Tuesday, December 15, 2009

2009 Test Results

Today, I received my score report for the J. Test 実用日本語検定 which I took on November 15th.  I took the A-D level test. There are 7 different levels that can be attained on this test of 1,000 points. The lowest starts at 500 points and is D level. The highest level starts from 930 points and is the Special A level.  The last time I took this test level was 3 years ago. This time, my score is 154 points higher, however I did not receive a level certification because now there is a requirement that your score must not fall below 20% of the allotted score for any of the 8 sections of the test. I failed the written portion of the test as time was running out and I had difficulty thinking up any sentences that could be made with the given words. Next time, I think I'll jump to that section first and do it while my mind is fresh.

Here is my scoring history.

AD Level Scores
  • 11/2009  613 points
  • 11/2006  459 points
  • 04/2004  376 points
This time my annual improvement was about 51 points per year. Before, my reading score was about 10% higher than my listening score.  This time, however, my listening score was 12.8% higher than my reading score. I scored 57.6% on reading/writing. Actually that was all from the reading questions and nothing on the written part. And I scored 65% on the listening portion which makes up half of the test.

I did not expect to get over 600 points. I was expecting to at least get more than 500 points, so I'm pleased with the score but not the fact that I didn't get the certificate, however, that doesn't bother me. I just take the test to see what my real improvement is. I have never prepared before taking the J. Test. I was going to do more reading before this test, but I only read that one book which I finished 2 months before the test. After that, I didn't do any reading. It would have really helped though as I was struggling with all of the articles you have to read to answer the questions on the test. There were 7 articles. Only the first 2 were short ones. The others weren't real long but they were more and more difficult to comprehend.

Last week, I received my results for the Japan Kanji Proficiency Test 日本漢字能力検定. I took and passed level 8 with a score of 144 points which is 96%.  This level tests on the 200 characters that are learned by 3rd grade elementary students in Japan.  Combined with the previous grades' characters, that makes 440 characters. As I told Emma, I missed the readings for 歯車 as well as 画板, and the writing of 究 as well as 発. For that last one, I don't remember what I did to get that one wrong. I probably wrote the last two strokes starting from the bottom horizontal line instead of the line above it. But I really don't recall.

8 comments:

  1. Good job on the tests. 96% on the kanken is pretty solid mastery. Did you prepare for the kanken in any way? If so, what materials did you use?

    Are you going to do level 7 next or skip to 6?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh yes. I definitely had to be prepared for the KanKen (Kanji Kentei). I used past test collection books(過去試験問題集). In fact, I've studied for this same level before. The last time I was prepared for it was in April of this year. I could get over 90% on the tests back then. But then, just 2 weeks before the November test, I started doing more past tests and I was failing again. So as I did each one, my score increased every time until I was getting over 90% again. Next, I'm working on level 7, which is another 200 Kanji.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations Keith, keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete
  4. Don't feel bad about 発. I have seen two ways of writing this in books, so I asked a Japanese teacher. She got very defensive and acted like I was being komakai because I wanted to know.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Keith. Congratulations!

    And btw - ho ho ho for the holidays...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Good job!
    I see a couple of posts here about you taking various tests, so I wonder if all that is defocusing you from the LL and do you have certain periods of the year when taking tests and others when studying, kind of preseason-season?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm not very good at studying but I like to take tests to measure my improvement. The Japanese tests can be somewhat helpful for gaining employment. Usually, it is the off-season.

    ReplyDelete

No profanity. Please be considerate of others. Thank you.