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Looked through the first 10 or so pages of posts in the Textfugu and The Japanese Language subforums and could not seem to find an answer; so I’m starting a thread of my own.
I plan to take the JLPT N4 this coming December. I have been studying with Textfugu and WaniKani since about August/September. I am currently at the start of season 5 on Textfugu. I am going to do a review of season 1-4 before I really get into 5, but I was just wondering…
What level of the JLPT should I be able to tackle at the end of Season 4? How about at the end of Season 8?
I have a JLPT N4&5 study workbook coming in the mail next week, so I suppose that will be a good gauge as to what Textfugu hasn’t taught me thus far.
I’ve wondered this as well. I don’t think it is four though. I’ve seen sample questions and they’re all in Japanese.
"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses." ~George Washington CarverWell, yeah. The whole JLPT is in Japanese. Even the application form, though that at least has an English translation.
I’ve got the official N5/N4 practice book, and I’m fairly confident I can do all the N4 written questions – only reason I haven’t done the actual test already is that I’m not at all confident about my listening ability…
I passed JLPT4 last summer, and I am fairly sure there is no way you will be able to pass it from what is offered on textfugu. There are many kanji in the test never taught on textfugu, and the listening is pretty hard. You could attempt to take JLPT5, but I don’t think anyone has yet passed any JLPT from only doing what is on textfugu.
For n4 you need to know all grammar on tae kim, except maybe a few things in the advanced topic sections.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/
You need to know most of the vocab on this list
http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt4/vocab/
And need to polish your listening skills
Listening skills are perhaps the most intimidating part of the JLPT if you have not been immersed for a good period of time. If you don’t have Japanese speaking friends, I really recommend using JapanesePod101′s podcasts. There are many different levels and they do a very decent job of breaking down the conversations for you. Pair this with other forms of input like Japanese dramas and radio shows and give it time. Even if you know every word in a sentence you will have a difficult time understanding a native speaker without attuning your ears to the different sounds and accents.
My brain just switches off when I try to listen, but I don’t know if it’s just because I’m unconsciously trying to translate each word on the run, and thus falling so behind that I just give up trying. I can pick out the occasional word easily enough.
Joel – I think that’s a common trap, as soon as you hear a word you don’t know you focus on that, next thing you know the whole sentence has flown by and you’ve missed most of it.
Talking with a friend I found if they said a word I didn’t know I just let it go. That way I got to focus on the rest of the sentence and work out the overall meaning.
@Joel: I have probably ordered the same one, or something similar. It’s a joint N4/5 study workbook, comes with a CD of listening exercises too I think. Got it from Amazon.co.jp. It is all in Japanese as well.
@マーク: I have Tae Kim’s guide in print form (he released it in paperback on Amazon.com around the end of last summer?). I decided I would read through Textfugu, and then move onto his book for further expansion of my grammar knowledge.
I’m also a subscriber to WaniKani. I am currently level 6 on there… I wonder what level WaniKani = what level JLPT Kanji/Vocab. Either way, that has certainly helped expand my vocab beyond what is offered here on Textfugu. I’ve also just gotten to the point in Textfugu where Koichi recommends using Lang-8 for content creation. I am hopeful this will increase my vocab as well. I’ll probably get around to my first submission later this week.
As for listening comprehension… I have been buying all my favorite (American) movies/shows dubbed in Japanese. I have been watching these DVDs almost exclusively. I have Japanese audio and subtitles on, but may have to try for no subtitles, as I definitely catch myself reading more than I listen. It helps that I already know the plot of the movies… aids in piecing together random verbs/words that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to place.
I would hope that through these few resources I could be ready for the N4 by this December. I suppose all I can do is try!
your initial questions was
“What level of the JLPT should I be able to tackle at the end of Season 4? How about at the end of Season 8?”
Which is what we answered.
Right… and the verdict was, Textfugu alone does not prepare you fully for any level of the JLPT. Thread topic answered.
Also mentioned in the replies were the various deficiencies in the material on Textfugu. I was simply sharing the ways in which I am/have planned to learn beyond Textfugu. ;)
I don’t know how many people noticed it, but last Monday a blog update was posted: http://blog.textfugu.com/post/41133232330/textfugu-while-were-in-japan
Some of the post is about Koichi and co spending Feb in Japan and the other part is about the next version + edition of Textfugu.
WaniKani levels vs. JLPT levels can be found in this WaniKani forum thread: http://www.wanikani.com/chat/wanikani/1045/page/3
Level 6 on WK gives you 87% of N5 and 45% of N4
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This reply was modified 11 years, 10 months ago by
dkmiller.
so what would be the main recommendation to do after we complete textfugu? where should we go for advanced learning, that when can start about where textfugu ends?
As for textbooks, I’ll recommend Tae Kim and Kanzen Master. The latter is all grammar and example sentences (with some fill-in-the-blanks sentences too); very minimal English used – just enough to get the point across – and no romaji. It was actually Koichi who recommended Kanzen Master Grade 3 (which I think is Old JLPT 3 level grammar) when I emailed him one time about catching up with the material and waiting for him to write more.
Do any of you remember the good old days where you’d get lengthy, in-depth, heartfelt replies to email responses from him? Then he changed to some kind of “3 sentence system” for efficiency :/ Does he still do it like that? I imagine he would, but I haven’t had to email him in… probably almost a couple of years now… man, does the time fly by! :D Back in the days before even *Hashi* joined him! His first employee, ah, I remember it well :P Remember having to wait forever for Hashi to finish his degree before joining the TextFugu team full time; the anticipation surrounding the big reveal of who the new crew member was was immense XD
But I digress…
Textfugu will work for grammar and vocab but probably won’t cover what you need in regards to Kanji. For that I would start with WaniKani to begin your Kanji studies and build your base.
I believe this site offers a complete list of Kanji covered in WaniKani in comparison to JLPT levels, Joyo, and frequency in readings.
http://ky.is/wanikani/#data/jlpt
Currently it looks like you reach them as follows in this study program:
N5 = Level 16
N4 = Level 27
N3 = Level 31 (90%), Level 50 (99.4%)
N2 = Level 44 (90%), Level 50 (95.6%)
N1 = Level 50 (53.4%)It also shows a list of all the excluded JLPT Kanji not covered in WaniKani, which currently is about 592 Kanji total.
So basically WaniKani covers nearly all the Kanji you need for JLPT 5-2, and about 50% of those for JLPT 1.
It covers the most common Kanji, statistically about 98.515% of the Kanji you encounter while reading are covered when you complete the 50 levels of WaniKani. So you are off to a great start.
You can easily fill in the missing 592 characters at this point on your own (unless they are added to WaniKani system later).
Note: Currently WaniKani covers about 1,680 of the most commonly used characters.
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This reply was modified 11 years, 10 months ago by
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