I would hope not, but I’d still fear them saying “your pronunciation was off”, or thinking you said something else. Accent/speech impediment can make one thing sound like another. Judge may decide you made a mistake, hearing something other than what you said.
I would bomb an English proficiency test then. 
Japanese is still comprehensible when spoken in complete monotone, so I don’t think an accent will throw them off too much 
“…おばあさんにあげました”
“I’m sorry but おばさんにあけました is wrong”
“That’s not what I said”
“Sorry but that’s what I heard”
Did the judge hear wrong? Perhaps test taker did actually make a mistake, but is all ‘oh no no, that’s not what I said’
It’s tough. Speaking is important, but it’s a thing where one judge may give you an 80%, while another may give you a 70%. Then again, lots of tests are like that. All those essays we had to write in high school/college.
Guess I’m just cynical.
I doubt the JLPT will be replaced. From what I read in NHK, there will be a new japanese test to assess these immigrants. With that said, it does not necessary mean JLPT will be replaced.
There are also many tests in JP and each has their own purposes.
If you look at the statistics section on the JLPT site you can see that overall there’s a big range in motivations for taking the test - from academic reasons like getting into university, through to professional reasons, and then there’s just people who want to measure their own proficiency.
I agree that this isn’t really news yet, it’s speculation. However the articles seem to focus on the problem of assessing people better for professional situations. If the new test is better suited for this then I imagine for people who had that as their motivation it’ll make both test takers and businesses happy!
That said, I highly doubt that a test which is exclusively business-focused will end up being the sole test, purely because the JLPT folks will be mindful of people whose focus isn’t business - some of them won’t care about how to schedule meetings for instance!
Maybe it will, but it sounds like you will have a more well-rounded foundation in the language by being expected to have a minimal level of speaking and writing ability.
Unless you’re just expecting everyone in Japan to pass you notes of what they want to say and you’re just going to grunt and nod?
This sounds like guys I knew in college taking Japanese classes who could appear to speak well if all you did was stick to the canned textbook phrases but were at a complete loss if anyone deviated even the slightest.
That’s not just a difference in pronunciation or accent though 
You’d almost have to mangle words on purpose to make that kind of difference. For tests it’s a big help to speak slowly and clearly. And like I said, I doubt they’ll expect perfection. If one of the main points of the new format is to administer it digitally, the speaking part might be processed by a speech recognition system. And those (at least the ones if seen used in language learning) have a fairly wide margin of error. If anything I’d worry about it NOT catching small mistakes 
I don’t know how it may work for (a possible) test for japanese, but here we have the judge just sitting there and maybe asking questions in english about various stuff. Your speech is recorded and then a couple of other people judge it afterward
I’ve always been very bad at speaking tests, so I hope this won’t become a part of JLPT at least.
Especially for tests with a working environment in mind I wouldn’t be against speech proficiency tests at all. Finding a right balance will be hard though. If I understood correctly, reform is also part of making Japan more open to a foreign workforce. Having a very strict speech test will go against that aim. It’s probably harder to find good resources for speaking overseas compared to other disciplines.
True, but only because of neccessity, not by choice. They just don’t have enough Japanes workers.
Maybe a bit. But it also ensures that those who do make the cut will actually be able to live in Japan and interact with people on a meaningful level. Nobody needs highly qualified engineers that can’t talk to anyone.
Highly qualified engineers are on a different visa, and do not need to be able to speak Japanese at all.
I want to apply to this test, my most strong skill is listening and then speaking. My most weak skill is reading, I find easy to write if I can use a computer, but if is something like “write with your own hand” then I am already dead.
This article talks about the kinds of jobs people who come under the new reforms will be allowed to do
Edit: This blog post explicitly lists all 14 industries: Agriculture, Aviation, Cleaning buildings, Construction, Electronics and electrical equipment, Fishing, Food and banqueting (restaurants), Food and drink manufacturing, Hospitality (hotels, etc), Industrial machinery, Materials industry, Nursing, Shipbuilding, Vehicular maintenance
That’s why I said finding a balance. Not being able to talk to anyone isn’t typically part of that.
True, what I meant was that no matter how well a person fits a given job description, the speaking skills are pretty damn important.
And imho that new test format could help with that. Because with the JLPT, nobody forces you to learn speaking the language at all.
The new test does not have any speaking (nor writing) part yet, though. And may never have for all we know. So it’s basically the same problem.
But let’s be honest. It’s not being done because of some newfound, widespread love of foreigners and diversity from Japanese society as a whole. It’s the tiny, first step of acknowledging an economic reality that they don’t really wish they were in.
True. But at least they seem to be thinking of adding those parts later on.
A language student’s end game shouldn’t be a grade on a test.