Monday, August 21, 2023
I got my JLPT N2 result today. Yes, I did finally do the JLPT N2 last month in July. I didn't write about it at that time because I felt quite demoralized after the exam. If you have been reading, you may have heard me mentioning this last year. JLPT stands for Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. There are 5 levels in total. N1 is the most difficult and N5 is like beginner level. I have never taken any of this exam before. When I was ending my japanese class early last year, my sensei told me I should take N2 and I was like that's hard and I think she was overestimating my ability. Most of my classmates at that time had done it and passed and a few were even preparing for N1. I was confident I could pass N3, not perfectly but perhaps without much studying, and knowing that and what my sensei told me kinda then made me think maybe I should try for the more challenging N2 and that became the plan. They only conduct the exam twice a year and I planned on doing it last year, but I just couldn't. I didn't know that registration filled fast so last July I couldn't even apply because it was all filled in maybe like 3 hours or so. Then I wasn't available for the December one. So this year, I was sure to be ready by 9 AM to apply for the July exam.
Being the Indonesian that I am, I prepared for the exam by doing past year papers. Well I think those are past year papers that I did. I had to trawl the internet for them. If anyone reading this and want them and couldn't find them online, email me. I collected the N2 and N3 ones. The JLPT website itself has an example paper, but only 1. Since I was delayed and couldn't do the exam last year, I ended up spending many weekends last year doing the N3 exams. I thought that would be useful to build stronger foundation. I only did the N2 exams regularly every weekend this year after Chinese new year. The first time I attempted the sample paper from the JLPT website, I couldn't even finish within time, so that was scary. It's like you're not ready for this, this is not for you :( Luckily by the next attempt or the next one, I could finish within time but that doesn't mean that I manage to have a thorough read of everything. It also involved not reading even the full sentences of the first 2 parts of the vocabulary part which was about converting Kanji to Hiragana and vice versa. I sometime did need to read the sentence on converting Hiragana to Kanji because sometime I need the context. All and all I did 24 exams every Saturday and some public holidays since I came back from Chinese new year break. The only week I skipped was when I went on vacation, but then I did 2 exams the week I came back. It was quite an effort because I had to remember to wake up early on Saturday so that I could have enough time to do the exam. Then I had to check the answers and being that I am weak in Kanji, I had to check all the words and then sometime I needed to translate the sentences. I was burning not only Saturdays but Sundays too. The less I did on Saturday, the more I ended up losing Sunday :( The Kanji part was the one that I was scared the most because I feel that is my weakest part and if you don't know the word, how are you supposed to understand the passages. I kept an excel file of all the raw score (correct questions / total question) that I did. Surprisingly I felt like I did the best in the reading part except for that one week when I scored so low at 30%. I was so shaken at that time. It was like shit got real, I haven't gotten this. I was getting like 70 - 76% the weeks before and to score that low was seriously I was shooketh. It was the week when I was quite sick, so I thought maybe it's my brain not having the stamina to work, but as I was going through the questions and answers, it was still quite confusing. Seriously there were many moments when I went for lunch after doing the past papers, where I was just like in a daze, like I've been hit by a tornado. I couldn't see if I was improving because it's up and down. Sometime it seemed I was doing better on the vocabulary but the next week I took a dip. Inconsistent result like that really made feel I'm not at that level. Surprisingly, despite me being scared by the Kanji, it seemed I was the most weak on the grammar. My average raw score which I rounded down after all the exam papers that I did was 60.76% for vocabulary, 56.68% for grammar, 60.6% for reading, and 60.4% for listening. I think if your average is at 70% then you can be quite confident in passing and as you can see I was not :( Aside for the past year papers, I did buy one book, Pattern-Betsu Tettei Drill. It has questions on all the components. Since I am weak at the vocabulary and Kanji, the more words I can absorp is of course the better. The grammar part was kinda easy. The listening part was a mix, but normally the problem with this is your own concentration. The reading part has some confusing passages; I should have taken the hint that I needed to be more careful with that. Then I managed to borrow Sou Matome N2 Kanji and TRY N2 from the library. I actually had the PDF of TRY N2, but it's really better to have a physical book. I finished all the books but up to the last week, I thought I was still shaky.
The JLPT itself has a really unclear marking scheme. There are 3 components: vocabulary + grammar, reading, listening. All are multiple choice questions and there's no oral component, you don't even have to write answers which is a huge relief for me because again my kanji is so bad, I will not survive it if I have to write the answers. The no oral part is also quite a relief though it is weird that there's no oral part in a language exam. One may argue just because you pass the exams, it doesn't mean you can speak Japanese well, it just mean you can pass an exam and that is so true. Each of these components have a maximum score of 60 and you need to score at least 19 points to clear the component, without which you would fail. Then as a total, you have to score 90 in N2 to pass. The thing that is a mystery and something that I am really curious about is JLPT uses Item Response Theory to mark the exam. Each of the components has less than 60 questions so by logic some questions worth more points but we don't know which ones and logically your final score should generally end up higher than the raw score if some question has higher points, but this Item Response Theory explanation in JLPT website mentions answering patterns - Scaled scores are determined mathematically based on "answering patterns" of how examinees answer particular questions (correctly or incorrectly). So what does it mean? It's really unclear. The way I imagine it, they have some models that see if an examinee is able to answer for example a group of questions A, then they should be able to answer another group of questions B. If they couldn't answer the group A questions but successfully answer some of the group B questions, they may get less points because the model might think it's a lucky guess. I am really really curious to know how it works, especially because I couldn't find any other exams that mention this. Searching the internet, there's one website that list out the points that they think are attached to each question, but there's also a YouTuber who said don't believe that because JLPT has said it looks at answering patterns. If it's as I thought it is, I would be interested to know how the model is made.
The exam was on a Sunday in Singapore Management University (SMU). I was curious about getting in because I know being right smack in the city without really an enclosed compound, you would need to tap in to get in the campus. So apparently they had staff who facilitated our entries and there were many of us. I was still wearing mask at that time. In fact I was still quite cautious in wearing mask up to JLPT because I didn't want to get sick and I only let go of the mask after JLPT. They didn't ask me to remove my mask though when I did the exam, so that's weird. I was very scared of everything that I prayed for everything and prepared for everything like having 3 pencils at the ready. Then I saw the guy in front of me and he had like 5 sharpened pencils :D Unfortunately for me, the guy to my right kinda made a sound when he read so that's kinda annoying and I just had to tell myself to focus. The guy on my left didn't come so that's 100 over SGD gone. As I looked at the answer sheet, I realized that the total questions for the vocabulary + grammar and reading was less than what I thought it was going to be. Kinda glad upon finding that out but still when the proctor said 5 minutes left, I said fuck. I wonder if there are people who are good enough that they have enough time to review their answers. I always barely made it. The vocabulary part was actually easier than expected, though for sure I made mistakes but it didn't fill me with dread. Then it's the grammar part where I guess it's where I began to go downhill. There's a section where we're supposed to arrange 4 words into the correct sequence and I think I may have gotten all the questions in that section wrong :( Still I was still calm because we know the grammar part is where we're weak. Then it's the reading part where I went in with confidence. If there's any strategy to me doing the exam is that I did the last 2 questions of the reading first. The internet seems to agree the last 2 questions which are information retrieval questions carry bigger points. Generally you have to read a notice or flyer or announcement and answer 2 questions which could be quite easy, so easy you begin to doubt yourself sometime. The thing is sometime you're running out of time so you may miss crucial notes or disclaimer so that's why I chose to do it first. After that I went back to do the reading questions from the beginning and it's just going downhill. The passages were unclear, the options were unclear. There's a lot of nuances in N2 exam, I figure it'll be more in N1 and that's when mentally for me I started to perhaps feel down :( I remember praying after each time I circled my answer telling God I'm really not sure, please let this be correct God. Then it's a 20-min break before listening. Going to the listening part, I was mentally down so I just wasn't sure about anything. At one point I saw my answers and I seemed to be selecting the same option in a row, that can't be right, so I became even more demoralized :(
Finishing the exam, I was quite relieved I did it alone because I saw people discussing answers with their friends and I was like I just needed to get out fast. It wasn't quite fast though because I was confused about where my bus stop was :( I had like plan on what to do after exam that I was going to enjoy myself because it's finally over but since I felt I did so badly, any enjoyment seems unearned :( The next day or maybe the day after or maybe even that evening I saw answers being posted in the Internet by people and I did worse than what I thought I did on the reading. For the passages comparison part which had 2 questions, I only got one correct and I was actually quite sure of my answers :( So now it became even scarier than I may not even meet the required score for the reading part :'( I tortured myself by looking and not looking at the answers. Again we do not know how the scoring goes but if following from the website that shows the predicted mark in each question, I may pass the reading section, barely, maybe. So now it's a matter of making the required total and over here I was kinda in disbelief that I had never thought about how each of the component should contribute to pass comfortably. Now I ended up banking at the vocabulary + grammar component to be the best and I was worried about the reading and listening. I became insecure that I may not meet the required score for listening too :( Everyday I prayed so that I passed each component and I pass the required 90 points for the total - please God, don't let it be 87, 88, or 89, or maybe even worse like I only get 70 something. The thing is if I didn't pass, I would have to do it again and I did contemplate if I should apply for the December one. The thing about the Singapore organization that handles registration, for some freaking reason they open registration before result is out and registration for N2 was already done last week. When I told mom this, she was like you don't even know the result yet. Yeah, she's right so I didn't apply. Then I was also thinking about how I should prepare if I should do the exam again. I couldn't possibly do the same past year papers because I would still remember some of the answers and I don't have anymore past year or exercise papers. Then thinking about all the weekends, geez it was too much. It really made me symphatize now with my classmates who last time did normal class and preparatory class on the same day. No wonder they often didn't do the homework in normal class and didn't write essays. It's a lot and it's the weekends you're burning all those months. Putting myself through that again, oh God :| Then I also asked myself, why am I doing this, I don't need the certificate, and the only answer I could think of is that it's akin to trying to pass a level in a game. It's a challenge which somehow my brain cannot let go and need to conquer. You may think I need to get a life, perhaps you're right.
So today's result day. It's out by 09:00 AM Singapore time. Felt like I waited a long time for this but I was too scared to see it. My heart was racing and my stomach got all twisty. I decided to see it before lunch just so I could have time to process failure. By the way it's one of the reason why I didn't write earlier about me doing JLPT because if I had written I did it, I don't know if I could have been open and written again about failing. I said a prayer before I went to the site, asking God to help me be alright if I were to fail. I got in and lo and behold, I saw I got 105. Told myself, that means I passed right and only after I saw the word passed, I was calmer :D Oh God, praise be to God!
The vocabulary + grammar section was lower than expected so praise be to God that the listening part was good, way much better than expected that I don't even understand how that happened. A for vocabulary was perhaps not surprising because I happened to know a number of the words in the questions and I did feel like I was cruising through. B for grammar was unexpected, so maybe I wasn't so bad. Higher score for reading than expected, but I still feel disappointed because truly during my exercises I did much better so I feel unsatisfied :( In total, I didn't even reach 60% of the total score but I guess a win is a win right? I am very relieved, very happy. Today is like a good day and to celebrate I got myself a lemon mille crêpe cake :D So what's next, though I felt bad after the exam I did do an N1 sample test paper which I printed before the exam and told myself to try. I tried, but no I don't think I can do it. I could finish within time, but the results shows it would be such an uphill battle. My raw score is 60% for vocabulary, 35% for grammar, 68% for reading, and 45% for listening. See, I did not do so bad for the reading. It is very difficult, I do not understand many of the sentences and the passages. The reason why the vocabulary and reading is not so bad I guess it's because my guesses became more educated, but the grammar is atrocious. Almost as if I have never seen those grammar forms before though I'm sure my sensei have taught us those. Anyways, leaving at N2 means being at the same level as with DELF B2 and CELI 3. I passed the exams, but I don't speak all those languages well and I still need subtitles when watching things in all of them.
So what's next is I don't know. I know I won't be learning any new language because I just don't think my brain has enough space for it all. Then financially, I kinda have a much less amount that I can spend now so even previous plan of learning other things are just something that I don't consider now. The plan for now is perhaps just watching something in Italian or French or Japanese every weekend to somehow keep the languages circulating in my brain. I didn't watch any Japanese things to prepare for the listening part of the exam because I didn't have any more time, it's kinda funny I started to do so now. I recently finished watching Giri / Haji which I really really really love. Then I also watched Le Otto Montagne / The Eight Mountains which I kinda love even though the story is not that happy. I think the movie is calming, seeing the mountains and the nice soundtrack. There's no french movie yet to recommend from the ones I managed to watch. Okay it's been one hell of a long post right. I've just been holding this for a long time, it's been months. Good God, it really feels like a miracle - 私はとてもうれしいです。
:) eKa @ 10:13:00 PM • 0 comments
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