I have been working a lot to prepare for this test. I have done the Shin Kanzen Master series’ workbooks 2 times, and today, I felt very confident, and I wanted to test if my ability is good enough for this test. Also, I wanted to know what will actually appear on the real test, as the mock tests I did in the Shin Kanzen Master books were quite easy, and that really made me doubt a lot.
So I download the sample test (It is said that this sample test is the official test of year 2012) from here https://jlpt.jp/e/samples/sample12.html, From the beginning, I was going to do the whole test, but I ended up just finishing the first section of the test, called Language Knowledge, as I felt extremely exhausted after doing it. Well, I only have one word to describe this sample test: “unexpected”.
Language Knowledge Section contains 3 part: Kanji (6 questions), Vocabulary (3 groups with 18 questions) and Grammar (3 groups with 20 questions). In sum, there are 45 questions in this section.
The first Kanji part, it should really be finished within… 2 minutes, as all the questions are very easy, just look at the underlined word, let the brain work, and make the choice. I would say, marking the choices even takes more time than finding the correct answers.
The second part is Vocabulary. I was very surprised when I did this part. The things asked here were very broad, and I didn’t know many of them, so my guessing-ability had a chance to prove its value. But it appeared that my guessing ability was not really good, as I only got 3/7 correct questions in the first group of this Vocabulary part. In the second group and third group, my performance was much better, I achieved 4/6 and 5/6 correct questions. In sum, in this part I got 12/19 correct questions (around 63%). Quite bad, as I only made 2-3 wrong choices when I did the Shin Kanzen Master Series’ mock test. This result also strongly proves that the real test is much harder than the mock test. Therefore, I must never be complacent.
And next, the final part, Grammar. I have to admit that I was shocked when I did this part. About the first group of the grammar part, the things that appeared here could be everything, from a N4 basic grammar point, to a grammar point that I don’t even know about its existence. There was only one grammar point that is truly from N1 level's grammar list. That was surprising, because last year official N2 test (which I took and passed), questions were mostly concentrated on N2 grammar points, and it didn't contain lower level's ones. Choices were also very confusing, as I often ended up with 2 choices to choose. About the result, I made a horrible result at the first group of this Grammar part, with only 5/10 were correct. It was such a shame, since I usually get full points from this group.
While the first group was very hard and broad, the second group was easy, and the third group, I would say, easy as fuck. I really can’t understand why there is such an easy thing in the highest level test. There were 5 questions in each group, and not a single mistake was made by me.
In sum, I made 33/45 correct choices in Language Knowledge section. Assumed that every question’s value is equal to each other, I scored 44/60 points. Not so good, but not so bad at all, especially for the first real test.
Still, the real test really made me shocked. It was hard, broad and confusing. The mock test I did in the Shin Kanzen Master series, is undoubtedly no match to this test. (Of course, it's just about this section. I didn’t complete the reading and listening sections of this sample test, so I don’t know). Also what I have learned after doing this test really makes me think: “Should I use old tests, to study, instead of using books like Shin Kanzen Master series or Sou Matome series? Because things listed in those books do not appear much in the real test after all”.
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