I didn't! Hehe, but that was to be completely expected. My study ethic just wasn't where it needed to be last year. I am going to slaughter 二級 this year, plus a few more kanji kentei tests I plan on taking :)
Im ambitiously aiming for 2yuu for my first attempt. Studied 2.5 years and lived 1 year in japan... my only weakness is... kanji... >_>
I make paper flashcards from the renshuu.org's site, and also subscribed to i think jgram.org's email a day. The two of these so far have been my practice set.
QUESTION: Anyone know where I can get a few copies of prior JLPT tests with questions and answers? Let me know :)
Good luck to everyone!!! (First post btw^^)
Na~n to ka naru! Benkyou sezaru wo enai! (hope i said that right)
Good luck on that. Man, I wish I could have taken 二級 after only 3.5 years. I'm at 5 years, and I'll be pulling in at the wire. Ah well. :) Will pass!
I've not extensively looked, but I've never seen any full examples of past tests. I don't doubt that they exist, but you'll probably have to dig deep for them.
If you want some a good resource for example sentences for the grammar in 二級, send me a private message. I've got sentences checked by Japanese college students for about 80% of the grammar material covered by what we're both aiming for.
Actually, send me a message regardless. I might be able to help you out with flashcards.
I'm counting down to 2級- more than 10 years after I passed 3級! :D I passed 3級 in my second year of university but after coming to Japan a couple of years later I didn't want to actually "study" any more, just use Japanese in my daily life. That has worked well for the 9 years I've now been in Japan, but I felt like I needed a boost to my Japanese reading ability especially so am taking 2級 this year. I should pass it okay but the reading section is going to be hard for me time-management wise I think.
This site is really helping me improve my kanji and vocab, which were a bit lacking at this level. Thanks very much for creating and maintaining the site!
Tenkamuteki, did you find some tests to practice with? Yesterday I printed out the tests for the last 2 years from the site jlpt/info/ - that's it for the address, no www. or .com or anything. The site is kind of badly laid out and all the text is really dense but you can print out the tests for the last few years. To get the answers though you need to register, which is free but you have to put all your info in and even pick an avatar- not sure why but it's worth the time it takes.
The only problem with the practice tests is that the one I took at least (2006, 2kyuu) seemed to have been inputted (I'm guessing by someone looking at the real test and typing quickly) kind of carelessly by someone and occasionally I came across mistakes like big つ instead of small っ and even 入 instead of 人 a couple of times, plus once there was supposed to be a space where the phrase that you chose would be inserted and there was no space! Mostly you can figure out pretty quickly that they had made a mistake and it didn't affect my ability to take the test, other than that last one with the missing space. It was still a really worthwhile exercise as it showed me that the materials I had been working with didn't have the same level of difficulty as the test- one textbook I have has much easier reading passages to work with, whereas the practice test book I bought (Unicom) has such hard vocab in the passages that I was despairing of being able to pass that part of the test!
Now I have done last year's actual test and did okay I feel much more confident- I'm going to do a few more in the next few weeks.
One thing is that the site offers you the possibility of downloading the tests but you have to have a certain number of points- I'm not too clear on how you get points, possibly by writing articles or answering questions or something but I don't have time for that, I'm studying! :) As long as you log in though you can print the tests out with the answers included so as long as you have access to a printer there doesn't seem to be any need to actually download them.
I took the 4級 with only 90 hours of study... super cramped mode... the feeling was like two opposite feelings trying to mix. Surprisingly it was not as crazy as I thought it would be.. or maybe it was just the 4級. I don't know.. the first part of the exam I am very confident. The listening was kinda fast.. despite we had headphones :( the last part was kinda ok.. i have a 60/40 feeling overall... but it won't matter.. cause i'm sure i'm gonna pass 3級 next year. :)
