A brief history of my Japanese language studies

February 26th, 2009

It’s been almost three months now since I passed the JLPT level 1 back in December. Passing the JLPT1 is not a major goal in my eyes, but nevertheless it serves as a very important milestone (not to mention its value as certification, but that’s a separate issue). It’s a milestone marking that from now on there are no specific text books, nor any kanji or vocabulary lists with content that needs to be studied any more. From now on the target is the whole darn Japanese language.

For the record, here’s a breakdown of my studies up until this point:

  • Fall 2002-Summer 2003: Half-time basic course in Japanese at the university. (During this time I also studied engineering at around 150%, adding up to around 200% of full speed academic credits.)

  • Fall 2003-Summer 2004: Japanese conversation and Technical Japanese at about one quarter speed. Also studied Japanese history, culture, society, and politics at one quarter speed, while keeping up with my regular engineering studies.
  • Fall 2004-Fall 2005: Didn’t study much in particular. In October 2004 I went to Japan for the first time as part of the post-graduate program on East Asian business culture that I was enrolled with. In January 2005 I started working, and that summer I went to Japan again for work for almost 2 months in total. Still didn’t study much though.
  • Fall 2005-Winter 2006: I transfered to the Tokyo office in early October 2005. After getting settled I took up my Japanese studies again. In early 2006 I resolved that I should pass JLPT level 2 that year, which I did – thanks to diligent studies and frequent opportinities for conversation practice.
  • 2007: While the passive vocabulary and expressions I had picked up for JLPT2 soaked in and strengthened my active Japanese skills, I didn’t study much at all actually. I spent my spare time this year learning web technology stuff and doing web-based projects such as Unreal Soccer.
  • 2008: In February, I resolved that I should pass the JLPT1 that year, with a good margin, thus essentially repeating what I had done in 2006. Started reading books in Japanese and listening to the radio every day, which improved my passive understanding of the language dramatically. By early fall I started digging into the JLPT1 textbooks for real, then slacked off, but got back with a vengeance a month or so before the test. Started using Anki for tracking and reviewing vocabulary and expressions.

And that leaves us where we are today. So, adding up years spent studying and counting the half-time basic Japanese classes I took as one year’s worth of studies (that’s how the university counts it, anyway), it adds up to three full years – two of which I spent in Japan. Seems pretty reasonable to me, for passing the JLPT1.

Next up, I’ll be writing about what I’ve learned about learning, how this could have been done more efficiently, and how I’m going to study from now on.

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JLPT: The Results Are In!

February 16th, 2009

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!

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JLPT1 Has Come And Gone

December 15th, 2008

I didn’t really write anything about my progress with studying for this year’s JLPT1 (Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 1) since after I took the first mock test in August. As I mentioned before, my goal was to pass with a good score, meaning at least 80% (passing score is 70%).

So how did the studying go? Well, decently good but not as good as I had hoped. For a while during fall I slowed down a bit (but never stopped) due to external issues. I kept reading books and listening to the radio, of course, to get continuous Japanese language input.

The weekend two weeks before the test, which was a three day weekend in Japan, I spent almost all days studying grammar. I was going through the Kanzen Master grammar book, reading every grammar item, the example sentences, and did all the exercises, in order basically.

Then I took the week before the test off, using my precious remaining paid holidays, in order to cram the last bits and pieces. Actually that was mostly vocabulary, but I also reviewed grammar, reading (the Unicom reading comprehension book), and listening (Unicom listening comprehension book).

I also entered the word lists I had gathered over the last year into Anki, and slashed the default intervals by at least a factor of 10 in order to cram the 755 words I knew I should but didn’t know. I had tried Anki before but was too appalled by the UI (I still am, and the fact that it’s slower than Java at starting up even on a dual core 2 gig machine), and a bit sceptical to using a computer for learning (yeah, feel free to not consider me Generation Y), but in the end I overcame this and it turned out pretty well, although I’d really recommend using Anki the way it’s intended to be used – which is as spaced repetition for long periods of time, not cramming. (It’s actually got a “cram mode” but I found that pretty useless – slashing the intervals proved to be better.)


Anyway, about a month before the test I did the writing/vocabulary part of a mock test and got pretty much the same result as before – even slightly lower – with 80% on kanji and 60% on vocabulary compared to 82% and 64% before. I don’t know why it was lower, maybe just random disturbance. However, when I did the rest of the mock test about a week before the real test, I had 82% on the listening (up from 72%), 74% on the reading (up from 68%), and a whopping 89% on the grammar (up from 78%). So the intense grammar studies had clearly paid off. Remember that the grammar section takes 20 minutes – 11% – of the test time, but still account for 25% of the score, and is the easiest section to cram.

So in total I had 78% on the second mock test – even though I did the vocabulary part before cramming vocabulary – so in the end, the forecast is looking good. When I took level 2 I had 65% on the mock test a week before, and ended up getting 81% on the real one, so I think I pull myself together when it’s for real too…

But I also think I was a little bit unlucky with some of the content that the real test covered. There were some topics appearing especially on the first part where my vocabulary is lacking. But even allowing for a 5% lower score due to that, it’s likely to be a pass, but may be closer to 70% than 80%, which I consider to be the lowest acceptable score. If I don’t reach that, I’ll probably do the test again soon.

Anyway, from this peroid of intensive study, I can at least draw these conclusions:

  • Exercise books are good for self study. For some reason I had a lot of books, some of which I even read frequently, that included exercises, but I never did the exercises. The Kanzen Master books for instance are good, and the Unicom listening comprehension book. I guess if you follow their recipe of doing one chapter per day then you’ll be in good shape for the JLPT.

    Maybe it was because I was introduced to them as part of classes that I got off on a bad start. Doing exercises is good for your memory. I’ll definitely finish the kanji part of the Kanzen Master book too – I didn’t do that because my kanji skills are already good enough for the test.

  • Use a computer program for vocabulary training! I have to admit I was being foolish not to do this from the start. After having used Anki for a few weeks now I realize how much simpler studying vocabulary has become. Especially using the synchronization feature I can keep my vocabulary synced between home and work (I often add work-related words). Also the fact that the software keeps track of which items need attention is very convenient.

So now we just have to wait for the score? No, now we keep on studying. All this studying has reminded me of how fun it is both to study and to learn, and not to mention the greatness of being able to communicate and read books in Japanese. Fortunately, there is still more to learn.

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