JLPT: Halfway mark

Well, it’s the middle of June, and almost exactly 6 months since I decided to study for the JLPT 3 test. I remember coming back from a great trip in Japan, humbled by my lack of language skills, but full of energy and enthusiasm. Every morning, I studied my kanji flashcards, and dumped lots and lots of vocabulary into Anki and had freshly ordered lots of material from Amazon JP to study for the test.

That was then, this is now. After a period where I got burned out, I have achieved a kind of balance between studying regularly and not exerting myself too much. This week, I was pleased to finally finish the excellent grammar workbook for the JLPT3, which took me at least 3 months. I never knew how little basic Japanese grammar I knew, and how much I knew, but used incorrectly. So, even if I fail the JLPT, my grammar and usage definitely have improved.

So, with that big hurdle out of the way, I am trying to focus on my two weakest points: vocabulary (語彙, goi) and listening (聴解 chōkai). I took a couple mock tests already, and while I definitely improved overall, these two sections continue to be the weakest points because they are the two that require the most practice and least amount of memorization. Although I passed the second mock test,

Memorizing the vocabulary for the JLPT isn’t so difficult if you invest enough time (and use Anki), but correct usage requires a lot of practice. In the mock tests, I frequently make mistakes where I am supposed to choose the synonym that best fits a sentence, and picking the suitable word from a list. So, on advice from Robert’s Shiawase blog I recently started using Bojinsha’s JLPT workbook. It’s a strange book because the listening tapes come separately, and the practice test in the beginning is pretty easy. However, I found I like the book a lot because each section has quite a wide variety of practice exercises designed to get you used to vocabulary usage. It’s not just the amount, but the variety. They really seem to try and hone that particular aspect of the test every way they can think of. The other thing I like about the book is that it is in all Japanese, but pretty simple Japanese that a JLPT student should be able to pick up (plus some new vocab). If you can’t read the Japanese in this book, you’re in a big trouble for the JLPT3.

I haven’t yet tried out a listening practice book I purchased recently. The book provides a pretty long, thorough coverage of the listening section, trends, and good points to keep in mind, but the content is long, so I can’t do this while on the train to work. I am planning on spending some time this weekend going through listening, and trying to absorb the material. I still practice listening in Japanese almost daily, though lately work has made this very difficult to do. Listening to Seebit TV is nice because that runs all the time, and I can listen to that for a while while working, whereas watching the news takes more concentration (but frankly has more interesting content usually…almost always about North Korea or party politics).

So, I still have a three-pack set of past JLPT test for level 3, and my goal is to take them every 2 months from now on, starting in July. My concern is that I am moving back to the US on September 15th, so my life will really get disrupted as we repatriate, and I hope to get pretty familiar with the JLPT before then, so that the last month or two is just rote practice.

Although I’ve studied so much material, I realize that the hard part is just practicing it until it becomes rote. I have six months left to do that, and I believe I can keep up the pace until then.