening is hard for you, but for me it's by far the easiest section on the test.  I live in Japan though, so I get tons of listening practice, and I'm used to figuring out conversations even if I can't understand 100% of the vocabulary.

For me the hardest part of N1 is vocabulary, because I've never really been able to bring myself to SRS regularly, and it's hard to learn enough vocabulary without SRS.  I read regularly, but I read fun stuff, so it doesn't really cover a wide range of vocabulary.  If I read more newspapers or magazines I think they would prepare me a lot better for N1.

That said, the part of N1 I did worst on was the reading, but it seems like the N1 reading section in July was hard for a LOT of people.

Gotta agree with this one, although I'm the type of person who uses the srs often, sometimes if I'm busy I just put it off 1 day but I always catch up nowadays(must have been due to not having my own computer for a while). But I think what most people have trouble with listening is simply because they are still getting used to it. It really takes a while to get good at it.

About to pull my hair out here, waiting for my results to show up from SOAS, as someone really puts the snail in snail mail. I don't particularly have high hopes for passing, but I have to know one way or another in time to leave for Japan on Sunday morning to know what level of JLPT I'll be taking in December. (It would be stupid to take N2 again if I already passed it, and if I didn't, well...) ARGH.

Thanks for the info. I get the feeling that I'll be sending them an e-mail on Friday morning, because  I seriously doubt that they'll have shown up here by then.... I could be wrong. I would love to be wrong. But experience tells me not to get my hopes up.

BohemianCoast wrote:

kainzero wrote:

I find this description of the JLPT fascinating and hilarious:
http://www.outpostnine.com/gaijin_smash … -kyuu.html

I too found this hilarious, but I was left with a question -- when asked to describe a rainbow, what colours do the Japanese say are in it? Because we only include 'indigo' because Newton expanded the colours to seven because seven's a cool number.
Otherwise the word is rarely used in English except as a description of the colour of denim (a very different colour from the 'indigo' in a rainbow). It's pretty clear from Randall Munroe's awesome color survey ( http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ ) that indigo isn't a colour label in English.

I appreciate this is now entirely in the wrong place...

虹の色の数は現在の日本では一般的に七色（赤、橙、黄、緑、青、藍、紫）と言われるが、地域や民族・時代により大きく異なる。日本では古くは五色、沖縄地方では二色（赤、黒または赤、青）とされていた。なお現代でもかつての沖縄のように明、暗の2色として捉える民族は多い。

Source: Japanese Wikipedia

Last edited by Bokusenou (2011 September 21, 9:25 am)

drdunlap wrote:

atreya wrote:

日本語の学習方法の秘訣を教えて下さい！お願いします。
4回目に合格したい。今年の12月にN1の試験に合格したいんです！

秘訣なんかないんですよ。：P
このレベルでは勉強方法の問題じゃなくて、日本語を実際に使ってるかどうかという問題だと思いますよ。そしてどれくらい使ってるか、ということですね。atreyaさんの得点は結構よかったけど、読解だけが問題だったら読解に集中すればいいんでしょう？目が頭から落ちるまで日本語を読めば、問題解決！w　

そうですね。じゃあ、目が頭から落ちるまで刊張ります！
それと、秘訣も教えてくれると助かるなあ～^^;（冗談でござる）

Last edited by atreya (2011 September 21, 10:24 am)

That post about JLPT and Indigo was hilarious. I'm the complete opposite of this guy right now. I've gone through 800 kanji in RTK, super basic grammar, and hardly any vocab :-). won't be taking the JLPT for a while! But if I ever do, I think kanji will be my strongest area after using RTK.

jishera wrote:

That post about JLPT and Indigo was hilarious. I'm the complete opposite of this guy right now. I've gone through 800 kanji in RTK, super basic grammar, and hardly any vocab :-). won't be taking the JLPT for a while! But if I ever do, I think kanji will be my strongest area after using RTK.

just note that...

-that entry was old. the test has changed, so it's no longer a grammar/listening/kanji test but it has grammar/listening/reading.
-knowing RTK won't particularly help, since they won't test you on a kanji and its definition straight up; but a multiple choice question where you have to choose the right word and they put 4 words with changes to only one radical. 働く vs 動く so you need to know the right word (not keyword) in order to pick out which one to use.