It's been almost six months now since I studied my eyes out, and got a passing score on the jlpt. To be honest, not much has happened in the meantime. Fear of the future has grown heavier and heavier as August nears. I've done a bunch of poorly directed work toward the scholarship. And sadly, I've sort of come to terms with the idea of teaching children for a while longer if need be.
I've also continued to study a whole lot. Which is why I thought it would be a lark to pick up one of the old JLPT practice tests that I took in October, and give it another go. I was expecting it to give me sort of a boost, in showing how much better I am now than I was back then. It didnt really happen that way. I just finished the kanji and vocabulary segment, the hardest part for me. On the real test, I got a 63% on this section. Add to that 6 months of off and on studying, but generally pretty serious attention to kanji and vocabulary and you get 71.1%. I'll solve for X for you... 8.1%.
In the last six months, I've only improved by that slim margin, despite the fact that I wound up improving about 15 percent (of total score) in the 6 WEEKS before the test.
So, I'm not sure what to make of that. I'm thinking about taking the rest of the test, but the grammar part is probably gonna be worse than my test score.
Allow me to bend over backward to justify what happened there (in a way I won't believe myself). No doubt, I've gotten to be a much much better speaker, and my vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds since then. I can understand almost everything that crops up even on the NHK news. I've increased my reading speed and read about 1000 pages worth of book. Anyone who talks or works with me at all, has seen me get a lot better, but this score hasn't really changed. What gives? At that point in time, I was studying for the test. I was studying test words, in a test-oriented way. At that point in time, I couldn't speak for shit, and was glad to work with exactly what the test prep books suggested.
Since then, I've actually learned Japanese. Maybe.
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3 comments:
Conceivably, the fact that you're improving on the vocab section - the most representative of your familiarity with Japanese, I'd argue - can be extrapolated generally across the test.
With the grammar, you can hit the books and guarantee yourself a nice score, so even if you've forgotten most of the cramming you did in the first place, it's just a question of review...
Your listening is likely better than it was, if not already perfect...
You can read much more quickly than you used to, which will give you more time to think/focus in the reading...
Now, I'm no statistician, but ...
http://momo.jpf.go.jp/jlpt/download/2005result8.pdf
... a 32 point increase on the top side of the curve ain't too shabby.
ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for my guardian angel.
You're right. It's all in the spin. Because I'm free like this, I decided just to add up some numbers. My score, 305 + the estimated 32 points (which may be a stretch, but it's not a crazy stretch)=337. That would put me in the top 7% of 1kyuu test takers. None too shabby, I'd say. And that's before you even consider the implications of sticking a 1 in the front end of the number 337.
I'm going to (re)take another mogi test when I get back to the office today, because I have a hunch. I know that I've learned at least 1500 new words since back then, and my kanji has improved immensely. They say that the test covers about 10,000 worth of vocabulary, which means I should be able to pad my score some more.
(last entry, "10,000 words worth of vocabulary)
So the score from the second try at the vocab test = exactly the same. Not every theory's a winner.
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