Hello! I’m taking my first JLPT test this December at N5 level, has anyone have any experience of what it’s like? I’m mostly concerned about the listening sections; are they listening questions only played once or do you get to hear them more than once? Thank you!
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iirc the question is asked at the beginning as well as at the end of the audio for the lower levels. Not sure if this goes for all or just most of the questions though.
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I used these videos to practice for the N5 I took in July.
I found them to be accurate to the format of questions used in the exam (though the exam doesn’t replay the audio and doesn’t show you the answer). There are several formats of questions so I’d recommend trying a load of them. I’m not yet sure whether or not I’ve passed the exam, but if I have it is only because of these.
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There is a whole JLPT 2024 thread, also with some more information:
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Ooh don’t know how I missed this! Thank you very much!
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This is brilliant, thank you so much!
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They’re only played once. They follow a similar format (at least as I have experienced with N5, N4 and N3). You can try sample questions from here - I think you need to plough through the other sections to get to the listening samples:
https://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.html
If you’re there or there-abouts in the Listening, the tricky thing can be that missing one word’s meaning can leave you unsure (like real life). The vocabulary difficulty level should be lower than the reading section though. It’s important to focus and stay calm so that one difficult question doesn’t rattle you for the following ones. Practice helps with that.
Good luck / 頑張ってね
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Take notes in your native language.
It’s about comprehension, not memory. 
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For most of the listening questions, at least at the higher levels, I found that trying to take notes (in any language) meant I wasn’t able to focus on what was being said. So I did better without taking notes, except for certain of the long format N1 questions where four things were discussed and you needed to note down roughly what they were. I think this is something where doing practice questions and trying different approaches is helpful.
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A lot of questions will have a man and a woman talking, but the question only wants you to focus on what one of them is doing. I found it helpful to quickly scrawl a 男 or 女 to remind which was needed.
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