The JLPT 2021 Thread (RESULTS OUT NOW!)

[Lswan]

@Popetitled

You weren’t talking to me but,

but thank you! I can use all the help I can get.

Right now I’m on Level 51 with WaniKani so I’m putting a pause in my lessons so I can focus on catching up with listening & grammar. Rosetta Stone had trouble designing an intensive program. Compared to other languages I’ve used for it, Japanese is more intermediate level in speaking and listening which I have decent recall. I already have a strong vocabulary as I’m discovering while watching all these Japanese television shows and oftentimes wonder why they dont’ use more kanji in the subtitles for the sake of simplicity. (Kanji is much easier for me to follow than when they write things phonetically with hiragana). There’s a huge drop off of necessary material for the N1 after Level 51 so I’ve heard and researched, but probably a unit’s worth of material that’s not included which is a bummer.

I don’t understand why people keep assuming that I want to go from “N5 to N1” in a year as I’ve never at any point suggested that I’m new to Japanese. In fact I’ve explained quite the opposite, that I finally want to get serious and get a certification for all these years (off&on) of independent study I’ve put in. I would like to be ready to take the N2 by December 2021 independently of physically going in…just practice exams… and the N1 by July, but I think starting from ground level and reviewing all the material from N5-N3 is important since I never took any of these exams before. I’ve been studying since December 2019 with WaniKani with the intent of finishing the program in December 2021. I’ve found that I’ve already completed what is necessary. I’m not “rushing” through anything. I just happen to learn things faster than most people. I speak four other languages, English, French, Spanish, Russian. I can read Korean as well, but that’s purely for KPop purposes I also study coding at a beginner level and I’ve been dancing between subjects of Data Science, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, and now learning about Computational Linguistics to try to find which area is really best for me. I have the time, I just need to put in the work in the most efficient way… and binging on Japanese Anime may not be as productive, but it sure as hell is fun!

Thanks again!

[Lswan]

@KitzuRane

Honestly, I went in to N4 with no actualy JLPT style training and it was okay, but now that I’m at the upper levels, it’s definitely helpful to practice this stuff in the style of the test. xD

If the test is on paper and I can skip around… then it’s on, no matter the subject! I suppose that’s how I passed intermediate in Spanish although I never actually studied it…ever… And I scored pretty damn well on the mechanical engineering section of a military exam I had to take which was fun… For years I thought I was a bad test taker, but I suppose believing that is the reason I’ve worked so hard isn’t it? I think it’s a cultural thing. Americans believe in the concept of “natural talent” while in most asian cultures its about applying yourself, learning from your mistakes, and trying your best to a Battle Royale level of determination. I suppose N3 is the best starting point for these practice books. I’ve noticed I read much better the more kanji that is implemented in a sentence.

Sigh. I hate Bunpro. I really hate it. Russian has some of the hardest grammar to learn in the world (they spend 8 years on grammar alone in school) and I can read a sentence saying to myself “well this ‘sounds’ right” and be right most of the time. I think I need to just read and read until Japanese “sounds right” for me as well. I figure if I am going to read japanese it should be in the style of the exams so I can get used to the kind of reading comprehension questions that are common, teaching myself to look out for those key points as I go along.

Thank you so much for all of advice.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint right?

[Saimin]

That’s interesting, I really like Bunpro.
I don’t want to turn this into a grammar/Bunpro thread, but i’ll put my thoughts in a bracket.

Bunpro and formal grammar "versus" immersion

I can understand the issues people have with Bunpro, like having a perfectly valid construction in mind but Bunpro doesn’t accept it because it wants a different form. But i think all these issues can be worked around. See this as an SRS item where you’re asked to reproduce multiple forms of how to say this, probably varying in formality / humbleness, etc. Or just give yourself a pass (after seeing the answer) if you don’t see this as wrong.
I guess the beginning of Bunpro can be tedious when you already know a lot of grammar, but you can just set any grammar point you know to “learned” and it will never appear in reviews again.

Also, I think some form of grammar learning is pretty fundamental. I know, in the end you internalize grammar by immersion, and not e.g. by learning the formal rule for adjective order (“old green antique car”), but i feel this often gets blown out of proportion, overusing this example, and formal grammar lays the groundwork for understanding.
For example, there is a lot of very different grammar using こと in some way.

You either need to know the grammar, or get it from a translation or context, but either way grammar SRS seems to me to be the most efficient first level of understanding.
Adding to this, Japanese grammar seems very different to English, Spanish, French and Russian, which have a lot of similar grammar (maybe not Russian).
I mean, you can probably pass the JLPT as a purely passive test like you did with Spanish, relying on context and not a lot of grammar knowledge, but that’s not our final goal, right?
Let me add what should be obvious, that this is just my opinion, and your approach seems to work well for you. I just wanted to add my view, because a lot of people have been talking about grammar.
I’m currently on my way to finish N2 on Bunpro until the December exam, and feel like I’m learning a lot, efficiently (=

[lattepatatte]

@Lswan

There’s a huge drop off of necessary material for the N1 after Level 51 so I’ve heard and researched, but probably a unit’s worth of material that’s not included which is a bummer

You can check it out on wkstats.com how many percent of a JLPT level’s kanji are roughly covered at which point on your WaniKani journey. After level 51, you’d know about 55% of the kanji which are expected for N1 but not for the previous levels. As far as I’m aware, there are no official JLPT kanji lists though, so I guess those values and kanji lists in general are just rough estimates

@Lswan

I’ve been dancing between subjects of Data Science, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, and now learning about Computational Linguistics to try to find which area is really best for me

Good thing they’re all connected so your efforts in one area won’t be useless for the others But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that

[Saimin]

Yes, level 60 is around 79%, so the N1 coverage picks up a lot near the end of WK.
Direct link to JLPT Kanji coverage (for WK, on wkstats)

[lattepatatte]

Oh yeah, would have been good to mention the percentage at the end of WK too, thanks ^^

[DaisukeJigen]

Got my confirmation email this morning. Seems they’re getting it all straightened out.

[Wp2151]

Confirmed for your location and level? Good news for you but now I am afraid I’ll be locked out before it even re opens. Hope not!

[Ruisey]

I apparently passed N2 with 132/180, but I applied through school so I can’t see my results online and only have the teacher’s word for it. I also don’t know my individual scores for the three sections so don’t know my strengths/weaknesses. Really waiting on the post card in the mail because it won’t feel real until I can see it with my own eyes. Apparently everyone in my class passed. Which makes sense since we already finished studying N2 material, but there’s a lot of grammar that didn’t appear in our text book (like most of it) and we don’t focus specifically on learning vocabulary. So I do wonder if the pass rate was very high. Although I scored almost exactly the same on two practice exams and I crammed to an unhealthy degree in the few days before the exam, so it’s probably not that the test was made easier.

[WeebPotato]

You guys are acing it! Big congrats everyone!

[Alan850]

Same here I passed N3 whereas i answered randomly in 50% of the questions ! I wonder what the passing rate is

[d-hermit]

I looked through the stats published on the JLPT site, mainly focusing on overseas sites and N2 level because I’m taking N2 this year outside of Japan.

@Leebo

When you have a variable like a worldwide pandemic, I would lean more toward there being a change to the kind of people taking the test overall.

The number taking the exam in Japan only went down a bit, but the number taking the test overseas went way down.

For instance, people in America were unable to take the test, which represents a large amount of test takers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese test taking numbers stayed relatively unchanged. Chinese test takers have an advantage over learners of other native languages.

That could be it.

Yes, the regional split of the overseas test takers has changed significantly. North America accounted for just 1.3% of the overseas examinees in Dec 2019, so that’s no the biggest factor I think. For instance India and Pakistan had the same share of test-takers as NA in 2019 and got down to just 0.1% in 2020.

China went down a bit from 55% to 49% but still accounts for roughly a half of all overseas test takers. Taiwan went up 13% percentage points, so overall China + Taiwan went up from 65% to 72%. I guess we can say that learners in Taiwan have the same advantages in regards to learning Japanese as the learners in the mainland China.

Two other big shifts were Vietnam going up from 9% to 17% and Korea going down from 12% to 5%.

China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea amounted to 94% of the oversees examinees in 2020 (85% in 2019).

@Aislin

Or just more dedicated people decide to sign up for the test, because of high risk of cancellation or because some sites limited the number of participants.

I think this is a big factor too. I actually could take the test in Dec 2020 but I decided against it because of the covid infection risks. I didn’t need the test certificate for anything and taking the test to assess my level didn’t seem worth the risk in a pandemic. But who where the people who took the test? Probably many of them had a reason. Perhaps a requirement for job/studies? Although if this were true I’d expect a sharp decline in the number of examinees in N5, N4 groups and relatively smaller drop in N1, N2 (because these certificates actually mater for employment/studies). This isn’t the case. The number of oversees examiness in groups N5+N4 went down by 15% while the number of examinees in N1+N2 groups went down by 23%. Although N4+N5 are a relatively small share of the total examinees (15% in 2020, 14% in 2019).

It’s possible that regardless of their need for a certificate more people who felt unprepared decided to stay home and not take risk.

When we look at the test scores they are much higher in 2020 compared to 2019.

An average score total score of N2 examinees in overseas locations in 2020 was 103.5 points vs 89.4 points in 2019. And the scoring system is based on the Item Response Theory and is not affected by the difficulty of the test. More in the JLPT Summary doc (pdf) So if we assume they haven’t screwed up the statistics, the average level of a test taker in Dec 2020 was quite a bit higher compared to the previous year.

Actually 103.5 points is 13.5 points higher than the passing mark for N2 – 90.0 points! 2019’s average score was just below the passing mark.

I wish they also published more demographic stats with the average scores. Really curious how the native language impacts the scores for example. Also would love to see the split by the test taking goal. But I haven’t found these data.

[Rinkhals]

Wow… You only needed 1 more point. So so close!
That’s still an amazing result though! Your studying strategy is working nicely.

Will you be retaking it in December? Really looking forward to your next result.

Registration is already open in Japan, so I’ve already signed up for N2.
Hopefully 3 months is enough time to get ready.

[Ladymerelan]

So I took N3 last year in December and failed by two points.

I would like to inform that after “revenging” it in July, I have successfully passed the N3 on my second try!

Listening has become my greater skill out of the three, and I definitely messed myself up in vocabulary by second-guessing some answers I CLEARLY knew, but for now, I want to focus on upping my grammar understanding and speaking skills going forward.

I’m going to take a break from test taking this winter and focus solely on study and practice.

Congrats to others who passed and even if you failed, just know you are always getting better, little by little, so keep your chin up and keep chugging along! >^-^<

[laurenschultz]

The AATJ website is already acting funny and there’s two minutes to registration… excellent

[thelastjaybils]

yeah…its not looking great

[laurenschultz]

hey, anyone trying to register for the jlpt: the aatj website is still down, but the direct link works! http://jlpt.us

[Shannon-8]

Well, I was unable to get an N3 slot in Chicago. Those went super-fast!! There were some N2, so I started registering for that as an outside “maybe” I could pass… And then those were gone before I could finish registering. So I signed up for an N1 … But I feel like I haven’t got a prayer… I think if I drop it, I can open it up for some other person. But I’ll sit on it for a week…

[WeebPotato]

@Shannon-8

Well, I was unable to get an N3 slot in Chicago. Those went super-fast!! There were some N2, so I started registering for that as an outside “maybe” I could pass… And then those were gone before I could finish registering. So I signed up for an N1 … But I feel like I haven’t got a prayer… I think if I drop it, I can open it up for some other person. But I’ll sit on it for a week…

うわ, that’s freakin tough! I wasn’t aware that it’s so hard to sign up. Do you know how many slots on average are usually available?

[Shannon-8]

No, but at the moment I saw a flash, there were about 17 N2 and 22 N1 slots, pretty much less than 5 minutes after registration opened. So it seems that US demand is very high.

They had us do a survey, also, to see where we study Japanese (it is the Assoc of Japanese Teachers, after all), and the reason why we are taking the test, with an emphasis on REQUIRED for job or work or study. (small pangs of guilt). This might factor in…

I know that my friend teaching English in Japan right now got her job based on her college Japanese class grades and the bilingual, in-person interview. She never even took the JLPT.