Well, the weather was yet again nice. Though even if I get the same results I did when I took JLPT level 2 (aka 2Q) last December (I got 69.75%) I would still fail since JLPT level 1 (aka 1Q) requires 70%, not 60%.
It was nice though. It went better than expected, in particular the reading comprehension part. The listening comprehension part was a climax of sorts on my latest “trend” of simply not getting anything. It was idiotically easy there for awhile, but unfortunately I somehow lost that streak a few weeks ago. Today’s listening comprehension part was probably the worst one I’ve seen yet.
The rest was more or less as it always is, so it was just a matter of recognizing the example sentences and matching them to the appropriate word. I’ve wanted to say this for a long time, but the JLPT exams are in all honesty rather idiotic. People who “properly study for them” simply memorize the examples and answer based on what they memorized. That has nothing to do with one’s level of proficiency. Especially not when the answers are all limited to 1, 2, 3, 4.
In any case, I finally have the exam behind me. I can now focus on taking things a little easier for awhile (I seriously got strange in the head there for awhile), after which I will slowly but steadily pick up the rather heavy rock that I dropped awhile back (called “kanji studying”) and bring it to the goal line once and for all. It won’t even be hard, it will just take lots of hours. I can take the exam again in December, knowing all the grammar I need to know, and getting my kanji proficiency up to where it should be.
Beyond that it’s just a matter of feeding my brain with vocabulary. Reading more than I have done so far, watching TV more often, etc. I’ve learned (the hard way) that vocabulary is simply a matter of keeping your brain occupied with words. Doesn’t really matter which words as long as they’re not all words that you know. Repeating or “studying” vocab is mostly a waste of time. As a friend of mine said, you can sit and try to learn some set of words for the longest time, and then you just ignore them and suddenly a month or two later (during which you haven’t seen or heard said words even once) you just know them. You know their “essence”, beyond their meaning in whatever happens to be your language of studying (mine being English).
Then again, today’s exam was at a level where if I passed, I won’t be surprised, and if I didn’t pass I won’t be surprised, but if I pass or fail with a big margin I will be. I feel quite surely that I’m “at or around 70%”. I’ll get back to you regarding that once September rolls around. Unless I get like 50%, in which case I might just say “I failed. Leave me alone!” 
Was thinking of you and I hope you did pass!!! I am so amazed with your progress with Japanese.
So you won’t get the grades until September???
Annie: thank you for keeping me in your thoughts!
I knew there was something yowling at me in the back of my head when I was takg the exam. Must have been Bilbo in the background. ;P
Gaby: exactly. I could, in theory, ask the Chinese speaking folk in my class to find a site which has the answers (the answers appear on Chinese sites within days of the exam date, without the blessing of the Japanese Language test people naturally) and presuming I remember which choices I made, I should have a general idea whether I passed or failed but I won’t know for sure until the beginning of September, no.
I hope it went better than you thought it did Kalle! I have to say I’m also amazed with your progress!
Even if you don’t pass this time it sounds like it’ll be a definite pass for you in December before the exams change next year.
I can’t say I’ve really done much Japanese study since JLPT2 in December, and in fact now I’ve moved on to study Spanish and Russian for interest (and planning travel). I still watch a lot of J-dorama in the evenings and make notes of unknown words with example sentences, but that’s all I really do now. I guess I’m thinking that from here on out it’ll just be a natural acquisition; after all I’m planning to be here for a loooooong time. Maybe I’ll get round to taking JLPT1 in 2015.
Look forward to hearing how you got on in September!
Hey Mark! Happy to see you’re still reading, despite my extended absence(s) (that goes for all of you!)! One of the Taiwanese in my class showed me the answer sheets on one some Chinese site. I tried to remember how I answered everything. I’m 100% sure I screwed the kanji/vocab part up completely (in the 55% range…!), and I thought the listening was far more difficult than usual, but I believe I got something in the 85% range for grammar, which means that if — and only if — I actually did do okay on the listening part, and if — and only if — I did okay on the reading comprehension part, then I might actually push myself over the 70% line. I guess in retrospect I’m happy it was the vocab part and not the reading comprehension/grammar part that I screwed up so gravely, considering the latter weighs twice as much in the scoring.
But presuming I get listening at 70%, I would need 74% on dokkai (“reading comprehension and grammar” is just way longer than “dokkai”) in order to actually get 70%. Highly doubtful that I managed a feat like that, considering my history so far with mock exams and the like.
Oh, and as for Spanish and Russian — geez, man, isn’t that going to completely melt your brain? I knew (sort of) some German and some Spanish and some Russian at some point, but as soon as I started seriously learning Japanese, I simply couldn’t produce a single word in any of those “vague” languages anymore. In fact I’m surprised I even know how to speak English these days. Swedish I guess I’m “immune” to forgetting, though I have trouble with words on occasion. I often find myself knowing a word in English and Japanese but not in Swedish, or any combination of 2-out-of-3.
You definitely aren’t immune! TRUST ME! Well, if you return to and live in Sweden, it won’t be a big deal. I can tell you, however, that living in the US being out of touch with any French other that listening to French Canadian satellite news, my French has taken a real beating written and spoken. My vocabulary is being overwritten! CAREFUL!! BEWARE!!!
may i know the Chinese website where the July 5, 2009 level 2
answers are found? thanks so much
may I know the chinese website where the July 5 2009 level 1 answers are found? thank you very much.