日本語の道

Good Guess

Ok, I've finished the 2003 長文・文法 paper and using many of Roy's good suggestions, I managed to wade through far more of it than when I attempted the 2004 paper before time ran out.

I basically did the grammar first, as always (which was really tough, including many points that I am sure were not even mentioned in the Unicom book), then worked my way backwards through the reading sections.

At the end I guessed the answers for the whole of the the first reading passage - a mammoth 35 points down the drain. But after marking the test I realised that I had got 3 out of 7 right! Nice bonus.

Also, as I'd got through more of the questions this time, I got about 57%. Not great, but not that shabby considering my expectations just a couple of months back. Still, after calculating, even if I got 100% for the listening test, my overall score still wouldn't be near to the pass mark.

Today I went back to the long reading question and gave myself ample time for my tired head to try and figure out the answers. I finished, checked my answers, and to my horror discovered that I'd got just 1 out of 7 (5 out of the 35 points) right - considerably less than my 5 seconds of guesswork during the test. How thoroughly demoralising.

Dismal Vocab

Last night I sat down to start the JLPT 2003 1級 文字・語彙 paper. What a shocker!

When I tried the 2004 paper most of my answers were guesses at best, or using educated guesses to piece together kanji compound words etc. Still, I managed just over 50%. Not as bad as it could've been, I thought at the time.

The 2003 paper shows how bad it could have been... I battled through the paper, guessing my whole way through, even more so than the 2004 paper. I scored a dismal 38%! Perhaps I was dreaming to think I might score higher than 50% in the real exam. We'll see.

Still Reading

Can you believe I am still working my way through the test paper I was talking about in my last post? I had forgotten just how long it takes to go through a paper thoroughly.

Interestingly enough, when I gave myself the extra time to look at the reading sections I didn't have time to attempt, I was surprised that I could understand a fair few of them. I still got many of the answers wrong, but at least I had some idea of what was going on.

If I had 2 hours to do the reading/grammar paper my score would improve by at least 10-15%!

So, my problem is reading speed which is mostly due to guessing the meaning of kanji I don't know. Unsurprisingly, I did badly at the vocab/kanji paper. So, in the remaining couple of weeks I have to speed up my reading and learn as many kanji as possible.

Test Practice

After trying last year's 1級 test, I realised (yet again) that my 漢字・語彙・文字 is not good enough.

But the worst part was（やっぱり） 長文. My speed at reading the first question (30+ mins) was too slow and although I'd done the grammar section first fairly quickly, I missed 40% of the marks in the paper due to not even having time to see the other 長文 quesitons.

So, improve vocab/kanji & more importantly, speed up skim reading/comprehension of longer reading passages.

Thinking positively, I scored 90% on the listening part of the test, so it can't be all bad ('_'?)...ン?ええ

MLC Japanese

Don't forget this great site for your JLPT preparations:

> http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/Download.htm

Tsumori

I understand the following sentence:

理解できるようになった。

But I was suprised to hear this sentence:

理解できるようになったつもり。

I presume from the context that it means the same as the first sentence but I wondered whether there was any nuance?

The つもり I have learnt is normally used for 'intention' after having made a decision, e.g. 「あのラケットを買うつもりだ。」.

Actually, I've heard a similarly confusing sentence before. It went like this:

分かってるつもり

Can anyone clear this up for me? Is this new grammar or simply a type of style of speech?

Naughty Words

These are some of this week's new words - all from one friend, actually.

げり、たちしょん、のぐそ･･･

I won't include their translations on this occasion...

ヘ(・ρ・ヘ) ウヘェ♪

Letter Arrives

This morning a letter arrived from SOAS containing information about the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which is now less than a month away.

Although I had thought that all entrants would take the JLPT at SOAS university's Russel Square campus, it appears that there is another site at King's Cross which will be used for levels 1 and 2.

It's all too soon and all of a sudden feels real. Time to panic!

One Month!

日本語能力試験まで一ヶ月しかない…超ヤベー!!!

みんな、頑張りましょう。