JLPT mini rant

July 12, 2017August 8, 2020 sonie

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It’s been such a long time since I’ve updated my blog. With so much stuff going on these past months…like studying for the JLPT (N5) exam~..yup, that happens.

JLPT mini-rant

The first exam for this year was the beginning of this month. The exam was held at one of the universities here.

The exam started at 12:30pm and, you’re not allowed in the class after 12:30pm.

Before the exam starts, the instructors go over the rules of what you can, and can’t do during testing. You know, the obvious. I just copied what everyone else was doing during the demonstration.

Getting on with the actual test. It’s a 3-4 hours (I forgot) test, consisting of three parts (30 minutes break after each part).

Kanji :

I’m not going to say much about this section because I think it was the easiest part of the whole test! So~~ easy that I took my time! (a bad move I know!) next thing you know, the lady is yelling “TIMES UP!” and I’m yelling, ” WTF, nooooo!!” with 10 unfinished questions bubbles, yup. 25 minutes goes by SO QUICK!.

Reading/Grammar:

The hardest part of the test! I say it’s hard only because of frustration with one of the sections, within this section. It was one of those “fill in the blanks’ kind of sentences. You have to put the sentences together to figure out the word they are looking for, to get your answer. Honestly, that took SO MUCH TIME! OOOOMG!!. You’re given 50 minutes.

Listening Skills:

The second easiest part of the test, and the last part of the test. The whole class sits and listens to an audio recording together that the instructors play. You listen and fill in your answers. fairly easy, fairly quick,..and fairly boring! so boring that for 2 or 3 of the questions, I swear I had ADD. My ears were not having it and my brain just shot to focus on something that’s not the CD player (lol). 30 minutes.

In conclusion,

I think this is a fairly easy test to pass. The only thing I would do differently however if I knew beforehand is, DON’T TAKE YOUR TIME! OMG! lol.

I wanted to kick myself on the kanji skill section because, even though it was one of the easiest sections out of the whole exam, I didn’t keep an eye on the time!.

Believe me, 25 minutes is not long at all!. I suggest you skip the ones that are hard, get the easy ones done, and then go back to the ones that you need more time on.

The way they score the test is confusing AF! I’ve tried looking online for a better explanation but, meh…none.

From what I’ve gathered from the internet is, the first two parts of the test ( kanji skills, grammar skills) are scored together.

Which means, if you know your kanji skills are bad, you have a chance to save yourself with the grammar sections, and vis versa.

A required score to passing each section is