Not familiar with JLPT, what does yellow card mean?
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There are a bunch of rules on the JLPT and much like soccer two yellow cards and you’re out (though you might also receive a red card directly).
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A yellow card is when you broke some sort of rule to a minor degree (e.g. didn’t put your pencil down when you were told to, opened your book a bit too early, etc.). Two yellow cards results in a red card which means an automatic failure and I think kicked out of the classroom. You can also get a red card if you’re caught cheating or your phone goes off in the listening section. Usually the proctors are pretty lenient but somebody pushed their luck and kept trying to fill out some answers past the “pencil’s down” time.
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I didn’t know there were yellow cards, I just assumed you were kicked out if you broke the rules.
Nice to know, although I hope I don’t get accidentally any. I’ve been to 3 levels already and I was never explained the card system?
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I don’t know if they are used everywhere. A friend of mine living in Japan mentioned these, I haven’t heard it mentioned with any of my friends taking the tests here (though I only know 2 people actually doing JLPT here, so my scope is very limited 
)
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I’ve been to 4 different locations for my tests, although granted they all have been in the same country. I haven’t seen them in any of them.
I’ll probably retake the N3 this summer. We will see.
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Might just be a Japanese thing then I haven’t taken any JLPT’s myself, so I can’t comment with any certainty on how it’s done here, I’ll see if I can bother my friends tomorrow to ask, because I’ve gotten quite curious now!
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Thinking of taking any soon? Is there a location to take near you?
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We do have one (relatively) close, but I’ve never been all that interested. I’m just doing this as a hobby really so never saw the need for accreditation. I have been toying around with the idea of taking them starting at N5 though, so maybe next year 
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Oh, I don’t do it for accreditation as there’s no much use of Japanese around here.
Is more like a self-test. It’s a funny thing to add to the CV though.
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i took N4 in philly, probably saw some of you. I think Vocab/Grammar/reading was a breeze, listening was crushingly hard. (probably < 50% in this section for me especially the long dialogue questions).
Does anyone have any suggestions on improving the listening section? that’s one where there aren’t many good resources for.
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I took the N2 and failed for the 2nd time because I ran out of time in the first section and couldnt finish reading everthing. Listening was pretty easy.
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I used these materials for passing the N4:
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新完全マスター has a book for N4 listening that has content that will be similar to what you find on the test.
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The Japan Foundation and JEES, the companies that created the JLPT, also have two practice test workbooks with content that has been on previous tests.
I found both of these to be extremely helpful because the vocabulary, grammar, speed, and content are all the exact same as the test.
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I am using this youtube channel Tuhoconline.net - YouTube to practice listening since it contains actual JLPT listening tests. Although it is in vietnamese (I think) the only vietnamese text is directions and the right answer (which is a number, so no need to know vietnamese obviously). It does not have many N4 tests, but a search on youtube with “JLPT listening practice” gives many results, such as this one Light Smit ▽ 日本 - YouTube.
Took my first JLPT test yesterday and felt I couldn’t pass 
. The N3 reading section was really tricky though.
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You can never know, I felt like I failed N3 and it turns out that I passed by 3-4 points because I aced listening.
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The exam ended up being substantially harder than I expected. No individual question was all that difficult, but the time constraint, particularly for the grammar section, was surprisingly tight. There was a lot of text to read through. Judging by the reactions from the other people in the room, I think I fared better than most, but I was still quite rushed.
I expected listening to be my weak point, so that’s where 90% of my study time went for the last 6 weeks or so. When I got into the exam, it clearly paid off. Although I’m sure I missed several of them, I was able to follow along and understand most of the questions. Our audio cut out between the 6th and 7th question, which gave a nice little mental break while they called tech support in (took about 15-20 mins) to get everything working again.
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So my advice (to be taken with a grain of salt) is to pace yourself to have learned all of the new grammar, vocabulary, and kanji that you need at LEAST 2 months before the exam. Spend that last 8+ weeks doing tons of repetition to speed up both your reading and listening comprehension.
Practice suggestions for listening:
Practice suggestions for reading:
- Tadoku
- Lingo Mastery
- Japanese social media (Youtube and Twitter comments) – and yeah, I understand there are lots of possible pitfalls here, but it does help reading speed
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Overall I’m pretty happy with the experience of taking the exam, and I recommend it. I think certification exams in general are great for exposing and filling in holes in your knowledge.
I don’t think I scored particularly high on the exam, but I do think I passed. And more importantly, I know where to direct my next few months of study time.
(and no, there were no yellow or red cards during my exam 
)
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I have taken N1 for the first time, and since I know what my real level is I was really skeptical about my ability to pass. But actually, it seems that I have quite a good chance of passing it. Listening was really easy (apart from concentrating on all the tiny details in the dialogues all the time) and grammar and vocab sections weren’t disastrous.
Reading I felt was okay too but maybe I have missed tons of nuances, dunno.
Overall, seems like I might pass and hopefully not just by a few points.
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That’s amazing to hear. N1 is a huge feat. Do share the result when you get it!
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Just so you know to find it less confusing in the future, that type of format seems to be quite common in that section of the JLPT tests. They will have two different pieces of writing that are related and partially share information. For example, one is general information about a hotel and then the other is a flyer for a special deal the hotel is currently running and question 1 might be something like ‘based on article A, what should this person do’ and then the second question might require you to take both A and B into account. I’ve seen that type of question structure in multiple leaked past exams and practice tests.
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