I took JLPT N2 in December. I really wanted to pass first time because it was very inconvenient (not to mention expensive) to take it. So I spent some time devising a strategy, which I will share in this post.
This is the first JLPT I’ve taken, so some of these points might be less relevant to other levels.
Why do I need to prepare specially for the JLPT?
First off, because if you don’t do practice questions and plan your time, you will probably run out of time on the vocab/grammar/reading section (unless, that is, you’ve picked a level that’s far below your ability). They are not generous with the amount of time at all.
In addition to this, the most important things to realise from the start are
a) your level of conversational fluency doesn’t have much bearing on whether you will pass the JLPT (and vice versa)
b) the JLPT is as much about exam strategy and getting used to the type of questions as it is about Japanese knowledge
You can often deduce the correct answer to a question about a sentence without understanding the meaning of most of the words in the sentence. You can often get a listening question right without understanding most of what you’ve just heard at all. And you don’t have to actually construct a meaningful sentence from scratch at any point.
There are a lot of “N2 grammar” or “N3 vocabulary” etc. lists floating about, but the content of the tests is not limited to these, so just memorising the lists the week before is not going to save you if you haven’t been studying enough.
The key is practice questions
In addition to generally listening and reading to more and varied materials, I would advise you to start looking at the style of questions at least couple of months before the test. If you’re not sure which level to take, you might have to do this earlier, of course. But you don’t have to time yourself at the start – you may need to get used to the style before you can do the questions at the necessary speed.
I will now look at each section individually.
Grammar and vocabulary
The exact type of questions here depends on the level, but we could broadly divide them into questions where you need to understand the meaning of the sentence you’re presented with, and questions where you do not. Knowing in advance whether you need to read the sentence carefully can save you a lot of time.
For example, in N2 we start off with simple kanji readings. So far I have not seen any questions where the reading of the word depends on the context, and except for N1 I don’t believe they would write any. So you can just look at the underlined word – generally you know it or you don’t. You now know that you can do the first 5 questions in a minute or less.
There are also quite a few sentences where you have to pick the correct noun to go in the space. Here you do need to understand the nuance of the sentence, so you'll have to spend more time per question.
Now let’s look at an interesting case – where they give you parts of the sentence that you have to rearrange. Here’s a simple example from an N2 book.
この ★ がまったく違う
１．雰囲気 ２．夜は ３．町の ４．昼に比べて
You might not understand all of the words in the sentence, but it doesn’t matter. Knowing basic (N5) rules of grammar, you know that a noun has to go before が and after この and の. So 雰囲気 must go in the 4th space, even if you don’t know its meaning (“atmosphere”) and so on. Indeed, I usually get these questions right even if the vocabulary is difficult and I don’t know exactly what the sentence is supposed to mean at the end.
If you can’t work out the correct answer on any question, don’t waste more than a minute or so on it. Eliminate answers you know are wrong and then guess. You could put a question mark on the exam paper (you are allowed to write on the question paper) and come back to it if you have spare time. Hint: you probably won’t have a lot of spare time.
Once you’ve got the hang of the format, do a run-through of these questions and time each section. Where are you wasting time? Which questions do you tend to get wrong, and is it worth spending more or less time on them? Note that, because of the way they scale the exam, harder questions towards the end are going to be worth more than easy questions towards the beginning. More about the scaling system here.
For N2 you have a total of 105 minutes for this section and the reading section. I would advise you to practise until you can get this section done in 40-45 mins, leaving you a clear 60 mins for the reading section.
Reading
For this section, the most important thing is to realise you barely have enough time to read all the texts in full (well, if you read at the same moderate-but-not-fast speed as I do), much less understand every detail. You will have 10 minutes or less per page of text, so you need to practise reading fast and finding the most important points.
Generally I read the questions first (not the answers) then read through the text quickly. You don’t have time to get hung up on words or phrases you don’t understand. Sometimes the questions relate to a specific phrase or point made, and often that phrase is underlined for you. If you are running out of time, you can read only the few lines around this section to try to find the answer. Similarly, if the question relates to the overall point of the text, most likely the point the writer is making is summed up in the first or last paragraph.
However, this technique of only reading smaller parts was a bit hit-and-miss for me, and I found I prefer to attempt to read the whole text unless I’m really strapped for time (and also for the short “flyer” type questions at the end, these ones you don’t normally have to read everything). I calculated how much time to spend on each question, but in the end it’s better to spend a couple of minutes more on a text and get the answers right rather than hurrying through 2 texts and getting all the answers wrong. For this reason, one of the questions was essentially an “I’ll do it if I have time” sacrifice for me.
Most people will simply start at the beginning of the vocab section and work through the questions in order until they get to the reading section. Is this the right tactic for you? Usually the reading section requires more brainpower than the shorter vocab/grammar ones, so you may consider doing it first.
Remember you need to pass each section as well as passing overall. Reading seems to be the one that trips the most people up.
Here is the order I planned for the reading:
Mondai 14 7 mins
Mondai 13 10 mins
Mondai 12 7 mins
Mondai 10 12 mins
Mondai 11 9 mins each = 27 mins (if not enough time, leave out q.3)
Total 63 mins
On the exam day, I just had time to answer all the questions and correct one kanji reading that I’d remembered before the time was up. No time to check my answers again.
Listening
Here the biggest problem is that you can only listen to each question once and it’s hard to concentrate after just having had nearly 2 hours of test. The questions are mostly conversational, sometimes with a few formal speeches or texts being read out. The vocabulary used is relatively simple compared to the other sections, and every kanji word written on the paper has furigana. Actually, the fact they hardly use any kanji can make it quite hard to read the answers through quickly.
I found that my score didn't improve that much with doing practice tests, but it helped me to know what to listen out for and calmed my nerves for the exam since I knew what to expect.
Make sure you read the questions before the audio starts. If they don’t give you time to read e.g. for the first set of problems in N2, you can have a look while the set instructions and example are playing. You are encouraged to write notes on the exam paper, but I am not very good at doing this and concentrating on listening at the same time. So I only wrote notes for the long questions at the end (except for the odd note of whether I have to listen for the man or the woman’s opinion etc.).
There are quite a few listening samples available on Youtube for each level. In my case, the real exam was harder than any of the practice tests, but they do scale the tests so try not to panic if this happens to you. In the end I got the highest score on this section despite being sure it had gone badly.
Other important points
On the day of the exam, make sure to bring a watch with you. Bizarrely, I have heard there is often not a clock in the exam room, and the invigilators will not update you on how much time you have left.
You only have about a 10 or 20 min break before the listening section. Bring a snack, ice coffee, water, whatever with you because you won't have time to go and buy anything. Unfortunately you are not even allowed to have a bottle of water on your desk.
And... that's all. Good luck :)
Related post: Tips for studying Japanese by yourself
No comments:
Post a Comment