One interesting thing I noticed recently is that after level 5, the “expected level of passing test takers” starts to diverge from the joyo list.
Like, for all of 10 through 5, each level corresponds to a grade level in elementary school, and students who completed that particular grade should be able to pass that level of the test.
But there is no official order for all the joyo kanji beyond grade 6. As a result, the kanken people can’t really expect a particular level of kanji knowledge from, say, all 8th graders. So, level 4 is described as “currently in middle school level.”
Level 3 is described as “graduated from middle school level” even though it only covers about 1600 of the 2136 joyo kanji.
Level 2 covers all 2136 joyo kanji finally, but it is described as “graduated from high school level.” The “in high school level” is pre-2.
To be fair, there’s a difference between learning the kanji, and having a full vocab that covers all the words you can write with said kanji.
But it’s kind of a relief to know that level 2 is not middle school level.
I’m struggling to come up with a way to properly study yojijukugo as I get ready for pre-2.
The main issue is that it’s hard to reliably predict what set of yojijukugo to study for. It seems like about half of the yojijukugo that appear on pre-2 are what would be classified as pre-2 yojijukugo on the various kanken resource websites you see. This means that at least one of the kanji in the yojijukugo is included in the 333 kanji that separate level pre-2 from level 3.
But this still means that about half of the yojijukugo come from lower levels. Because of course you can have difficult yojijukugo that are made from simpler kanji. So it seems like I really need to start again from the bottom up with yojijukugo specifically.
For now, I started looking at lists of yojijukugo made for the purposes of passing high school entrance exams, because that seems like a more reliable way to find the “important” ones than by just looking at sprawling lists of all yojijukugo that fit within a particular test’s set of kanji.
Yeah, I would say level 2 is definitely considered “impressive for a native,” though I’m a long way from there
Pre-2 would probably trip up a lot of people just trying to roll out of bed and take it, but I don’t know how much value it’s considered to have on your resume or something for natives.
The one thing I always worry about when I tell people about this kind of thing though is that they’re going to ask me to write something from elementary school lol. Those basic kanji get used so much more often, they can appear in tons of words I don’t know yet. A lot of pre-2 and 2 level kanji only ever appear in a couple words.
Detailed results came for level 3. Really disappointed with the score, 161. I can’t look at any of the things I got wrong since there’s no physical test to take home anyway.
A major culprit was the 同音・同訓異字 section, which I usually only get one or two wrong at most, and I got 4 wrong.
I also have no clue how I got two writing questions wrong, because I was confident on all of them.
Every section was just kinda “meh.” Except synonyms and antonyms, that was perfect.
Yeah, I totally get that feeling. I retook one of my national school tests (just a modular one) because I was disappointed with my score, even though there was really no need. Still, you’re already doing something far more impressive than most would be able to!
Ah, well then yeah, the computer test is pretty different then. There’s no way to even take your answers home with you because you aren’t allowed paper or anything to write with in the test room.
I’ve tried those apps, and it’s not like they’ll hurt you or anything, but they’re not really much like actual test questions. I would consider them extra if you have time on the train or something.
