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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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kraemder
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 Message 601 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 12:46am | IP Logged 
Well a spectacular 69% on the reading. And I went over the time limit a bit so I'll need to be careful. It's a bit exhausting. I think I'd have done well to find reading material around my level to practice on. Reading above my head = using a dictionary a lot and that doesn't help you on this test. Same goes for anime. Most of the dialogue is over my head (not all, but most).

I think 60% is passing? lol. I hope so. If it's 70 I think I'll be cutting it close. Well this will be a good learning experience no matter the results.
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kraemder
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 Message 602 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged 
heh thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to eat plenty. I hadn't thought about needing to use the toilet.. caffeinated beverages make me need to pee =(. And those are what I'll be wanting most of all. This N4 material is just about right for me I think actually in terms of difficulty. It's challenging but not too challenging. A lot of the structures they're using are stuff I've just learned this semester too. I'm pretty sure I'm seeing passive voice thrown in a little which is something we haven't done in class. I actually think I'm getting better as I go.

Regarding the kanji - really the kanji would help me for word I don't know. If I know a word, the hiragana should be ok for me since usually it's used in some kind of context. I see that in the reading section they use a lot of kanji and I have no complaints with it. It was the 1st section and I am guessing they did it on purpose.

g-bod wrote:
I know, when I saw the exam rules for the first time before sitting N3 in the summer I found them a lot more intimidating than the test content. It's a lot stricter than any exam I've sat for a British institution. For that reason alone I'm really glad I went for N3 before taking a long shot at N2, so that at least as the test content gets harder I'm not also going to be caught out by unfamiliarity with the exam procedure. Actually the only thing that really did catch me out on the day was that I was a bit paranoid about ending up needing the toilet halfway through the exam, so I didn't eat or drink enough in the break between the first and second papers. Towards the end of the second paper I started getting really hungry and was kind of distracted by my rumbly tummy!

Good luck with your N4, although by the sounds of things I think you'll do just fine. Once you've got a basic familiarity with the format of the test, I think general language knowledge is far more important than exam practice, so I think leaving the boring stuff until the week before the exam is actually not a bad strategy at all! I did too much too early for the N3, and I felt totally bored by Japanese study by the day of the exam. Although I don't think I've done enough yet to pass the N2, at least I don't feel like I deserve it yet...but I'll show up next weekend and try my best anyway!

I know your frustration from lack of kanji as well. For me, the problem is not so much about not having a clue to the meaning, it's just that some words I've never really seen written in hiragana, so when they crop up with no kanji on a test paper or something like that it just takes me so much longer to recognise the word (I'm just not used to it being "spelled" that way I guess).

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kraemder
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 Message 603 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged 
The last section is listening which I'll go ahead and attempt in a bit here... It's called Choukai or ちょうかい or 聴解. It means punishment or listening comprehension depending on context I guess. I find that entertaining... 聴解 (listening comprehension) and 懲戒 (punishment) - same pronunciation.


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kraemder
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 Message 604 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged 
And I got a 79% on the listening. My best score yet. Wow.

I've been looking online to figure out what a passing score is and can't figure it out at all. Something about them scaling the results and using that to create a point system or some kind. I'm very confused.
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stifa
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 Message 605 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 2:44am | IP Logged 
I think they pass a certain portion of the cohort... so you got to wait a bit. You
could ask on kanji.koohii.com's forum or something, though a lot of the "common
knowledge" there is a bit dodgy... (The more standardised and inpersonal something is,
the more relevant it is to that site it seems.)


Edited by stifa on 25 November 2012 at 2:45am

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g-bod
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 Message 606 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 10:41am | IP Logged 
The scaling system is steeped in mystery, but it could mean that if too many people get a certain question right, it won't be worth as much in your final result. Or it might mean that they just compare all results to a bell curve (but there can't be a rigid cut off - pass rates still vary somewhat).

Anyway, since you need 90/180 to pass, which is 50%, you are well over that in your practice test scores, so despite the scaling mystery I don't think you need to worry at all.
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kraemder
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 Message 607 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged 
I was thinking that you only needed 50% to pass but then I got to thinking that their whole scoring thing didn't make any sense and maybe they pass the top 50% of applicants or something along those lines.
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kraemder
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 Message 608 of 1702
25 November 2012 at 11:30pm | IP Logged 
I'm am attempting to discipline myself to watch anime/jdrama without subs again. It's not that I tune out the Japanese totally with subs - it's that my attention gets divided. I think that turning off the subs will make my brain feel like the Japanese is more real and will better reinforce vocab/grammar I have studied. It's so hard to keep those subs off though - I get so curious sometimes. I don't have the discipline to watch stuff twice either so watching it with subs then w/o subs again after isn't going to happen.

*edit*

To motivate myself I'm going to post lists of shows I've watched w/o subs here. Might be a little spammy (if I can do it heh)

*edit*

It's a failure. I got partway into host in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and I got too curious. I'm having to settle with forcing myself to make an extra effort to listen to the Japanese.

Edited by kraemder on 26 November 2012 at 3:23am



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