All that suffering and I definitely didn’t even pass (the reading section strikes again)
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Took N5 here in Japan. First time taking the JLPT. I’ve been doing the JLPT mock tests on Bunpro a lot and they really did help prepare me for the real deal. It was exactly the same, but I think the real test was a bit more difficult than the mock tests here.
Vocab was a bit of a breeze for me. I’m confident I passed. Not so much with reading/grammar and listening. Definitely got hit with grammar points that left me confused, and listening has always been my weakest point and I admittedly struggled yesterday.
I will say that because I took the mock tests so many times and knew how things would go, I managed to finish both vocab and reading/grammar with a lot of time left to review my answers and make corrections where needed. Super helpful since I did make a few amateur mistakes on a few questions. I talked with a few people in my class during breaks that admitted they had several questions left unanswered (especially during reading/grammar section), and they were genuinely confused on how was I able to answer everything AND had time to review things.
Depending on how soon the results come through, I’ll either retake N5 this December or try N4 next. Regardless if I pass or fail, proud of myself and how far I’ve come,
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I took N3 yesterday and I have the exact same feeling.
Grammar, reading and vocabulary was a bit more difficult than bunpro mock test.
But I got overwhelmed with the listening section that I found complicated + the stress of the exam that doesn’t help.
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N3 here. Poor guy next to me didn’t understand the instructions about the envelope and just sealed it without putting his phone in. I pointed it out to him and luckily it got sorted in time but I was a little shocked.
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I made the mistake of hesitating among two possible answers far too long too many times, saying myself “come on, you already spent 2min, be 100%sure” by this is exactly what to not do.
Good experience for next time
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Took the N3 and felt the worst about the reading. During the reading someone’s phone went off. It was in the envelope, but not off and, I swear to god, at full volume. They were disqualified and it was hard to focus again after that. I also don’t think I managed my time well. I didn’t do a full reading section practice test like I did last year so I think that would be my downfall. I know I straight up guessed on at least 3 questions just to avoid leaving blanks.
Listening is probably the one I have the most confidence in but they did make it tricky with some of the phrasing. We’ll see how it goes! Either way I think I’m gunna take a break from the JLPT and just keep studying, strengthen my N3 stuff and start N2 when it feels right.
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Same in my N2 room, actually. Not sure if it was an alarm or a ringtone, but it was a full song playing and everything.
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I’m sat here in a Japanese office, listening to real Japanese conversations all day - people do NOT ask questions at that speed, either to me or to other staff.
The JLPT was basically this for the entire last section.
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Perfect example for me was on the N2 exam that just happened. 一層 I can instantly recognize and know the meaning, but what the heck is いっそう 
The kana just sounded general enough that I couldn’t for the life of me pinpoint what it meant
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I just took the N3 test here in Japan and it’s the first JLPT test I’ve taken. All of the spoken instructions were in Japanese and I was wondering do they also do that for the N4 and N5 tests? I’m sure there was a lot of vocab and grammar that I would not have known at those level and figured I’d ask
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Yes I just took the N3 yesterday as well, but when I took the N4 here in December I was also shocked to have the entire test proctored in Japanese. There were 2-3 people in my room that got disqualified and removed from the room after not paying close enough attention to the instructions at the end of the test & removed their phone’s from their envelopes mere minutes before we were supposed to : (
I took N4 in Sydney, anything to do with reading/kanji I was well above level for which is not surprising.
But that listening section was absolutely lethal. I had too many questions where I didn’t hear/understand whole sections and had to pray to god and pick an answer. I’m hoping I still just make it over the line.
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First time taking a JLPT test yesterday, I did the N4 in The Netherlands.
First 2 sections were WAY easier than expected, but listening part was WAY harder than expected lol.
Overall - checking the answer discussion online a little - looks like I passed!
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N3, feel good about everything, but yeah Listening gave me the most trouble despite being my strongest section in the Bunpro mock exams.
Maybe I should be doing listening practice with a boombox instead of using headphones lol
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I have a trick for this. Whenever I’m unsure I just pick an answer and put a strike next to the question in the question booklet. This lets me speed through the booklet as fast as possible, then at the end I’ll come back and look at any strikes more thoroughly/potentially change the answer. In general if I’m taking more than 40s on anything I’ll just pick a likely looking answer and strike it.
It’s helped me get high scores on many uni MCQs and given me heaps of time to spare, depending on the test.
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I see many mentioning the listening part at N3 level and others too. It seemed a bit harder than the usual to me as well.
Just last week I saw a good piece of advice for this, which I will follow from now on. When you do listening, play the audio at 1.2 speed, so when the time comes, it will feel slower and thus easier to follow because you are accustomed to a swifter pace.
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How did you go with reading? I went in thinking reading was my strength, and still think so, but the reading passages were really tricky. I was fine with listening and language knowledge.
I didn’t even touch the last piece of text, so I just chose random answers for related questions. But overall I believe I understood long texts quite well, I just still struggle with reading speed. Which was surprising, because I thought that I’m doing quite well in this department.
The reading seemed quite lengthy to me, at least one of the texts, when I looked at it, it seemed like the longest I have seen in an N3 test before. I kind of ran out of time, could barely finish that part.
Thankfully, I skipped around a bit and did the shorter / easier reading parts earlier, where I feel I did well, so maybe it will not be that bad.
The takeaway for me was not to neglect reading - I love reading, but in the last 2 or 3 weeks, while I continued with grammar and vocabulary/ kanji, I neglected reading. Wrong choice. Also, for the future, I would practice better time management for the exam. I did not always have the time to do full mock tests, only one part maybe two at a time, but I should have been more time conscious.
And this below, golden piece of advice everyone. I started out like that but got into the flow of trying to figure out the order of words task and bamm… time is running out.
All in all, my impression was confirmed that the JLPT is not just a language exam but rather a test of test taking ability.
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Yes, even for N5/N4 all of the spoken instructions are in Japanese. And yes, they are probably beyond the level of most test-takers at that level lol. I guess the proctors try to speak slower and repeat a lot, but doesn’t really help. Hopefully most people have checked the directions online in their native language beforehand.
Took N3 for the second time this time and my proctor was really speedily giving directions and kind of chit-chatting during breaks. I didn’t understand some of what he said even though last time I took N3 I understood everything the proctor said. Also some of the staff would just speak in English to give you directions even if they saw you were taking N3 or above.
Inevitably, no matter what level, someone always either doesn’t listen or doesn’t understand the directions and gets red-carded. This year they even had English printed on the phone envelopes so people wouldn’t open it and several people still did.
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