I got the results for the JLPT test I took last year in December finally, today. I went from being completely sure I’d failed miserably, to thinking that maybe I didn’t fail after all, and then to simply not having a clue and giving up on any forecasts on the subject.
So…
Wee! 
I apparently passed at 1 point below 70%. Thank god this wasn’t the level 1 test since that one requires you to succeed at 70% of the questions (70% is 280, I got 279…!). Luckily this was level 2, so 60% was the requirement.
Crossing my fingers for you others who took the JLPT that same day! Let me know how it went!
Nice score! I managed just 255 on my 2-kyuu, which works out to 64%.
I won’t go for 1-kyuu this year though, as I just don’t want another year cramming Japanese. After finishing my 2-year course at school next month I want to move onto other things, so from now it’s more just natural (slow) progression for me, watching dramas, reading books and speaking as much as possible. I would also like to return to iKnow, as I’ve had quite a long break from that.
I’ll wait and take the N1Q which I think starts in July 2010. Good luck with your 1-kyuu studies Kalle, I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog!
Congratulations, man! We deserved it!
Well, to be honest, I’ve decided to not stress things from here on myself. I could in theory bust my ass and sincerely aspire to pass JLPT1 in July, but I’m going to simply work my way through the Jouyou kanjis [ ] and once I’ve got those all down, I’m going to do pretty much what you intend to be doing — watching, reading, listening, in everyday life things like TV shows or whatnot. The July exam I will take simply because it’s being offered, but the one that truly matters will be the December one of this year. And if I fail that one as well, I will most likely take Dec-July (2011) to busting my ass studying like a little maniac, and then taking the test a third time, in Denmark (closest to home).
In either case, I’m a full time student so I’ll be studying full time, but I won’t overdo things like I have up until now.
Thanks, yeah. We studied hard for it
I didn’t realise you’ll try 1-kyuu in July, wow! That means you have to apply next month or something I guess. What book are you using for the 1-kyuu kanji by the way? I have the pink ‘完全マスター’ book, but I have yet to start working my way through it.
In our class, only one guy took (and passed) 1-kyuu this year, everybody else went with 2-kyuu. He’s a Taiwanese guy, and in December 2007 passed 3-kyuu with me. So in 1 year he went from 3-kyuu to 1-kyuu! Amazing really, but I guess that’s a big advantage of coming from a kanji-using country.
I’m not really using any books for kanjis at this point. I’m going with what school throws at me (that I don’t know) and what I get from books and such, and if I run out of new kanjis to study, I pick kanjis that I find amusing (or whatever) from the Jouyou list of kanjis. I meant to put the URL for the wikipedia article which lists those kanjis in the [ ]‘s in my earlier comment but it slipped my mind.
The link is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji
If you scroll down a bit, there’s a link to “List of Jouyou kanji” which has a huge ass table. At some point I copy-pasted that whole thing into OpenOffice, added a 1/0 thing to the left side which meant 1 for studied and 0 for not studied, then did some silly things to keep track of how many I’ve studied out of how many, percentage, etc.
I was quite inspired to get through e.g. grades 1-6 simply because I didn’t want to NOT know some kanji that a 7-12 year old might know.
Speaking of kanji, though, I recently got my hands on “Remembering the Kanji” by John Heising (I think that’s his name..) and it’s definitely something I wish I’d found sooner. I can’t help feeling that I’m too late starting on his method though, since I’ve only got a few hundred kanjis left to study before I’m done with the Jouyou list. Then again, I still have issues remembering the damn things, so long-term-wise, it might be worth giving a shot.
Basically it’s about learning the components of the kanji, giving them each a single keyword for their meaning, and coming up with stories as to why them, in combination, form the various kanji that they do. For example 項, which means “paragraph”, has “craft” and “head” (the right hand side component has the keyword “head”, but it’s not 頭), so the story goes something like “paragraphing can be defined as the ‘heading craft’”. So whenever you are asked to write “paragraph” you recall (hopefully) that phrase and then you know it’s head and craft. Presuming you remember the components for craft and head, you can write the kanji (though in this case, the order is the opposite). Only problem with this way of doing it is that you don’t learn any readings or anything as you go, and you only get one of the possibly many meanings for the kanji in question, but that’s something you start adding onto it after you’re done, or so it seems. It’s something I wish I’d started doing about the time I started learning Japanese, so yeah, I feel like I’m too late on this one.
Hi,
Does anybody know how to get the results. We have not yet receivd the results and eagerly looking for any website for knowing the score. Please share if anybody knows. I would be of great help.
Thanks,
Yeskay.
Yeskay, you should get an envelope in your mailbox which has the results in it. Since I’m in Japan, there’s a chance I got mine earlier than people who undertook the test in other countries, but you should receive it at the latest in April, it appears.
CONGRATS!!!! So happy to hear that you passed! You’re a smart pup!
FANTASTIC!!! YAHOOO!!! AMAZINGLYFANTASTICOUTOFTHISWORLDIAMSOHAPPYFORYOUI’MGOINGTOPASSOUT!!!
yay!
Thank you both.
Oh YAY! Congrats for passing XD!
For a sec, I thought you needed 70% to pass the level two, so that made me slightly nervous LOL.
Yeahh, I think we get our results in like April or something =/. Lazy North Americans.
It’s great that you had a nice Valentines day (=.
Once again~ congrats! Good luck with that level one exam in June now!
Thanks Shiho!
According to wikipedia, the results for overseas students should arrive around March: “Exams take several months to process, hence results are announced the following February for examinees in Japan, and March for overseas candidates.” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Language_Proficiency_Test#Results ]
Not mid-February like us in Japan but better than April.
Congratulations man!
. Just as I anticipated, I passed it with a margin, got 321 points (80%).
And congratulations to me for passing the level 1 test
Don’t worry about the level 1 test. You’re at least as smart and motivated as I am and I didn’t really have any big problems advancing from level 3 until level 1 in one year’s time (Mark: without being asian). I’m just hoping you have a good course in your school specifically aimed for the JLPT. In my class, two students took level2 and 11 students took level1, everyone passed except for one of the students who took level 1.
Btw, about the Heisig method. I guess everyone’s different, but I tried it for a short time and found it being a waste of time. My recommendation is reading alot of different texts, looking up all the words that you don’t know, and learn other commonly used words that contains the same kanji as the word that you looked up. This helps you build a big vocabulary and you’ll remember the kanji by lots and lots of cross-referencing. Another recommendation is buying a good book with vocabulary aimed specifically for the JLPT, for example 日本語総まとめ問題集１級「文字 語彙編」.
But of course, what’s important is that you find a method that suits you.
See you back in Sweden in a year or so!
Tomas, that’s an amazing achievement! I can only assume that you met have studied like mad to make that jump. Just the kanji and vocab difference (300 kanji to 2000 kanji, and 1500 words to 10000 words) in one year would require one to memorise 5 new kanji and more than 20 new vocab words every day, and that’s assuming you can permanently memorise them the first time around so you don’t need to revise previous ones. Amazing!
Please tell us your secret!
Tomas, grats on the pass, though I presumed you would since you were so self-confident back in December.
Hi Kalle!
March? Haha, that’s better than April for sure xP. Thanks for letting me know!
Have a lovely weekend!
Awesome
Awesome! Congratulations, Kalle.
I was going to reply to your impressions of the test, but I figured that it might be in slightly bad taste being that I’m just some random person who stumbled across your blog, and you didn’t think you had done very well.
We Brits just got our results back today, and I did just about as I expected I’d do. Which is to say that I kinda botched up the vocabulary and listening, and made up all the marks on the reading and grammar. I don’t really know how to feel. On one hand my final mark was about 85%, and I can’t possibly complain about a score like that. On the other hand, I know that it’s beyond flattering to my real ability with the language. I’m too lazy to buckle down and learn big lists of words, so my vocabulary isn’t even close to what’s supposed to be required. I’m mostly self-taught, so I’ve never really had regular chances to speak the language, and I struggle to convey even the most basic ideas using my voice. And even though my ineptitude in the listening section was largely down to my always becoming extremely nervous with that sort of test, my listening is still stuck at the level where anything spoken faster than the speed of ‘movie Japanese’ is mostly beyond me. My only strength is that I can read quickly, and that my knowledge of grammar is pretty good. *shrugs* I’m just lucky that my best section is the one that’s worth the most marks, or else what ended up being a pretty good final score might’ve been dancing rather close to the pass / fail mark. ^_^
Anyway, good luck with the ikkyuu in July! You are clearly quite, quite mad. And also rather inspiring.
Perhaps I’ll take a crack at it in December myself. That gives me plenty of time to revise. Not that I’ll actually *use* the time, but it’s slightly less frightening if I apply knowing it’s there.
That’s a rather insane score you got there, Elly. 85%? Damn… congratulations! And thank you.
Actually when I read your feelings about Japanese it reminds me of how it was for me when I was studying English as a kid. I could read quite a bit and such, but trying to say things I’d always stumble over myself. Luckily that’s something that just sorts itself out as soon as you start speaking the language on a regular enough basis. Or that was the case for me.
But at the same time we’re (Westerners) not as exposed to Japanese as e.g. Swedes are to English so you might even wanna just go to Japan for 3-6 months or so.