Hey that’s a good score man! You’re in a good place now, there’s tons of materials and stuff for you to read and learn from and you’re getting close to being able to read some simple stuff without much fuss.
To make you feel better, here’s mine:
.
6 months, I guess.
I started studying Japanese as a complete beginner on August 24th, 2017 so I took the JCAT today to check my progress after exactly 6 months:
Listening 42
Vocabulary 34
Grammar 37
Reading 41
Total 154
It’s a higher score than I expected but I’m not sure I deserve it… I may have gotten some false positives somewhere in there by guessing answers instead of letting the timer run out (which I didn’t realize you could do until after the listening section.)
Multiple choice also makes it easier to eliminate answers based on your test-taking skills rather than an actual understanding of the question. I would not classify myself as an “intermediate” Japanese learner in any way except for in my knowledge of kanji, because I spent the first 4 months or so almost exclusively working on WK. Currently, I am halfway through Genki 1 (supplemented with a Genki-based Anki deck), and I’ve dabbled lightly in Tae Kim’s stuff. I have been quite diligent, though, and I have not gone a single day without studying Japanese at least for a few minutes. Most days I spend about an hour on it. So, the limited scope of knowledge I have is thoroughly engrained.
We’ll see where I’m at on August 24, 2018!
すっごい！After only 6 months? Good on you, that’s a really good score!
Quite the motivation for me to stay ahead of your score when we retry the test in 6 months, then.
頑張りましょう！
That was supposed to be a reply to you, above…
While doing the test I was very certain my marks were going to be terrible. So this isn’t as bad as I thought!!!
Context: Started being serious about learning since October 2017. Honestly WK has been a big part of me staying motivated (along with finding Japanese content I liked). I knew I needed to work on grammar and this confirms it…
I’m glad I did the test, now I have something to track my progress.
So I finally got around to taking the test. I generally describe myself as “lower intermediate” so I guess my score accurately reflects that. You could probably say it’s a bit low for studying for two years, but oh well.
*individual results may vary
Nice of you to credit WK, but since it helps with almost none of the J-CAT categories directly, I’m not sure how accurate that endorsement is, heh.
talking to Japanese people, watching Japanese TV, studying abroad in Japan, all the typical stuff
I pretty much started the day before I started Wanikani, so its gonna be 4 years in a few weeks
!!!
!!!
6 months later, I took the test again. 23 points of improvement, and for the first time nothing (cough, grammar, cough) got worse. I even got my grammar up. It’s still the weakest of the bunch, but at least not embarrassingly so.
This puts me officially at N2 level, which means this is the level I’ll register for for the December JLPT.
(Level when took the test: 20, after resetting from 20 to lvl1 9 months ago)
Are you in Japan or do you do dedicated listening practice? Because that’s a pretty good score!
Mm, neither. What I do do is have lessons once a week with my 2 iTalki tutors (so, 2 hours of speaking/listening), and I’ve had them for over 2 years. Before that my listening was truly abysmal.
I’m only good at listening to women, though. I should practice on figuring out what men are saying, that’s the only reason I didn’t have a better score. 
I have a harder time parsing them - they don’t seem to open their mouth as much as the women so their speech is slightly slurred (especially in casual speech), and their inflections are a bit different than what I’m used to from my woman tutors …
Well luckily, 悟空弁 doesn’t really exist on the test, so you should be fine. However, I’d suggest double checking on the actual N2 example questions
Of course, but it still gives me a direction. 
I got 167. It would have been much lower had it not been for wanikani.
Well, took the test again to get some kind of baseline. I took it last in February 2017, but then stopped studying for the second half of last year and reset everything I was doing over the last couple of months to start again.
2017 - 
Today - 
I had thought the grammar score was high the first time, but I’m blaming today’s grammar score on the fact that two people were texting me during that part of the test and even without answering it was super distracting because I had forgotten to silence my phone when I started. 
