I’m back home now, after taking that JLPT exam, and I must admit it didn’t go very well. The first part went worse than it usually does, and had lots of things I had to guess the answer to, the listening part went worse than it usually does, but went well enough, and the third part went worse than it usually does, which is to say it went pretty much to crap. I hope it went better for you others. 
Then again, I’m comparing the outcome of “the real thing” to the exams I’ve taken at home, and I can only say there’s quite a big difference, even though I put in the effort to make it as similar as possible (time restraints etc. were all the same).
What had me worried before the exam was whether I’d end up not actually hearing the listening part, speaker-wise, but that wasn’t a problem at all. I may still pass, but that’d take some major luck. If I fail, I’ll be disappointed but not “you’re shitting me” surprised.
I bought two onigiris and one triangle-sandwich, two bars of chocolate and a bottle of tea on my way there, and realized that I should’ve bought more food and less chocolate.
There is a supposed 50 (I think?) minute break between the 2nd and 3rd parts but for some odd reason, we had to listen to the 12th problem one more time and so we only got something like 25 minutes of lunch-break. I wanted to eat more but I didn’t have anything with me and going to a store was out of the question (everyone else goes to the store on the lunch break so the lines are too long).
In any case, that’s it for 2Q, on to 1Q. I decided from the beginning that I’d take this one once and then move on, no matter how it went. With a bit of luck I might pass after all, so that’s what I’m hoping for. Will know “in the middle of February”.
I presume by comprehension part you mean reading comprehension, which is the part I suck the most at. Basically, reading stuff is the way to go. Preferably literature. There is something called “light novels” out there which is basically regular books written for adults but with fairly simple language. They still make no sense to me most of the time, but my reading speed at least increased noticeably since I started reading regularly (before bed, usually).
Beyond that, you just need the grammar and the vocabulary and you’re good to go. As for the kanjis I suppose me being in a school sort of helps since I get a lot of kanjis thrown at me all the time. A tip is to grab “中級から学ぶ” (ちゅうきゅうからまなぶ) which is a book aimed at JLPT 2 people. It’s got something like 22 texts in it with accompanying practice pages for grammar etc.
[edit: "light novel" not "night novel". gah, hope I didn't set someone on a bad track there]
How did you prepare for the comprehension part ;thats one part that gives me shivers.
We cannot pick up any randon passage from interent becasue they would probably have kanjis way beyond what Level 2 needs
I hope we both passed ><! It wasn’t so great for me either..level 1 was terribly hard.
The first part I was literally clueless. I went into the exam knowing I’ll do horribly on that, and my original plan was to balance my mark out with the listening/grammar section.
The listening was really confusing– but I think I did all right.
Really? Lucky! We didn’t have any breaks. We only had a 5 minute break, when everyone rushed to the washroom, and there was no time for food. Our person of authority for our room didn’t let us have any drinks/food during the exam. My other friend who did the exam in another room said she was allowed to eat.
I hate waiting for the results. Darn, two months of waiting.
I hope we all did well.
You had no breaks?? That’s… not according to the rules whatsoever. You might want to bring that up with the JLPT guys. The schedule for Ikkyuu is (was) 9.45-10.45 (writing), 11.25-12.30 (listening), 13.30-15.15 (reading/grammar), which in other words means (excluding waiting to be let out of the class room etc) about 40 mins between parts 1-2, and 1 hour between parts 2-3…!
That aside, yeah, waiting 2 months definitely sucks. That’s what happens with no competition. They slack like there’s no tomorrow. I hope you did well despite the tyrannical person of authority. :/
Heard from my Korean friends that they do the test with just 5-10 minutes breaks between the different parts in Korea, so it seems to be different from place to place..
For me I actually found the listening part of level1 to be the hardest part. The cd player broke down and they had to exchange it and play a bunch of question two times, the staff got stressed and nervous and the examinees got annoyed. Kind of ruined my focus and we got our lunch break stolen as well. Had to eat my onigiri and kakipi- in 15 minutes instead of 1 hour.
For the kanji and vocabulary part I’m quite sure I nailed 80% of it, but I’ve pratically been bashing kanji into my head from morning until evening every day for the last 3 months.
As for the reading comprehension, I don’t really find it that difficult. Of course, it’s different from person to person I guess, but for me I’ve gotten used to reading by using the 中級から学ぶ日本語 and the following 上級で学ぶ日本語books, doing all the old level1 tests from the last 6-7 years and the reading comprehension practice aimed for the JLPT that we’ve been doing at school.. I’m sure you’ll get there in time, just hang in there.
I had no idea it was different in different places. I kind of presumed the rules were supposed to be the same no matter where you took the test, to give everyone an equal chance. Serves me for assuming.
And yeah, reading is something that will improve unless you slack, so it’s a matter of waiting it out. It’s also a matter of getting enough kanji and vocab knowledge in order to be able to read books aside from the stuff you get thrown at you in school. With the way things are set up, our skillset is leaning heavily away from reading speed and comprehension initially simply because kanjis are a road block that takes a lot of studying before you can even begin to work on. At least in my case that’s so, but in my case my kanji learning began much much later than it should have, so it may not be the case for everyone.
Hope you end up passing!! Keeping my fingers crossed that you did better than you think!
Thanks Annie! It would help my morale when I face the level-1 test in July if anything so here’s to hoping.
Haha yeah, like Tomas said above, I guess it’s different in each country. Sucks for us ><. It also seems like you guys got more time to do the exam than us. Hmmm!
It seems so long ago that we did that exam, though XD. Maybe it’s just me.
Hehe, it was only a few weeks ago!
What’s long is the wait until mid-February in my case. Well, it would be if I didn’t have to study for Ikkyuu in July (which I don’t think I’ll be able to pull off but it’s worth a try, eh?).
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