stevesayskanpai wrote:

UK here. Passed N2 with 96. Not sure where to go from here - obviously not ready for N1 in a year (as I can't study full time, or even every day) - on the other hand, not willing to pay the same amount of money to take N2 again just to improve my score as some people seem to do.

Any advice for someone who wants to maintain/consolidate their N2 level in the next 12 months?

read,read,read...and read.
Srs what you find worth the hassle and skip the rest

Unlucky those people who failed by just a few marks. It's a good incentive to ace it next time. Seems like it's going to be pretty hard to get a really high mark with the new scoring system. A good reason to try taking it again maybe, although there are plenty of other things to aim for.

My tips on N1 study for what they're worth:
Far in advance
- Aim to learn all of the relevant kanji and their readings as early as possible
- Practice reading a lot of material appropriate for N1 level (articles, literature etc.).
This is hard to do if you haven't learnt most of the relevant kanji first.
- Learn new vocab/grammar as you come across it
- Listen to lots of Japanese (but no need for it to be at all JLPT related)

Then, a few months before the exam
- Do practice papers (obviously). In particular try to get used to the style of the listening questions.
- Look for gaps in your vocab using JLPT study guides (e.g. I was pretty poor at the uses of compound verbs like 取り立てる、打ち出す etc.)
- Use the JLPT study guides to revise grammar and make sure you haven't missed some of the more obscure uses than you only rarely come across

mutley wrote:

Unlucky those people who failed by just a few marks. It's a good incentive to ace it next time. Seems like it's going to be pretty hard to get a really high mark with the new scoring system. A good reason to try taking it again maybe, although there are plenty of other things to aim for.

My tips on N1 study for what they're worth:
Far in advance
- Aim to learn all of the relevant kanji and their readings as early as possible
- Practice reading a lot of material appropriate for N1 level (articles, literature etc.).
This is hard to do if you haven't learnt most of the relevant kanji first.
- Learn new vocab/grammar as you come across it
- Listen to lots of Japanese (but no need for it to be at all JLPT related)

Then, a few months before the exam
- Do practice papers (obviously). In particular try to get used to the style of the listening questions.
- Look for gaps in your vocab using JLPT study guides (e.g. I was pretty poor at the uses of compound verbs like 取り立てる、打ち出す etc.)
- Use the JLPT study guides to revise grammar and make sure you haven't missed some of the more obscure uses than you only rarely come across

nice advice, definitely agree with all these points.

Last edited by ta12121 (2011 March 05, 9:27 pm)

pudding cat wrote:

I got my N2 result!  119/130 so a pass   But I took the July N2 as well and I got 136/180...  I noticed though that the pass rate was much lower in December than July so I'm hoping I have made some improvement over all

So much for their theory that their awesome new score calculation method means scores shouldn't vary between tests...

pudding cat wrote:

zigmonty wrote:

So much for their theory that their awesome new score calculation method means scores shouldn't vary between tests...

For N2, the pass rates in Japan dropped from 59.5% (July) to 44.9% (Dec).  Overseas it went from 43.4% to 33.1%.  Clearly something changed...

The latter results are more consistent historically... I'd say if you just barely passed the N2 in July, consider yourself lucky it was the first test of the new format!

My results were

40/60 grammar
34/60 listening
17/60 reading

91/180 total

I think I know what to focus on for next year....