g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 89 of 333 24 May 2012 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
I'm very excited. Official JLPT practice tests have now been published, one test for each level. Up until this point, the biggest stress for me in preparing for the N3 exam is the lack of official test material. The sample questions are good as a guide of what to expect, but there are not enough of them to really gauge the range of what might appear on an N3 test. My concern is that the N3 level textbooks that I have been using do not necessarily meet the examiner's idea about what is appropriate at this level. But I don't have to worry any more. The N3 practice test is now on my desk. I'm just about to go through it under timed conditions, to find out how well prepared I really am for this level. Woohoo!
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 90 of 333 24 May 2012 at 11:03pm | IP Logged |
Well the good news is, I think I'm going to be ok! I scored 89% on language knowledge, 81% on reading and 74% on listening. I'm not sure how this matches up to the weighted scoring system that they use, however I am feeling a bit more confident now. Studying for the test was starting to turn into drudgery but now I feel like all I have to do is keep my current form over the next 5 weeks and I should be ok. I think I probably need to ease up on the grammar and vocabulary drills but spend a little bit more time on listening and reading (which is more fun anyway) and I should be fine.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 91 of 333 26 May 2012 at 1:29am | IP Logged |
Nice =D. It sounds like you're in great shape for the test. Wish my Japanese were at the N3 level ;). Good
luck.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 92 of 333 26 May 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
You'll get there. You've already made great progress so far this year. As for me, I don't think taking 4 years to reach this level is very impressive at all. When I started out I foolishly thought I'd have surpassed N1 by now. The official test papers are pretty cheap so I ordered the ones for N2 and N1 at the same time. I took a sneaky peak at the N1 paper and it looked tough! I couldn't answer a single question on the kanji section, didn't recognize a single word in the vocab section and the grammar section made me feel like I've been studying a completely different language so far! I can't complain though, as my level improves things just keep getting more interesting.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 93 of 333 27 May 2012 at 5:09am | IP Logged |
What study material did you use? I get spam from the white rabbit mail order store and I'm about to break
down and buy some of their stuff. I just have this set of vocabulary I copied and pasted from some guys
Facebook which I semi trust heh and would like more. There's no context for any of the vocabulary to
reinforce it and I think that's hurting my retention of it. I'm looking at something called Mimi Kara oboeru
mastering vocab through auditory learning for the N3.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 94 of 333 27 May 2012 at 10:56am | IP Logged |
Having wasted my own money on JLPT vocab books I would not recommend any of them, at least for N3. After doing the practice test I found that although I knew most of the words, they hadn't come from the vocab books. It would be helpful if I could tell you where they did come from but the truth is I met these words in all kinds of places, including Kanji in Context (which is overall too advanced for N3 and rather expensive) Japanese for Busy People III (which I thought was supposed to be not advanced enough for N3, but has been surprisingly helpful, for grammar too), some things that had come up in class this year, contact with native speakers, and contact with native materials.
I would suggest if you want to get specific N3 books, to get drill books instead, including ones for listening and reading. You can look up new vocab from the books as you go along, and you will have a context for the word from the practice exercise.
It's really important to remember that there are no official vocab lists for any of the new JLPT tests and since N3 never existed before, any list is just somebody's guess.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 95 of 333 27 May 2012 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
I should have waited for your reply before ordering lol. I wanted to click buy too badly.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 96 of 333 27 May 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged |
Did you just get the Mimi Kara Oboeru one? I don't think it is sufficient preparation for the N3 but it still has lots of useful words in it. It's not so bad and at least it has example sentences or phrases for each of the vocabulary words it introduces. The audio is a nice bonus as well.
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