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Tracy desu yo, pessimist and world’s worst procrastinator. Uni student with still a lot of things to learn. Interests include otome games, Naruto and Japanese.

: Loves pink, food, ice-cream.
Summer is my eternal love.

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let's all panic

written on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 @ 11:05 PM ✈

Welp, today seems to be my mental breakdown day. In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if I did fail JLPT sigh. I feel like I'm more worried about it than I was for uni finals and I think that's justifiable on several grounds. I mean, I haven't been able to dedicate as much time as I wanted to studying JLPT since it was a "side" thing and uni work always had to come first which meant whenever it was bomb us with assignments time then I had to set aside JLPT and same thing with exams.

This means I don't really remember the things I learnt well since I haven't been constantly using it like in HSC :/ And when I did japanese for HSC it was an actual subject on my timetable not like uni so I actually had to spent a certain amount of time on it. Ah, am I really going to pass? With uni exams I'm pretty sure I will pass, it's just that I want more than that but at least the worry of failing isn't there. But I have that worry with JLPT (╥﹏╥) I guess because if I fail, that means no certificate but more than that, what would my parents say? They'd be like "you took this on and couldn't even pass?" And more than that, I'd feel so bad for my tutor who taught me for so long and then it would be so disappointing if I just failed sigh (ಥ＿ಥ）

I realise you guys probably don't care... but I'm just writing this for myself. I realise I never really talked about the test properly so for those that are interested these are the levels with 1 being highest and 5 the lowest:

N1: The ability to understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances
N2: The ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree
N3: The ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations to a certain degree
N4: The ability to understand basic Japanese
N5: The ability to understand some basic Japanese

I'm doing N3 because apparently with HSC knowledge it's easy to pass N4 which wouldn't really be a challenge and since N4 is "easy" it's not really recognised as something special (according to my teacher). The problem is that N3 is a new level, there used to only be 4 and N3 was inserted between the old N3 and N2 since the gap was too big and people found it really hard to pass N2 from N3. This sucks for me because there are hardly any resources for my test since my level is "new".... think of it as like a syllabus rewrite except there is no syllabus （ಠ_ಠ）

Soooo why do I find this test hard? Honestly, I think HSC was a breeze compared to this, not even joking. First of all, everything was in english for HSC japanese except the actual reading passages and the CD for the listening section. JLPT on the other hand? Absolutely everything is in Japanese, even the questions. Honestly that part is alright as long as you know whether you're looking for the "right" option or the "wrong" one.

So how does one get a pass? For N3 you need to get 95/180. Sounds easy? BUT WAIT! There's 3 sections - vocabulary, reading + grammar, and listening. Each is worth 60 and you have to get at least 19/60 to pass that section. Fail one section? Fail the whole test! This is to make sure you're actually well rounded in the areas, not just good at reading but suck at listening for example. Still sounds easy? WELL HOLD ON! One question isn't worth one mark. Wait what?!

Yep. Each section doesn't even have 60 questions but they have an awful scaling system based on how the candidates answer questions. Yep. So if you get a question right and everyone else does too, then it's worth maybe 1. Get something right hardly anyone else does? Maybe you get 4 marks. But if you get it wrong then you just lost 4 :/ Sooooo basically even if you got 15/30 questions right, it's possible you can't reach the 19/60 pass mark.

Now that seriously worries me because if I can't do a question, I'm pretty sure that's going to cost me a lot since I know my basics. Also, I can't stress enough how different listening in JLPT is to HSC listening. In HSC, they replayed all listening passages twice and you had a suitable amount of time to jot down notes in the margin, then put your final answer on the lines. In JLPT, it's multiple choice but the answers are all in japanese. Not only that, there's really no time to even read the choices before the CD starts so as soon as it stops, you have to pick an answer really quickly otherwise they start to read the next question.

They also don't replay anything. I'm not even joking when I say that if your concentration lapses for even one second you miss something really crucial. On top of this, JLPT is really tricky in that each of the answer options features in the passage to trick you. For example, if the question was like "what will this girl buy at the supermarket?" and the answers were chips, water, sandwich, chocolate, then the passage would go something like this:

Girl: Hmm I'm hungry. I'm going to go buy some chips.
Guy: Oh? But I thought you were on a diet, shouldn't you get something like a sandwich?
Girl: Hmm you're right... I guess I'll go buy a sandwich then.
Guy: I'll go buy a water with you then.
Girl: Nah on second thoughts, I'm definitely getting chocolate.

Or something like that. I know it sounds lame in english but JLPT is full of distractions where if you pick the first option you hear, it's seriously usually going to be wrong because there's always more important information afterwards. So yeah, if you don't listen even for a second you're going to get confused.

There's also listening questions where you're not even given the answers to choose from! All they give you is "1, 2, 3, 4" and you colour in the correct bubble. The listening passage is played, and then the answer options are read out and you're supposed to pick from it without actually being able to see it. So you really can't let your mind wander at all. I hope that made sense.

Strangely enough, listening is the one I haven't practised as much because aside from my little collection of random files, I haven't listened to much lately and listening was the latest section I practised with my tutor (like only a few weeks ago). And yet it's the section I'm best at. I don't know why. Even when I don't know the answer, I have some sort of sixth sense that picks it out. Or even when I can't understand everything in the passage, I blindly guess the one option I did know/ hear and it happens to be right. It's weird. That doesn't mean I don't get some wrong every now and then though.

Kanji is also pretty tricky. I'm thankful we don't actually have to write any and just be able to recognise them which is better for me since I've read a lot of stuff so compared to writing, my recognition skills are better. But JLPT still makes it hard because unlike HSC where they have wildly different options in multiple choice, JLPT just has options where the radical is different or maybe even a few strokes. For example:

My recognition skills are good, but sometimes I can really be thrown off if they look way too similar. That's actually why I have trouble remembering how to write chinese, it's because some are very alike and I don't know how to explain this but my mind gets "hazy" and I can't remember definite strokes. But if you show me, I can tell you what it says.

Anyway, I guess the one good thing is that there is no writing (like composing a response to a letter given) and no speaking (my definite weak point). Ah well, guys please wish me luck come this Sunday (╥﹏╥)

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let's all panic

written on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 @ 11:05 PM ✈