I finally wrote the JLPT (日本語能力試験）today. And I’m glad I did. It was such a lovely experience. Since there is only one centre in the city I was able to see a lot of people who are just like me. Learning Japanese instead of any of the European languages can make you the strange one among friends. But here I was surrounded by people who were interested in the same language as I. I was even more surprised to see school kids at the centre and they were writing for N3 certification! Amazing!
I wasn’t prepared for the exam. I hadn’t bought listening tapes or solved model question papers. I wasn’t aware of the types of questions expected in each section and to tell you the truth, it didn’t matter. I did stumble a bit in the listening section though.
How did I do today? Hmmm, I can’t really say. The vocabulary section was easy enough. The time period of 30 minutes was more than enough to go through 35 odd questions. I was really surprised by my reading speed though.
The grammar section was a little overwhelming. Lots of reading to do and it was a race against time. In this section I found that I couldn’t read a lot of Kanji. Some looked familiar, most didn’t. Instead of letting that stop me, I kept reading until the end of the passage while trying to understand the context simultaneously. It makes it easier to answer questions later.
The listening section was the worst actually. I should have expected it. The conversations were simple enough but I couldn’t follow them. I was told later by another candidate that watching anime helps with listening. It is one of the things I’m planning incorporate in my study plan for this month.
I don’t think I’ve learnt anything new by writing this exam. My listening needs work and my reading speed needs work. My comprehension is slightly better after preparing for N3. What I want the most is to get started with speaking Japanese. I will focus on these aspects for the coming months and depending on my results I’ll decided whether to rewrite N3 next July or not.
Jumping Jacqueline 
Anime is good listening practice, I wish I could find places where there were options for subtitles in Japanese though – something I love about Chinese shows. An idea for listening practice: https://www.youtube.com/user/freejapaneselessons3 nihongonomori is a youtube site for JLPT stuff and from the N3 stuff I’ve watched so far, all the explanations are in Japanese 🙂
I have watched Nihongomori lessons for N3 before. Their videos are definitely good practice. Also check out BIlingual Chika and Nagai Ruka CH for Japanese listening practice.
On lang-8 I came across a native Japanese speaker who used to take a small part of an anime video and translate it to English. I think that’s a very good idea. I’m planning to do that too instead of just listening to it and moving on.
Yeah, passive listening isn’t helpful ^^
For Japanese Subtitles you could go over to http://kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=subtitles%2Fjapanese%2F . Haven’t really checked for reliability yet.
Thank you! 🙂