Almost exactly one year has passed since I declared my intention to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test’s highest level with a good margin, in February 24, 2008. I defined good margin as a score of over 80%.
I then took the test back in December. It felt like a pass, but I was unsure about my goal of getting a score over 80%. Anyway, today the result came:
So yeah, it’s a pass! And with a score of 84%, I consider it a success. It’s surely a relief to know that I won’t have to do another JLPT ever again.
Speaking of which, if I did a JLPT1 now, I’m sure I’d get a 90% score. Because I really got up to speed with my study routines before the test, and guess what – I never stopped! Yes, start at 100% and then increase, is the philosophy I follow. Since, in my opinion, I’ve now proved that I know how to study efficiently, I’ll keep writing about study methods and efficiently learning Japanese more from now on. I’ve got some good things going now, so I’m hoping that sharing my techniques can be of use to someone.
The score, as you can see, breaks down to 86% on writing/vocabulary, 80% on listening, and 85.5% on reading/grammar. So compared to the mock test I did before the real one, that’s much better on writing/vocab (up from 70%), slightly worse on listening (down from 82% – must have been that damned clown demon!), and a little better on reading/grammar (up from 81.5%). I’d speculate that the writing/vocab score was unreasonably low on my mock test for some unknown reason, and that reading/grammar went better on the real thing because I concentrate better when I know it’s for real, and 90 minutes is much longer than my usual attention span.
Low score on listening, as before, despite me listening to the radio while working, watching tv, and talking to my girlfriend, I cannot really explain. Actually, it might not have to do with Japanese in particular. I’m a good listener in the sense that I let people talk and make an effort to understand what they’re getting at, but I’ve realized I’m very bad at concentrating to someone talking for more than a minute or so… I lose concentration and start thinking of other things quite quickly. I’m the kind of person you want to send an email to rather than call on the phone if the matter requires more than 15 seconds to explain, if you see what I mean. Maybe that’s just it. Or maybe it’s because I had a very annoying, slight kind of ear disorder of my left ear the day of the test caused by a minor cold just before and sleeping without covering myself with the blankets properly. Even compared to my native northern Sweden, winter in Japan is a cold experience (since the houses are built by scammers and crooks).
Anyway, that’s it for today. Back to studying!
Congratulations on passing Level 1. I have been going through all your Japanese language related posts and will be trying some of your studying methods. I have purchased three Unicom books for level 2: grammar, reading and the two mock tests. Once level 2 is out of the way it will be on to Level 1 or N1 depending when I take the test. I look forward to seeing more Japanese related posts.
Jeff in Iwate
I wanted to add. I looked at the test from 2008 and did a little research. I had trouble finding a study guide that contained all the kanji and vocabulary for that year's test in one book. I then happened to look through my New Horizon Japanese-English dictionary published by Tokyo Shoseki. It had all but one of the kanji/vocabulary answers. It contains over 10,000 words and shows each word in hiragana, followed by the kanji reading. I know it sound crazy to read through a dictionary, but I look at it this way, the vocabulary I learn will stay with me long after I have finished the test. Keep up the good posts.
Jeff in Iwate
Hi iwatejeff,
Thanks a lot for your comments. It's always nice to get some feedback.
Yeah the Unicom books are great for level 2! Especially the reading, listening, and mock tests books I think. It sounds like you're well on your way to passing level 2, which is great since from then on it gets even more interesting.
I haven't actually looked much at old tests (mostly mock tests), which was probably a mistake efficiency-wise. The tests can contain 20% words/kanji that are not on the list of words/kanji, so yeah you might not find all of them in study guides.
Going through a whole dictionary sounds like some of the ideas I've had before as well, but never been able to keep up for very long. Please let me know if it works out for you – that would be interesting and impressive.
I'm currently targeting learning about 1800 words/expressions per year (5 per day), which seems doable. 10,000 words is a lot though, and I guess you'll be learning them in kana/alphabetic order or something, not in order of relevance?
I'll do me best to keep the posts coming. The ironic thing is that now that I've passed JLPT1, I'm going even stronger and much, much more efficiently than before… I think I'll have to start studying some other language soon since I'm getting good at it now.
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