2011 JLPT N2 Preparation – Tips

Not exactly the most confident I’ll be able to pass the exam this year for N2.

But with that sentence grammar, I think I may be getting in the zone.

Here are a few tips I’ve come across with that might ease those butterflies in your tummy and make the most out of the time you have left to cram. (^_^)’

1. Make the most out of your cram time by

finishing up that Kanzen Master Bunpou Mondai Taisaku book

(green grammar book of the Kanzen Master series).

Grammar Reviewer for JLPT L2Grammar Reviewer for JLPT L2Grammar Reviewer for JLPT L2

For you guys that have this book, been browsing lazily through this book over the year, and forgot where you placed this book, it’s time to get to finding it – and finishing it.

Don’t just rush through it. If you haven’t studied words or kanji, looking up unknown words and kanji in the sample sentences is a great tip to cover a lot of ground you’ve been putting off until 2 months before the exam date. Trying to cram kanji and words out of context right now is NOT going to help. Unless you SRS everyday like a whole lot of words. Maybe.

A friend of mine passed JLPT Level 2 back then using this method. I’m not saying it will work for you. But believe me, I just finished it the other day and yesterday we had a mock exam on bunpou (grammar), I can say a lot that came out of that N2 reviewer, were the end parts. A lot of the grammar from the end of the book.

Focus now. If there’s one book to finish, this is it. Or that other book where you can incorporate kanji, words, and grammar (even reading) in one sitting.

2. Time yourself

when taking that reading mock exam.

I’ve found by timing myself that it is simply impossible to read through all the articles in the reading section of the test in the mock exam.

On the other hand, I’ve found that :

a. I applied the following tip found in this interesting JLPT Boot Camp read, I can finish short and medium reading comprehension and get the answer right most of the time.

(1) get topic

(2) read question

(3) read through (skim actually) with comprehension

(4) answer the question

(5) (I just added this) never mind if you don’t know the yomikata of a compound kanji word; you can figure out what it means by piecing 2 and 2 together from the two kanji and the context

(5 biggest mistakes people make on the JLPT – is an ebook you can download in http://www.jlptbootcamp.com/)

 

b. For longer reading comprehension, understand a few things:

(1) The answer is before or after the underlined word (or word in question)

(2) If the sentences before that are fuzzy, back track or read ahead a bit.

(3) Time yourself. If it takes too long, leave it.

(4) Look for hints in the connecting words like sorekara (それから), sorede （それで）, and all those like it.

3. Answer mock exams

– especially the reviewers for the new N series. (^_^) Sounds a bit like a cellphone model.

Don't get caught unawares!

Anyways, the last thing you want is to be caught off gaurd with new types of questions in the actual test date. If you don’t need to read the instructions because you already know what test it is, that is some (and in here I mean ずいぶん) addition in your precious test taking time.

There’s a lot more I can think of. But really, you shouldn’t be spending too much time reading blogs like this. ^_^) And for me, writing blogs like this. We all want to pass the test but we’ve really got to focus from now on as much as we can. Break a leg!

God speed in the test!

がんばりましょう！

Ganbarimashou!

p.s. I'm taking the N2 this year (sorry if the examples are for N2, I hope you find them helpful even for lower levels)

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 45 ～ことになっている

ご無沙汰、本当にごめんなさい！いろいろなことあるし。。。

では、今日の文法は発表します！

This one, you hear a lot! And it becomes a little confusing as its made up of lots of common words.

The trick to remembering this pattern is to memorize it as a phrase, a set, that means one thing and not per word combined together to form meaning. It helps to know what each word means though, if that is of any help to you.

こと (koto) – means thing

になっている – means ‘become’ or more precisely, because it’s originally になる + ている, it means has become (resultant state)

SO, thing + has become = It has been decided, supposed to, set to

^_^ hope you got that!

[grammar pattern]

～ことになっている

[meaning] It has been decided, supposed to, set to

[sample sentence]

鈴木さんと、５時にここで合うことになっている。

[English] We are supposed to meet Suzuki-san at 5pm here.

[romaji] suzuki-san to, go ji ni koko de au koto ni natteiru.

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 44 ~ことに（は）

ひさしぶり！やっと少し暇ですから、ポストしようかなと思いました。

[It sure has been a while! I finally have a bit of free time so I thought I’d go and post this]

さて、今日の文法は…

[Well then, today’s grammar pattern is…]

[grammar pattern]

～ことに（は）

[meaning] The thing its, the ___ things is that, ….

[sample sentence]

悲しいことに、誰も理解して来る人がいません。

へえ、そうなんですか。<- more on 日本語 conversation catch phrases in upcoming posts… ^_^

[English] The sad thing is that no one understands me… 😦

[romaji] kanashiikotoni, daremo rikai shite kuru hito ga imasen.

The JLPT 2 Grammar Project – No. 43 ~ことなく

今日の文法は

[grammar pattern]

～ことなく

[meaning] without

[sample sentence]

贅沢などすることなく、貯金しています。

[English] I am saving money and doing without luxury.

[romaji] zeitaku nado suru koto naku, chokinshiteimasu.

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 42 ～ことだから

[grammar pattern]

～ことだから

[meaning] Because, due to, due to the fact (followed by a guess)

[sample sentence]

山田さんのことだから、きっとその試験に受かるでしょう。

[English] Because it is Yamada-san, I believe she’ll pass the test.

[romaji] yamadasan no koto dakara, kitto sono shiken ni ukarudeshou.

^__^ いい週末を…

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 41 ~ことだ

Even though I wanted to post it up straight, どうやらできません。　But here we go again!

[grammar pattern]

～ことだ

[meaning] It is important to…, … is necessary

[sample sentence]

成功したければ、がんばることだ。

[English] If you want to succeed, it is important to try hard.

[romaji] seikou shitakereba, ganbaru koto da.

Well that hit straight home! ^_^’

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 40 ～ことか

I know I sound a bit weird here.. But please bear with me. ^_^’ I was attempting to voice the “!” mark

[grammar pattern]

～ことか

[meaning] What a… ! How… !

[sample sentence]

子供が生まれてなんとうれしかったことか。

[English] When a child is born, what a happy event it is!

[romaji] kodomo ga umarete nanto ureshikatta koto ka.

^_^’ A bit of info from a native speaker says that this pattern is not so commonly used nowadays.

He says that for 女性 (female) the following is much more appropiate during these times:

「なんと～ことでしょう」

Going along with our example from above, it would be something like  なんとうれしいことでしょう。

So the ～ことか is for those really exclamatory statements. It’s not applied in every English sentence we put a “!” to. ^_^ For guys, this is okay , I guess. I’ve heard this expression from Bleach. I don’t really recall but I think it was Toushiro taichou. ^_^

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 39～ことから

今日の文法は…

[grammar pattern]

～ことから

[meaning] From (the fact), guessing from, deducing from

[sample sentence]

髪型が変わったことから、彼女が失恋したって分かりました。

[English] From the fact that she’d had changed her hairstyle, I guessed that she had broken up with her boyfriend.

[romaji] kamigata ga kawatta koto kara, kanojo ga shitsuren shita tte wakarimashita.

大変ですね。@_@

The JLPT 2 Grammar Read Out Project – No. 38 ～こそ

どんどんにしよう。

[grammar pattern]

～こそ

[meaning] Only because, the very fact that, because (emphatically)

[sample sentence]

イチローがいたからこそ、あの試合に勝ってたと思うよ。

[English] I think they won the game (precisely) because Ichiro was there.

[romaji] ichiro ga ita kara koso, ano shiai ni katteta to omou.

(^_^)じゃ、またね。

Study Tip 1 – Ruler Magic

Hey there guys ^_^

Just thought I’d share a little genius that struck me. It might not be genius to you – but it’s like the answer to my search for ease of use, less preparation, and quick to get studying!

So the story goes that I have had in my possession a cool ruler in the  CheckAge set by Zebra that is red on one half and green on the other. It comes with a red marker and red pen. When I got it, I’ve always thought it was great! Now I’ve got a hide-the-word-you-are-studying study method – like we all used to do back in highschool when we were studying for a test or something… Now the thing is, unlike in highschool, I didn’t have as much luxury of time in writing that humongous amount of vocabulary to learn in such small time. So though its a wonderful product, it got stashed away in my pencil case.

Great tool for studying

Anyhow, I’ve moved my study method from the whiteboard to the mobile. It’s great because we all carry our mobile and now there are apps available to list down just about anything. I installed some japanese fonts, japanese input and some mdict mobile app and in no time, I was jotting down every unknown word in word mobile or excel mobile. I thought I’d just look for a flash card app and load all those words to review later. But that is where I got stuck! There were no good enough apps for it. If there were, I’d have to input everything I’ve already inputted (something I think is very counterproductive)… no way… well, not now anyway… I’ll get to it later, so I thought to myself. But like everything that we put off it goes into the “maybe or maybe never” list of things to do. ^_^

Now you see it...

Now you dont!

I know, I know… you probably know where I’m going with all this so let’s get straight to the point.

Pad, marker, and ruler to ruler and phone

I thought what if we combined those two methods? So, I launched my word list, formatted the kanji and hiragana readings to fuschia and the english meanings into cyan (why those colors? Patience my dear, patience … read on).

Fuschia for the kanji and hiragana - cyan for the english

red part for studying kanji and hiragana

green for studying the meanings

And voila!

I got myself a great seamless learn-input-study-review method with just my phone and a great ruler. ^_^

I just format the text’s colors and overlay it with the ruler when it’s time to study on the go.

I don’t know about you, but believe me, it’s super convenient and totally not counterproductive.

By the way, instead of red, I chose fuschia because the text totally vanishes. So with cyan for the green.

Your phone doesn’t have to support word mobile – it can be anything! Heck, it can even be NOT a phone for all you care! Like let’s see, there are iphones, itouches, anything you carry around with you that can be formatted into colors. It can even be a notebook (and I mean both the netbook notebook and the notebook made of paper).

The important thing is that its where you first put all you learn into.

If you write all your stuff on a pad, go ahead and get a ballpen that switches red and green (not necessarily of those colors though) of sorts.

A side note though: If you really want to make kanji stick (and I mean remembering it), you got to write it down. Nothing beats writing it down. And nothing beats reviewing. That – you can make easier but cannot do without if you really want to get somewhere with this. ^_^

That’s it! I hope that struck some chord in you and gets you looking for more creative and fun ways to take the boring out of studying something we’re really into. ^_^ I know that’s seems contrary but contrary to popular belief, sometimes when the hard work gets heavier the most interesting stuff in the long run will be overruled by the pain of effort… ^_^ So go keep loving what you love to do… ^_^