Wanikani July JLPT Community Event (aka Joint Mock JLPT on July 4th, home thread)

[FlamySerpent]

Aaaand the exam got cancelled here It was expected tbh, at least it’s nice that my voucher is just changed to December now /o/ Probably gonna take the mock exam if I have time to do so

[DIO-Berry]

I did the full practice test today since I’m taking the irl one this weekend.

I have learned that I need to study those hiragana words more… and that I should have been studying grammar daily and not… however often I’ve been studying grammar…

My Practice Test Results

N4
Vocab- 25/34, two of which were dumb mistakes, so I hope I do better on the real thing
Grammar- 15/25, ouch, haven’t analyzed yet
Reading- 8/10, I’ll take it
Listening (16/28) やばい
-Section 1- 5/8
-Section 2- 4/7
-Section 3- 3/5
-Section 4- 4/8 I had a really hard time tracking what the question in this section and it felt impossible to take notes while they talked but the note taking time was before the dialogue??

I may now officially hate that ding
Also, why is this format so shitty? Where on Earth are they only going to let you listen to something once? Intercom announcements go 2-4 times and people are kind enough to repeat themselves once usually. Why???

[NathaLire]

I’m making a guideline for taking the mock JLPT right now! I’ll include a scoring guideline (which is NOT official!) so everyone can try to estimate whether they would’ve passed or not.

I will upload this in a couple of hours!

[NathaLire]

MOCK JLPT JULY 4 - Guidelines + Planning

• Go to this page

• Click the blue button with “JLPT Official Practice Workbook (published 2012)”

• Go to the right level and download the necessary files (or download these as you go through them, it’s up to you!)
• Start whenever you want, but for a more ‘accurate’ experience, you could follow the schedules as described below.

Click your level below to see a guideline of the sections and allocated time + the amount of questions.

N5

Section	Duration (min)	Questions
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary)	25	33
BREAK	20
Language Knowledge (Grammar・Reading)	50	26 (G) - 6 (R)
BREAK	20
Listening	30	24
*NOTE: Grammar and Reading are combined in one section, but the documents are in separate files!
*NOTE: Starting in 2020 the test times have changed, see Composition of Test Sections and Items | JLPT Japanese-Language Proficiency Test for more information.

As of July 3rd, there are 41 people who have signed up for the N5, good luck to all of you!

N4

Section	Duration (min)	Questions
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary)	30	34
BREAK	20
Language Knowledge (Grammar・Reading)	60	25 (G) - 10 (R)
BREAK	20
Listening	35	28
*NOTE: Grammar and Reading are combined in one section, but the documents are in separate files!
*NOTE: Starting in 2020 the test times have changed, see Composition of Test Sections and Items | JLPT Japanese-Language Proficiency Test for more information.

As of July 3rd, there are 30 people who have signed up for the N4, good luck to all of you!

N3

Section	Duration (min)	Questions
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary)	30	33
BREAK	20
Language Knowledge (Grammar・Reading)	70	23 (G) - 16 (R)
BREAK	20
Listening	40	27
*NOTE: Grammar and Reading are combined in one section, but the documents are in separate files!
*NOTE: Starting in 2020 the test times have changed, see Composition of Test Sections and Items | JLPT Japanese-Language Proficiency Test for more information.

As of July 3rd, there are 20 people who have signed up for the N3, good luck to all of you!

N2

Section	Duration (min)	Questions
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar ・Reading)	105	32 (V) - 22 (G) - 21 (R)
BREAK	20
Listening	50	30
*NOTE: Vocabulary/Grammar and Reading are combined in one section, but the documents are in separate files!

As of July 3rd, there are 15 people who have signed up for the N2, good luck to all of you!

N1

Section	Duration (min)	Questions
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar ・Reading)	110	25 (V) - 20 (G) - 24 (R)
BREAK	20
Listening	60	35
*NOTE: Vocabulary/Grammar and Reading are combined in one section, but the documents are in separate files!

As of July 3rd, there are 5 people who have signed up for the N1, good luck to all of you!

Good luck everyone

Unofficial scoring method per level will be uploaded in a couple of hours, except for N1, which will be uploaded after I’ve taken the test also let me know if anything is incorrect or missing in this post so I can add it!

[tls]

Thank you so much for the very lively and enjoyable mock test prep phase. Wish you all the best for the test as I wish for everyone else as well. We can do this.

[Ragecup]

A warning for anyone taking the 2012 N4 listening test section 4 seems to be missing from the file

This misses off around 8 questions. So might be worth looking up online before you take the test.

I have never taken a JLPT exam before though so not sure if it’s supposed to look like this

[NathaLire]

Once I read your message I (was shocked lol) went in to check, but I think (if I understood it correctly) it’s supposed to be missing! The questions are asked in the audio Thank you for paying attention and checking

[Ragecup]

Oh that’s a relief! I was so worried!

Thank you for checking and confirming so quickly.

[NathaLire]

MOCK JLPT JULY 4 - Unofficial Scoring

• This scoring method is UNOFFICIAL
• The weights in the tables below were allocated quite randomly, feel free to use any other way (e.g., percentages) if you prefer to do so
• I will only attempt to calculate scoring for N1 after I’ve taken it

I’m sorry for only getting to this today! I’ve genuinely not had any time until now. If anyone has a better method of calculating the scores, or ANY suggestions at all, don’t hesitate to post them!

IMPORTANT: The following scoring methods are only ESTIMATIONS of the actual scores. The JLPT calculates their scores differently:

The JLPT uses “scaled scores.” Scaled scores are calculated based on “answering patterns” of each examinee, not on “the number of questions correctly answered.” Therefore, scores in the results may be different from what you thought. (From the JLPT official website, FAQ)

Again, the following method is only an approximation and does not give you the score you would have gotten if you had taken the actual JLPT. I recommend calculating percentages if you want a more standardized approach, because I have weighted sections according to my best (but unreliable) judgment below.

However, if you’re interested in a weighted approach, the following method may work for you:

To calculate the scores, I’ve referred @rwesterhof’s (lifesaving) post from last year, and used my own best judgment to get to the total amount of points possible per section (yes this was very random at times, my apologies for all the .5 that emerged out of this). I’ve tried to make this fairly consistent for all levels.

On to the scores! (N2 and N1 to be added ASAP)

N5

N5

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Language Knowledge				120
Vocabulary	10	1	10
	8	1	8
	10	2	20
	5	2	10	48
Grammar	16	1	16
	5	3	15
	5	3	15	46
Reading	3	3.5	10.5
	2	5	10
	1	5.5	5.5	26
Listening				60
	7	2	14
	6	3	18
	5	2	10
	6	3	18	60
Total				180
*This table is very closely based on @rwesterhof’s table in the post linked above

To pass: 80/180

• Language Knowledge: 38/120
• Listening: 19/60

N4

N4

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Language Knowledge				120
Vocabulary	9	1	9
	6	1	6
	9	2	18
	5	2	10
	5	2	10	53
Grammar	15	1	15
	5	2	10
	5	2	10	35
Reading	4	3	12
	4	3	12
	2	4	8	32
Listening				60
	8	1.75	14
	7	2	14
	5	2	10
	8	2.75	22	60
Total				180
*Compared to the N5, there are more reading questions, and so I’ve given this a higher overall weight here.
*The listening section was difficult to get to 60 points overall, I hope this estimation suffices. I assumed the last section would be worth the most points, like in the N5.

To pass: 90/180

• Language Knowledge: 38/120
• Listening: 19/60

N3

N3

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Language Knowledge				60
Vocabulary	8	0.75	6
	6	0.75	4
	9 (split)	(Q15 – Q18) 0.5 (Q19 – Q23) 1	7
	5	1	5
	5	1	5	27
Grammar	13	1	13
	5	2	10
	5	2	10	33
Reading				60
	4	4	16
	6	3	18
	4	4	16
	2	5	10	60
Listening				60
	6	2	12
	6	2	12
	3	2	6
	4	2.5	10
	8	2.5	20
Total				180
*In the N3, Reading is allocated 60 points in total. Even so, it is tested in the same sitting as grammar (if I understood correctly).
*NOTE that in vocabulary I’ve split section (9) to prevent ridiculous numbers.
*Due to this difference in weights, I had to adapt some scores quite far from the method I used for the N5. I did try to maintain similar weights within sections if possible (e.g., the last section of 5 questions in vocabular is worth twice as many points per question as the first section).

To pass: 95/180

• Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar): 19/60
• Reading: 19/60
• Listening: 19/60

N2

N2

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Language Knowledge				60
Vocabulary	5	0.5	2.5
	5	0.5	2.5
	5	1	5
	7 ( split )	Q21: 2 / Other: 1	8
	5	1	5
	5	1	5	28
Grammar	12	1	12
	5	2	10
	5	2	10	32
Reading				60
	5	2	10
	9	2	18
	2	4	10
	3	4	12
	2	5	10
Listening				60
	5	1.5	7.5
	6	2	12
	5	2	10
	11	1.5	16.5
	3 (4Q in total)	3.5	14
Total				180
*The weights are allocated to my best judgment, but they’re largely random to ensure the section totals are reached. This is a very unreliable way of calculation, so if you want a more reliable score, I would recommend just using percentages instead!
*Mind that vocabulary section 4 (7 questions) the section points are SPLIT. I decided on this question, because it uses kana words that are likely not on wanikani (I did not check though). So I’m guessing more people would get his wrong. It was also very convenient in getting the score to 28 lol

To pass: 90/180

• Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar): 19/60
• Reading: 19/60
• Listening: 19/60

N1

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Language Knowledge				60
Vocabulary	6	1	6
	7 ( split )	Q7+8: 1 / Other: 2	12
	6	1	6
	6	1	6	30
Grammar	10	1	10
	5	2	10
	5	2	10	30
Reading				60
	3	2	6
	9	2	18
	4	3	12
	2	3	6
	4	3	12
	2	3	6
Listening				60
	6	2	12
	7	1	7
	6	2	12
	13	1	13
	3 (4Q in total)	4	16
Total				180

*The weights are allocated to my best judgment, but they’re largely random to ensure the section totals are reached. This is a very unreliable way of calculation, so if you want a more reliable score, I would recommend just using percentages instead!
*I’m so sorry for splitting sections in the vocabulary section, I didn’t see another way to get to 30 easily. Any suggestions are welcome, as always!

To pass: 100/180

• Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar): 19/60
• Reading: 19/60
• Listening: 19/60

I apologize again for the .5 and sometimes even .25

[Sully22]

Hey everyone, I’ve been lurking in this thread for a while and today I took the N4 test, (gonna be busy on July 4th) and figured I would share my score .

I did better than I was expecting.
Vocabulary: 36 / 50
Grammar: 21 / 35
Reading: 28 / 35
Listening: 44.5 / 60
Total: 129.5 / 180

So I guess I technically passed , although I got REALLY luck on my guesses in the listening section. All in all I’m pretty happy with my score and I know where I can focus on improving. Thanks to the people that put this together and provided a way to grade the test. And good luck to everyone taking the test tomorrow.

頑張って！

[conan]

I ended up taking mine today too since I’ll be busy tomorrow as well. I took the N2. I didn’t do any fancy weighting or calculations, and got a 93/180. It went much better than I expected, I’m surprised. (My strongest scores were in grammar and listening, color me shocked, haha.)

My test center for December still says they’re going forward with it. I’m feeling more confident now, but will still be studying like crazy just in case this was a fluke (and it’s barely a pass anyway). And I now have a better idea of what to study. Thanks for hosting this!

Best of luck to everyone taking it tomorrow! (Real or mock test, y’all got this! :D)

[rodan]

I also took the mock N2 today, because I was considering taking the mock N1 tomorrow depending on how I felt.

I’m learning the language just for fun, the test is canceled in my area for all of 2021, and I haven’t really been studying (just reading – I was doing New Kanzen but only actually juuuust got to N2 speaking before getting distracted by books…), so this was pretty much the lowest stakes a mock exam could possibly be, but somehow it still felt kind of nerve-wracking!

Results

Assuming I tracked and calculated everything right… with the weighting provided above,

• vocab: 23 / 32 (71%) → 19.5
• grammar: 20 / 22 (90%) → 30
• reading: 18 / 21 (85%) → 50
• listening: 25 / 31 (80%) → 48.5

for a total of 86 / 106 (81%) → 148.5 / 180

(whoops initially I way overcounted the number of vocab questions. Might be fixed? I dunno how to count the double listening question)

So at 49.5, 50, 48.5, the weighted section scores are surprisingly consistent, although the weighting seems like it went in my favor (fingers crossed that’s true in the real thing too I guess).

I wouldn’t have expected to do so well at grammar compared to vocabulary, but I guess vocab is where all the “here’s 4 words that all mean X, which would you use in this situation” questions are that are most difficult for me who doesn’t produce anything and still drills vocab in JP->EN…

Very happy with the reading and grammar scores, and I honestly don’t even know where the listening came from but I guess I do have some OK auditory comprehension after all!

Also I feel like I woulda gotten that nasty 象徴 question if the quality of my printouts was better

… I did good I think!

It didn’t feel so easy that anything was trivial, and there weren’t that many questions where I felt like my answer was definitively correct, but on the other hand, there weren’t any questions that felt like a total shot in the dark.

So all on all I feel like that’s good support for the “I think I’d have a shot at the N2” hypothesis. I guess the goal would be to just make sure I progress instead of regressing in the next year!

I might still take the mock N1 this weekend too, because I’m super curious to compare the two now, but this was long and strenuous so maybe not tomorrow… I guess I’ll see.

P.S. @NathaLire Thanks for setting this up!
I think the N2 scoring has the listed weights off a little in the Reading section - the point totals are correct but 5 * 4 isn’t 10 so I had to shuffle the weights around a little (if I’m reading it correctly)

[tls]

Thanks again for proposing a weighting system.

N4: I noticed a small mistake in the Vocabulary section:

mondai 2 is six questions and mondai 3 is nine questions. Therefore it should be:

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Vocabulary	9	1	9
	6	1	6
	9	2	18
	5	2	10
	5	2	10	53

My first idea ~ to still keep it 180 points in total ~ we maybe can “steal” three points from the reading section by weighting it the following:

Section	Subsection	Weight	Points	total
Reading	4	3	12
	4	3	12
	2	4	8	32

But maybe you (or others) have a better idea?

Also, congrats to those who already took the test. Great job!

[rodan]

I’m sorry for not responding to the polls or studying with the group and then jumping the gun twice (does it count if it’s July 4th in Japan now?)
…but in a move that has 100% fried my brain, I decided to do the mock N1 today also, in order to make today just a test-taking marathon instead of spending a significant chunk of two days taking and thinking about tests. Had to redirect that adrenalin somewhere I guess!

How did that go

Turns out the N1 is harder than the N2! Who knew??

I feel like I didn’t do horribly though!

vocab: 20 / 25 - 80%
grammar: 9 / 20 - 45%
reading: 13 / 24 - 54%
listening: 29 / 36 - 80%
total:
71 / 105 - 67%

It’s definitely less of a clearly good result, but considering how hard it is and how fried my brain was I’m pretty proud!
I think ratio-wise that might even be a pass??

That said though… the line between “I know what I’m doing, I think I’m doing ok” and “uh oh this is chancey” is somewhere between N2 and N1 for me right now it seems like.

I don’t mind too much doing so badly on grammar… for this test that seems like an area that especially benefits from specific study that I haven’t done (yet).

Listening being way better than reading completely shocks me. But in practice it makes some sense – the text pieces they picked for reading were harder than the books I’ve read, but their staged listening pieces are still easier to pick out than like, real people stammering and talking over themselves, etc.
The listening pieces are even kinda fun! I laughed a lot at one about giving plants names.
I think I overestimated the difficulty of listening by comparing it to shows and videos, and underestimated the difficulty of the reading comparing it to mystery novels.

I’m tempted to attribute some of the reading problems with weariness from how I took the tests, but no, those were tricky for me even without that. It was a lot of “hmm I have a very diffuse idea of what this is saying, maybe this answer is the nearest to that.” I guess there’s nothing for it but to read more! Darn! (and study more grammar)

One funny thing – doing these back-to-back made me realize they reuse a few questions here and there! Unfortunately though… I didn’t thoroughly check my N2 answers… so I have no idea if I even answered the same thing for those as I did the first time.

Good luck to everybody on the actual July 4th!! (Which I guess is right now in almost all timezones anyway)
I found this a really helpful and interesting exercise for picturing where I’m at and what the tests are like, so I hope you all do too!

[Kialandri]

So hey everyone, back from a long absence from studying japanese, I haven’t studied at all for the mock to try and see where my base-line skill is at, so here goes nothing…

[Burnannator]

Yeah, my as well try tommorow! Yeah…

[NathaLire]

@rodan @tls thank you for pointing out my mistakes I just woke up, but I’l edit in your suggestions asap!!

Edited it now! Thank you for paying so much attention

@rodan

I think the N2 scoring has the listed weights off a little in the Reading section - the point totals are correct but 5 * 4 isn’t 10 so I had to shuffle the weights around a little (if I’m reading it correctly)

Yes! I’ve changed the weights now too, which is probably the same thing you did! (Fortunately it was a very quick fix!)
And well done on both the N2 and N1!!! I think I might do the same and take both as well! Excited for the listening pieces you talked about haha

@tls

My first idea ~ to still keep it 180 points in total ~ we maybe can “steal” three points from the reading section by weighting it the following:

I agree 100%, let’s steal those three points!! I’ve adjusted the scoring above, thank you for noticing it and suggesting an alternative!

---

I’ll eat breakfast and then take the N1 (and note that I barely studied at all, I only immersed, so this is going to be a very interesting experience LOL). I might also take the N2 to see whether I’ve ‘improved’ at all in the past two years. Curious to see everyone’s results come in and good luck
And congrats to everyone who already finished! I think even some people who were able to take the actual test already finished, right? Amazing

[sakuchu]

I took the N5 mock test today!
I think it was a very good experience, getting familiar with the JLPT test setting.

My Results are:

Vocabulary: 34/48
Grammar: 38/46
Reading: 26/26
Listening: 51/60

I actually expected the listening part to be super easy, but it turned out to be harder than expected.
Overall I think the result is alright, I’m currently studying for N4 in december. If I feel like it I might try to do the mock N4 as well, but doing a real mock is taking quite some time.

[Scylie]

Man, it’s test day already, even though it feels like this thread was only set up like 2 weeks ago…
I will also go find some breakfast first and then get to it.
Good luck everyone!!

[ekg]

I started early by doing the test yesterday! It was fun!

My results on JLPT N3:

Summary

Vocab

Grammar/Reading

Listening

26/33 Vocab
27/39 Grammar/Reading
25/27 Listening

Overall not too shabby for spontaneously taking a test with no studying for it. 21 mistakes, only 2 on listening. It’s easy to space out for a second and then you’re lost on the listening section! ^^; But, I was a bit surprised it wasn’t more difficult.

I also made a serious mistake on the last reading section, by not realizing there was one more page of info. So, that clearly was hard to answer correctly. I also panicked a bit for a while in the reading section as I started to run out of time. = I couldn’t Japanese anymore. Then I realized I actually had 10 minutes left, and managed to correct some answers in time. I also “corrected” an answer to the wrong answer in the vocab section. But overall, I’m happy about this result.

I don’t know how JLPT is scored. Anyone knows about that?

Time to calculate the score…

To pass: 95/180

Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar): 19/60
Reading: 19/60
Listening: 19/60

My score: I passed the test!
Total score 134/180

Language Knowledge: 42+??? (I can’t calculate one of the sections (it’s 7-??? points)
Reading: 36/60
Listening 56/60