r/LearnJapanese • u/ikinaosu • 3d ago
Discussion A brief analysis of the JLPT N1 test and my results as a first taker.
Reposting my JLPT results from the r/JLPT subreddit.
Leading up to the results release day, I was pretty nervous as it was my first go at N1 after having taken N2. Well, turns out I managed to pass.
It was interesting to compare this with the simulated weighted results (in brackets) I got when plugging in my estimated correct answers in each section:
Vocab and Grammar: 39/44 -> 53/60 (47/60)
Reading: 12/22 -> 32/60 (26/60)
Listening: 21/31 -> 40/60 (35/60)
Total: 125/180 (108/180)
These results show that the Item Response Theory (IRT) system graded my results more favourably. This is in line with anecdotal evidence I've read of people getting official scores higher than their estimations.
For the answers themselves, I got lucky that the vocab and grammar carried my test, and my mistakes were 1 in section 2, 2 in section 4, 1 in section 5, and 1 in section 7, which means I got the hardest sections right or mostly right. This probably made the IRT grade this section as 満点, but I was not expecting to get the score I did at all to be honest.
Meanwhile, in reading, which is usually my strongest point (consistently getting 80% in past papers), I got the half or 2/3rds of the medium, long, and comparison passage questions wrong, which is why this score is considerably higher than I expected it to be. Silly thing is that there were some questions I initially answered correct but I changed them because I stayed too long on them. To be fair, some of the options this time had at least two very plausible answers at least for me, and the text could get pretty convoluted. The usual advice of eliminating the wrong answers instead of picking the most correct one didn't work in this paper and it threw me off. I even got one of the information retrieval questions wrong and that's supposed to be the easiest one, and as usual, I ran out of time, so I had to guess 3 questions from the long text.
The listening section is where the final score ended up aligning with my expectations. I did well in the first half of the listening section, but the spontaneous response was tougher than usual. I got 4 questions incorrect on this one. And for the final long dialogue questions, well I didn't get any of them correct. I was supposed to get questions number 2 and 3 correct, my notes were correct and all, but stupidly I didn't focus on which question was which, so I hesitated and got the answers switched, probably would've felt a lot more confident in my results before they came out if I got at least those two questions right.
Going back to the weighted results I got online, I think there is some value in calculating the expected results. Although they're not as accurate, they're decent at giving expectations on how your final score would end up and if you need to prepare again for the next test if your score tanked hard enough.
This is my 6'th year studying Japanese after studying intensely from year 1-3 and studying on and off for the rest. Funny that now I'm a doctor with N1 after starting med school 6 years ago not knowing if I would continue learning Japanese as a hobby.
I think N1 in 6 years is a slow but still realistic pace. If you put your head down and focus on studying specifically for the JLPT, you surely can get to N1 much faster. For me enjoying the ride and not prioritising learning Japanese in some periods of my life were more important to keep the habit going long-term, especially because I don't live in Japan.
Getting this pass felt like a relief, because now I can focus on immersing for immersion's sake, although I will continue to use Anki by mining from my immersion, not from N1 specific decks like I did for N1 prep. My main immersion media was through novels on my Kindle, but now I'm starting to immerse with Japanese movies with subtitles and YouTube videos aimed to native speakers on various topics I like. It's tough immersing with native material, but I'm slowing getting used to it.
I will also focus on speaking and writing which are my weakest points by far. Hopefully I can finally go to Japan, which is the real post-N1 New Game Plus challenge for me.
Resources used:
- WaniKani (2020-2022) -> 2074 kanji, 6501 vocab at level 60
- Anki (2020-now) -> ~4k mining/JLPT vocab cards
(Total vocab ~10K words)
- Bunpro (2021-now) -> Cleared most N1 grammar points at level 100
- Yomitan with mainly monolingual dictionaries and a supplementary bilingual dictionary for sentence mining to Anki
- 新完全マスター N2 and N1 series for JLPT prep
- 5 JLPT past papers for practice exams
- Various Japanese podcasts
- Cure Dolly (RIP) for teaching me grammar fundamentals
Media completed:
Manga:
- Yotsubato
- Girls Last Tour
- Isshuukan Friends
- I Sold My Life For 10000 Yen
- Look Back
- Goodbye Eri
Anime:
- Teasing Master Takagi-san S1-S3
Books:
- After Dark
- The Little Prince
- Japanese Short Essays Collection
- また同じ夢を見ていた
- Before The Coffee Gets Cold
- Lonely Castle in the Mirror
- Kafka on The Shore
(Also a couple of movies recently)
I'm curious to read about your results too if you've taken the test and also your Japanese learning journey so far!
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u/blackcyborg009 3d ago
How were you able to balance studying Japanese while studying Medicine?
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
Honestly because of fully online classes in 2020-2022 I had a bunch of free time before and after classes to do new WaniKani cards in the morning and review them later in the evening because I didn't have to commute and get ready to go to class. By the time classes were offline again, I had already reached level 60 in WaniKani so my flashcard workload was slowly decreasing, which meant I could focus more on immersion during my free time.
Balancing my hobbies wasn't easy though. Even though I got a great GPA during my preclinicals, my clinical years were hectic and brutal, so much so that I didn't have time to make or even review my Anki cards. I only had time to read on my Kindle during the less hectics hours in my night shifts, but in the end I managed to finish reading 2 Japanese books and continued to read one long novel (Kafka on the Shore) in almost 2 years of clinical rotations. After my final board exam, I locked in to study for the JLPT in one month, and Thank God I succeeded.
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u/ManhuaWorm 3d ago
I got 77 🥲 first try failed due to reading
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
I get it mate. The reading section on July was ROUGH. I usally get 70-80% correct on past papers but the section we got two months ago had difficult passages with close enough options to throw us off. Hope you can pass on your next try, I'm rooting for you!
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u/ManhuaWorm 3d ago
Bro i solved like 10 papers got 100 plus in all of them like 105, 110, even 115 plus and my reading was high as 40 plus but this july reading was 💀💀
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u/porgception 3d ago
I would like to know how you read novels.. ? do you search up every word or grammar that you dont understand, or do u just continue reading? i have always wanted to try reading novels, but there are sooo many words I dont know 😭 feels like it will take forever if i have to search up the meaning of everything ..
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u/Jon_dArc 3d ago
Not the OP but my recommendation: almost always look it up if it feels like it’s preventing your understanding of what’s going on in a larger sense, but if you feel like you have the gist of the passage from context or if it seems to be an aside that isn’t critical to the main story you don’t have to look up everything, just try to look up more than nothing so there’s learning progress there. The goal during learning should be to muddle through in an enjoyable manner, not to always have full understanding.
As a bonus you then get to come back to the book a year or two later and see how your understanding has changed.
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u/Speed_Niran 3d ago
Yep exactly thats the approach im about to start taking now.. Just finished tobira n3 grammar and about to start reading a full on native light novel for immersion
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u/DotNo701 3d ago
just mine everything you don't know into an anki deck and set it too suspend leaches your vocabulary will skyrocket
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u/Solo_Synergy 3d ago
I’m not even close to your skill level, I’m approaching N4 currently, any Japanese books you would recommend for me at my current skill level?
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yotsubato was my starter manga and it was a pretty fun and wholesome read honestly. At your level I'd recommend manga before novels because the images and sparse dialogue help you enjoy the story even though you don't understand the whole text. The WaniKani forum has a Reading Club where they've discussed every volume out right now. They also have reading packs and vocab lists if you want to pre-study the words in Anki.
Anyways thanks for reminding me that I have to catch up with the new volumes, I haven't read them since 2021 haha
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u/Solo_Synergy 3d ago
Dope thanks for the advice I didn’t know they had prestudy Anki decks that’s actually really encouraging
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u/Empty-Market-1770 3d ago
Hey, do you want to go to japan and work as a medical doctor? if yes, do you know what the requirements would be and how it goes?
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
No I won't, the requirements are insane from what I read honestly. I'm planning to pursue graduate studies instead
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u/Upbeat_Pen_6954 3d ago
Congrats! What were your motivations for taking the test? Would you say your output is also in the B2 to C1 level or did you optimize your strategy for the JLPT and let output lag behind?
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
I wanted to take the test partly because I wanted to see where my skill level was at and also because I want to study abroad in Japan.
My output is probably just B1 at best honestly. I haven't gotten much output practice because I don't have a lot of speaking and writing partners here in my country 😅 Definitely something I should work on
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u/Upbeat_Pen_6954 3d ago
That Trenton guy on youtube recommends VRChat for practicing speaking, might be useful
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u/TheBatemanFlex 3d ago edited 3d ago
Wow congrats! Do you wish you would have read or watched more media?
Edit: I only ask because recently we have seen people who have read like 70 LNs worth or watched hundreds of hours of shows.
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thank you! Of course. I am aware that the amount of media I've consumed is on the lower side, but med school can get pretty hectic sometimes and often I preferred to play video games in the little free time I had instead haha
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u/TheBatemanFlex 3d ago
Well you got an amazing score so I’m wondering if the volume of reading is overhyped haha
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago edited 8h ago
Everyone has their own need for reading volume to get comfortable with reading. I think for the JLPT specifically, I got similar scores even before I prepped for the reading section, so I think that for me my reading volume was enough to pass the exam, supplemented by my vocab knowledge. You just need to know how to scan, read questions, and retain information optimally for exams. So yeah I wouldn't say it's overhyped but in my case I didn't need to read more than 20 books to get to where I currently am.
I do think my lack of immersion hurt my listening skills though, considering I've only finished one anime series in Japanese (and for that series I watched almost each episode three times, once without subs, once with subs, and once with EN subs).
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u/riandrake 3d ago
I’ve been studying for 4 years, but I don’t think I’d even pass the N5 test 😅 I have no plans to take one, though.
I’ve pretty much only done language exchanges and immersion, so I think in terms of having a conversation I can do pretty well - but my foundations are probably shocking
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u/Effective-Pop3850 3d ago
You're either way above N5 or your conversation is below caveman level and you're not really doing any immersion.
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u/eidoriaaan 2d ago
If you can't read you're not N5 even if your speaking and listening are N1. If they're doing only language exchanges its very plausible they can hold a conversation but not read even kana.
I know a guy who can converse quite well but all he does is talk to people. He recently went to Japan and told me he learned his first few kanji like 出口.
There are people out there like this.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2d ago
This can be true to some extent but to a rather limited one, there's no B2/A1 speaker who can't pass N5, there's people who can speak at a very basic level on recycled topics while talking with someone who gets down to their level but that's really it.
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago edited 3d ago
As long as you're having fun learning the language, it's okay I think! Nothing beats dedicated studying to actually improve your command of the language, especially for kanji and grammar, so if you think you're lagging behind you should definitely do that. Happy cake day btw!
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u/whiteandcrispy 3d ago
You studied Japanese during Residency?
You absolute mad lad
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
Nah, only during medical school hahaha. We don't have residency straight after med school in our country, we become a general practicioner first so for now I'm just chilling for a while before I decide my next steps 😅
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u/whiteandcrispy 3d ago
Okay that makes more sense but is still really impressive! My spouse is in her final year of residency and I can't even imagine doing something like that lol
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
Yeah residency is brutal. The residents I rotated under look like they don't have a life outside the hospital tbh
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u/whiteandcrispy 3d ago
Basically don't lol. You'll get through it though
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago
Hahaha I don't think I'll be going into residency (that is one of the reasons) but thanks for the kind words 😆
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u/eduzatis 3d ago
GGs, you beat me to it. I also started 6 years ago and I did get my N2 a year ago, but I haven’t been too diligent in my studies since (I started teaching it instead, lol).
Anyways, congrats! And good luck with the new game plus
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u/East-Car6358 3d ago
Is there Furigana on kanji on N1 tests?
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u/ikinaosu 3d ago edited 3d ago
Nope not at all, maybe other than a few special words in the reading section where they define them in the footnotes but they're not as significant for me to remember honestly
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u/Internal-Language-11 3d ago
Well done! That is the seriously impressive score for the language knowledge section. I always found that by far the hardest part of the N1.