After having studied every single day for more or less a year exactly, I’m pretty happy with my score. It was tough though, didn’t breathe throughout the whole listening section.
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Meaning you had basically no Japanese knowledge a year ago?
Well not really.
I knew veeeeery basic vocab from catching things during my childhood. I also learned hiragana and katana when I was about 14, but stopped when I encountered kanji since it was too much to grasp.
I picked up studying Japanese 1 year and aprox 2 months ago again.
The first two months was basically me trying to find an efficient way to study the language and failing until I found WaniKani, then Anki, then Tae Kim, etc.
I guess you could say that I went from “彼は私の食べ物を食べる。”
to
“今まで私達が想定してきたキラは、殺人に顔と名前が必要でした。
しかし、あの時、テレビ局にたまたま駆けつけたうきたさんが殺されたこと、Lをテレビ出演させれば、殺せるような言い方をしてることから、第二のキラは顔だけで殺せるということになります。”
in one year.
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Feb 12 2018:
Aug 3 2018:
Small progress but progress still. Though I’m a bit disappointed, especially for reading which I practice every day for 6 months…
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6 months ago:
Now:
|Listening |91|
|Vocabulary |57|
|Grammar |61|
|Reading |58|
|合計 |267|
Small progress but still good! 
Looks like I didn’t improve my reading at all though 
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6 months ago I took the JCAT for the first time:
And, here is how I fared after another 6 months of studying:
This time, I let the timer run out if I didn’t have any clue about the answer so as to not artificially inflate my score on accident. If I thought I had an idea of what was going on, I took my best guess.
At this point, I am level 33 on WK, a few chapters into Genki 2, and I’m reviewing burned vocab items on KaniWani for EN->JP practice. I read a couple articles on NHK News Easy most days.
In the next 6 months, I’m aiming to get up to level 45-50 on WK, finish Genki 2 and start on Tobira, and just keep up with KaniWani. By then I would like to be at a good conversational speaking level, and be able to read at about the level of a 4th or 5th grader.
Overall, I’m quite happy with my results after exactly one year of learning Japanese! Glad I found WK/Tofugu early on and followed their advice. Also very pleased with the quality of this forum and the resources/motivation I have gained from it, so thanks everyone!
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The total has gone up but I’m still really disappointed, Almost every question I struggled with and I felt I had to guess all the time.
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Damn 0 in grammar and 3 in vocab 
And yet 52 in reading 
Are you studying outside WK ? A good go at Tae Kim/Bunpro should help you make progress.
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Yeah, 52 in reading is like N2 level. I guess it really is possible to guess your way to success.
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I have done all the Bunpro N5 content, I do study grammar but not enough, I found it very hard to focus on the questions so I skipped most of them. I felt like I couldn’t process everything in the time given and it was frustrating.
For the listening part I struggled to keep attention, words turned into random sounds and I couldn’t even understand what some of the questions were about. In real life I find I can understand the general conversation of Japanese friends when they talk amongst themselves as they seem to speak more clearly.
I need to learn more vocabulary outside of WK, there are a lot of words that are used frequently that don’t have Kanji.
I don’t think I will consider doing this exam again at least for a few years.
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Note that it will stop being free in a year and a half.
Did they say that definitively?
My phone does not allow copy/paste, but that’s what the last two sentences of the first block of text say:
http://www.intersc.tsukuba.ac.jp/~kyoten/documents/20180402_J-CAT.pdf
Sounds pretty definitive to me.
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Thanks. I only had time to skim it and it was a bit difficult to understand without extensive use of my dictionary extension. The main points seem to be that it’ll be free through March 2020 and after that they plan to charge 3,000 yen. Is that right? Was there anything else particularly important?
That’s correct. (Edit: well, for people applying through their university/organization, but I assume the price would be the same for people applying on their own)
The other important points are that they will remove the flash dependence in the new (paid) version, and that they will make new questions.
That last part confirms @Leebo’s comment somewhere in the thread that they actually never changed their questions so far.
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Okay, great. I saw the bits about them updating to use HTML5, but it’s good to know that they’re going to update the questions as well.
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First time taking it.
I accidentally tabbed out during the listening around question 12 because I didn’t realise it had a set number of questions and just needed a break. It immediately switched to Vocab so Idk if I messed that up.
Honestly this entire thing was such a grueling experience. Really hit me in my gut about how much I have to learn. Reading, which I normally like, was just hell. I wasn’t confident in any of my answers. I just picked one that I had a vague notion on.
Even though it says 201+ is Intermediate-High, I’m literally just on the cusp. Which makes sense since I barely past N3. I hate just barely passing though. It just feels so…fake. Makes me feel like a fraud. : (
This is just more evidence that I definitely need to wait till next July before attempting N2.
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I felt the same way and it makes sense since they regulate the difficulty of your questions based on the previously answered ones, so you’ll mostly be dealing with stuff just above your level. Grueling indeed.
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２）2020 年 4 ⽉より有料の J-CAT を開始します。新 J-CAT ではテストの構成、内
容、システムを刷新します。また、安全性を確保するため、インターネットではなく、タブレットを使⽤します。ご指定の期⽇、場所に受験者⼈数分のタブレットを当
⽅事務局が持ち込みます。試験監督のもと、テストを厳格に管理します。成績はテス
ト終了後 2，3 ⽇中にとりまとめて通知します。受験料は受験者 1 名ごとに 3000 円
（税別）を予定しています。
It seems that it won’t be available on the internet.
Well, that’s what it says in point 2 indeed, but then why make it in html5? Based on what they said in the first part, I think that point only applies to groups.
Edit: Again, this is only my feeling, there’s nothing in the text supporting my opinion. It’s a mix of “it would not make sense otherwise” and wishful thinking.
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