Yesterday I took the 2006 JLPT level 2 exam, the same level that I’m going to take in December, to see where I’m at and what my weakness is. The test is divided into 3 parts — kanji/grammar (35 minutes), listening comprehension (40 minutes), and reading comprehension (70 minutes).

The kanji/grammar part was surprisingly difficult, but I ended up figuring the right answer out on a lot of the questions anyway. The listening comprehension part was shockingly easy. I had heard before that the listening comprehension part of the JLPT is quite easy, but I didn’t expect it to be quite this easy. The reading comprehension was a bummer, because as I was doing it, a big argument ensued outside my door, which I knew instantly would cause me to not be able to concentrate and thus fail.

So I stopped the timer, put the book aside, and walked outside to see what was going on. That’s another story. When I returned, I was still on “problem 1″ though, and it took me nearly 40 minutes to finish it, out of the 70 minutes I had at my disposal. Once I moved on, things moved a little quicker, but I still ended up running 20 minutes over before I had gotten to the last question in the test.

Because of that I of course failed the test. The required percentage is 60% and I got 56%. If I hadn’t gone 20 minutes over (i.e. if my answers to the questions I didn’t even get to when the time was up were to count), I would have gotten 70%, which would have passed me with a 10% margin.

Thus, my #1 problem right now is reading speed, though I can’t help thinking that I would’ve done a better job if I’d not been disturbed halfway thru.

Some stats:

- Part 1 (kanji/grammar) — 65/100 points.
- Part 2 (listening comprehension) — 74/100 points.
- Part 3 (reading comprehension) — 85/200 points
(Part 3, if we ignore the fact I ran 20 mins over — 138/200 points)

Total: 224/400 = 56%
(Ignoring 20 mins overtime: 277/400 = 69.25%)