Don't tell anyone...
…but it’s always A
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Now watch as everyone struggles to find “A” on an answer sheet which has options of 1, 2, 3 and often 4 
Good luck everyone! 
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みんな今日頑張って！！
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Breakfast is eaten. Studied last night and already a bit this morning. I’m all clean and relaxed after an onsen.
Yep, ready to fail. 
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I’m on break and listening is up next. I feel pretty bad about vocab and grammar. I understood more than last time but I had no confidence toward the answers. It was a lot of “I’m pretty sure it’s this answer.”
My reading speed increased quite a bit though. I was’t struggling as much as last time. My biggest problem was panicking over the time limit on the 3rd and 2nd to final passages; I kept thinking about time and it made it impossible to concentrate.
I still think I failed, but I do think I improved and am only a few points from passing.
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Had a dream where I thought I had brought everything I needed, and turns out I forgot my pencils and voucher! So much panicking in that dream since I’m over an hour away from the test site IRL. Luckily managed to bribe someone to get me pencils and get a new voucher printed. But I never found my room 
I’m packing everything now! DON’T FORGET YOUR THINGS! And best of luck!
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Just got out.
It was brutal. Questions felt like rollercoaster, from ones that seemed obvious to I have no idea and back.
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Just got out of the N4 and I feel pretty upset at myself. I had to guess at the last three listening questing because I couldn’t concentrate (the listening test for a different room was audible and it just was messing with me).
I felt pretty good about the rest of the test as a whole though. Just wish there was at least one audio repeat! 😵💫
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皆お疲れ様でしたよ！
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Yeah, incredible that someone’s phone went off during the last few listening questions and I couldn’t concentrate too during that and the following discussion with the invigilator /proctor. They were escorted out anyway.
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n3 reporting in:
kanji - a breeze confident that i have 90% right
grammar/reading - the god damn star questions took me to long. couldnt finish last 2 questions and had to rush the last third
listening - average
if i fail it was because of the reading part.
i guess may chances are 50/50 to pass.
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I really wonder if there is any sound evidence-based justification for the “star” questions … just seems like a random exercise dreamt up by JLPT test setters for their own amusement and not sure if it is really a good/accurate way to test grammar/anything 
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Honestly, those become my favorite once I figured out what to look for. They’re puzzle pieces that can only fit a certain way, so I always look at the words following and prior first to see what can or has to attach there, then work backwards.
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The star questions test your understanding of grammatical structure.
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Oh my God, that sounds like a nightmare! Wow. That’s exactly why I kept my phone off the entire time, even in between breaks
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I took the N2 in July and this time felt much more difficult. I knew I was going to fail the last one and just wanted the experience, but I did have a definite feeling on most questions (besides reading) that I either knew the answer or I didn’t. There was a lot of stuff this time where I had no idea if I was right or wrong.
Even listening, which I actually did pass last time, felt really off the whole time. There wasn’t a single question in listening where I felt I definitely knew the answer.
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Yes, they are in the grammar section of the test, but they only ask for one word out of 4 and you can get the other 3 words in totally the wrong order. It just seems like a bizarre format where a lot of information is thrown away, kinda imprecise. I would love to see a rationale behind this. I have never known this kind of question used to test any other language.
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Me too: better just to keep it off because it doesn’t seem worth the risk of the phone going off or looking up words during the breaks and then berating yourself like “oh I should have known that” etc.
There was a horrible moment when I actually thought it might somehow have been my phone going off and thinking omg I’m sure I turned it off etc., but it was the person 2 in front of me
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It’s more likely that they’re concerned with the clocks on the wall conflicting with whatever clock they’re officially using to start/stop. If the proctor announcing times is using a watch, but the wall clock is a minute or two faster or slower than that watch, then they run the risk of someone trying to accidentally start early or missing questions because the wall clock said it was x time (and possibly arguing about it).
Given how hard it can be to exactly sync a manually-adjusted wall clock, they probably choose to simply not have one instead.
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While this is true, the majority of the time if you understand the structure well enough to choose the correct answer, it’s because you got the other three options in the correct place as well. As soon as you mess one up, it makes it much more likely for you to mess up the entire sentence.
Not that you couldn’t guess and get lucky, but that goes for any multiple choice question, so.
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