Jisho.org Forum

You could listen to news clips on NHK`s website but they`re usually harder than anything you`ll find on the JLPT. Still, theres usually a transcript or at least a summary in text of each clip so you can follow along and see what you couldn`t understand, plus if you condition yourself to that level of difficulty, the JLPT test will be a breeze. There`s also past JLPT tests you can use to practice, although the ones posted online vary in audio quality.

For grammar, theres plenty of books available that give practice problems. A web application for grammar seems difficult to me unless it were to repeat the same sentences like a flashcard program. If I were you, I`d get the Soumatome (総まとめ) N3 grammar book that was just put out and commit the grammar points and example sentences to memory.

Good luck!

Hiya, I am studying for n4 this year. As for web applications, please check out the list I maintain at "best links for learning japanese" on facebook. The link is http://www.facebook.com/BestLinksForLearningJapanese
I have gathered together a lot of useful links over the last year or so. At the moment I am using www.readthekanji.com and testing out www.feedmejapanese.com - because i'm a web developer i'm also thinking of making my own (simple) site if I can't find a site that does everything I want...update: have made it, it is called tangochan at http://www.tangochan.com/

Why use a web application when a desktop software is superior in every way. Anki let's you study pretty much anything, is open-source and very customizable, has tons of pluggins and premade decks. It pretty much singlehandedly makes every website for learning Japanese superfluous. (Well, Smart.FM is a good source for stuff, there are however already decks in Anki with all the Core Japanese with audio and everything.)

dang, really? i just deleted anki cause i wasn't using it. I didn't know you could get audio for it though. I guess if i had a faster computer I might use it more... but I started a few lists and then just got bored of it.

Posted By: telica

[p]dang, really? i just deleted anki cause i wasn't using it. I didn't know you could get audio for it though. I guess if i had a faster computer I might use it more... but I started a few lists and then just got bored of it.[/p]

You can have anything in Anki, audio, images... even video. And there's so much stuff to use with it. If you go to forum.koohii.com and ask, you can find useful things like Subs2SRS which is a program which takes a video (for example a Japanese drama episode) and a subtitle file, then cuts the movie up into bits for each sentence and automatically makes Anki cards, so you can in seconds make a whole Anki deck for every sentence in a drama, with audio and video.

I guess it's down to personal taste. I found a few different reasons I didn't like Anki (and agree that it's boring) and didn't persevere with it. One is that you either have to generate the content or rely on another amateur. I prefer to work with sentences and questions that are professionally compiled. A second reason is that no matter how much you customise it, it's essentially the same pattern. You have to say whether you know the answer or not then move on to the next card. I also didn't like saying whether it was 'hard' or 'easy' and so on. One part of me thinks you either know something or not. Another part knows that it depended more on how alert I was, and whether I was tired or not whether something was hard or not, so it seemed quite imprecise.

At the moment I'm greatly enjoying Kanken 3 on the DS. The questions and problems have been put together by professionals and the quality is noticeable. I don't want to learn what I want to learn - I want to learn what I need to learn to be literate and I think someone else knows this better than me (besides things you want to learn are usually easy to learn anyway). There's a lot of variety in the style of questions. For example I'm trying to get past Level 4 at the moment and there are ten different types of problems testing your knowledge of yomikata, jukugo, how to write different kanji and so on. When I bought it, I wasn't sure if I could be bothered to learn how to write kanji, but the variety this brings actually helps me to stay interested (besides on each level you're not expected to be able to write as many kanji as you can read).

My experience of SRS is that it's easier to retain words if you see them again in different contexts rather than always the same context, and a variety of contexts is massively built into Kanken 3. Other than that I'm reading a lot. Feed Me Japanese looked vaguely interesting. Maybe I'll have a look at it some time. But the bulk of the reading I do at the moment is offline.

Finally, as I said, personal taste is very important. I'm sure many people like Anki and get on with it very well, so I'm not saying that you shouldn't use it or anything like that.

Anki is what you make of it. You want professional content? So do I, which is why I get my content from kanzen master books and japanese dictionaries such as kenkyuusha, every single card is hardcrafted by me to contain 100% correct and relevant information. You don't like measuring how hard a card was? Neither do I. If I know it, I press space (normal). If I don't, I press 1 to fail it. I only press easy when I get stuff which I know I won't forget... for example, how to write 一.

It's true that different contexts help retention, but Anki saves you so much time that you have all the time in the world to read books and get other exposure. For example, I put 20 example sentences with JLPT1 grammar from Kanzen master in anki yesterday... then I read the first chapter of 1Q84, then I watched London Hearts for 2 hours. Anki just guarantees you won't forget stuff, the exposure is there to be enjoyable and reinforce everything, internalize it.

As for Kanken 3, it's good software. Problem is, it lacks a proper SRS mechanism so it's bad for long term retention. It's a great cramming tool though, if kanken is what you're aiming for (I'm certainly not).

I believe in SRS in a broad sense, ie that it's good to review new words after short intervals and then the ones you know better after longer intervals, but not to the extent that you can decide the optimum number of days between seeing them. Also, and this is one point of agreement I think we have, I don't think relying on either Kanken or Anki alone is a good way to study - I certainly do a lot of reading (extensive and intensive) and Kanken is a supplement to focus on new kanji (or at the moment, kanji I need to brush up on thoroughly). I guess you say Kanken is best for cramming because it mainly focuses on short-term interval repetition. There is some long-term repetition though as kanji studied at earlier levels come back in yoji-jukugo or writing exercises. But for me, long-term interval repetition should really be covered by reading if you're doing enough at the right level, so it's not the main thing I'm looking for with Kanken anyway.

I guess the buzz-phrase that describes my learning best is 'maximising comprehensible input' rather than SRS. If I take a Kanken level test I go through about 120 questions in half an hour, and typing in all these sentences and problems would certainly slow me down (don't see how Anki would save me time here). Sure, some of the questions are easier than others, but that would be true with Anki too. Also, some of the questions do repeat if you spend a long time on one level, but you see words and kanji in quite a few contexts before that happens. Of course Kanken's not going to be much use for studying JLPT1 grammar. Also, I quite understand the opinion that it's not that useful learning things like radicals and how to handwrite kanji - I've neglected both for a long, long time - though I am finally starting to feel the patterns of radicals and handwriting is quite a fun challenge when I get the instant feedback of a 'maru' or 'batsu'.

I'm not sure if I'll ever take Kanken. It's not something I'd really considered until I got this little game. I still have quite a way to go before I'd feel it would be worth it (maybe level 2) and I'd want to know quite a lot more about the test before actually taking it. But I feel Kanken is a good way to brush up on kanji in general, and, even leaving aside things like radicals and handwriting, is more thorough than JLPT at its different levels with more testing of unusual readings and jukugo, alongside the fact that all JLPT questions are multiple choice.

Posted By: Richard

[p]I'm not sure if I'll ever take Kanken. It's not something I'd really considered until I got this little game. I still have quite a way to go before I'd feel it would be worth it (maybe level 2) and I'd want to know quite a lot more about the test before actually taking it. But I feel Kanken is a good way to brush up on kanji in general, and, even leaving aside things like radicals and handwriting, is more thorough than JLPT at its different levels with more testing of unusual readings and jukugo, alongside the fact that all JLPT questions are multiple choice.[/p]

Really? Is the JLPT all multiple choice? I was under the impression that you had to handwrite some kanji and write some essays, at least for level 1. I was thinking I might like to take a Kanken some years time once I have a better vocabulary, though I don't plan to study specifically for the Kanken. I think anywhere from level 5 to level 2 would be worthwhile. (If you want to take the level 2, it's probably helpful to take a few of the earlier levels---at least it would be for me.)

Posted By: tamatama

[quote]

Posted By: Richard

[p]I'm not sure if I'll ever take Kanken. It's not something I'd really considered until I got this little game. I still have quite a way to go before I'd feel it would be worth it (maybe level 2) and I'd want to know quite a lot more about the test before actually taking it. But I feel Kanken is a good way to brush up on kanji in general, and, even leaving aside things like radicals and handwriting, is more thorough than JLPT at its different levels with more testing of unusual readings and jukugo, alongside the fact that all JLPT questions are multiple choice.[/p]

[p]Really? Is the JLPT all multiple choice? I was under the impression that you had to handwrite some kanji and write some essays, at least for level 1. I was thinking I might like to take a Kanken some years time once I have a better vocabulary, though I don't plan to study specifically for the Kanken. I think anywhere from level 5 to level 2 would be worthwhile. (If you want to take the level 2, it's probably helpful to take a few of the earlier levels---at least it would be for me.)[/p][/quote]
Nope, no essay or actual writing in any JLPT.

I've just noticed I meant to say "I'm not sure if I'll ever take the Kanji Kentei (the test)" and "I feel Kanken (the game) is a good way to brush up on kanji in general".

Posted By: Richard

[p]I've just noticed I meant to say "I'm not sure if I'll ever take the Kanji Kentei (the test)" and "I feel Kanken (the game) is a good way to brush up on kanji in general".[/p]

Oh, do they not abbreviate 漢字検定　as 漢検? I know next to nothing about any official Japanese tests, which must be completely transparent by now.

Posted By: tamatama

[quote]

Posted By: Richard

[p]I've just noticed I meant to say "I'm not sure if I'll ever take the Kanji Kentei (the test)" and "I feel Kanken (the game) is a good way to brush up on kanji in general".[/p]

[p]Oh, do they not abbreviate 漢字検定　as 漢検? I know next to nothing about any official Japanese tests, which must be completely transparent by now.[/p][/quote]

From Wikipedia apparently they do abbreviate 漢字検定 to 漢検 (OK, not that surprising). Even so I meant to distinguish between the game and the test.

Talking about it in this and other threads is making me feel I should at least know more about the test. I'll probably look into it once I get really stuck on one of the levels in the game. It took me two weeks to pass the last level, so I'm sure it won't be long before that happens.

Yeah, I was just in the bookstore today and saw a bunch of books that said 漢検 on them, and realized I hadn't been making this up. In fact one of my books says 漢検 in big letters on the front. Anyway, it was clear from the context what you meant by kanken.

Incidentally, while I was in the bookstore, I also saw some prep books for a 日本語検定. Does anyone here know anything about that? There's some basic info about the different levels here:

http://www.nihongokentei.jp/info/exam/outline.html

(along with some online practice questions you can use to check your level---if the 5 question sample is indicative of anything, I can pass level 6---woohoo! I didn't try the next level though) But I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows who takes this exam, what it's good for or if anyone has any personal experience.

Both kanken and nihongo kentei are made for Japanese scholars. I doubt it will make any difference for a foreigner outside of bragging rights unless you want to do research on the actual language.

It's true that different contexts help retention, but Anki saves you so much time that you have all the time in the world to read books and get other exposure. For example,

Posted By: Tobberoth

[p]Both kanken and nihongo kentei are made for Japanese scholars. I doubt it will make any difference for a foreigner outside of bragging rights unless you want to do research on the actual language.[/p]

Really? If that's so, why do they both start from an elementary school level? If they were just for Japanese scholars, shouldn't they start from university level?

I don't really know, but I imagine that the Nihongo and Kanji Kentei would look much better on a resume than JLPT 1 if you're looking for a job that requires Japanese fluency. From a personal point of view, I was just thinking it'd be helpful to give some sort of gauge as to how far away you are from "native" Japanese, at least in certain aspects of the language. While my Japanese may never be like that of a native speaker, I would hope that in 5 or 10 years, I might be pretty close.

I think lots of people find tests useful as motivating targets even if they're not that useful as qualifications. Providing they're professionally put together tests, of course. Tests lead to test practice materials which I find useful to structure my study and focus on particular areas.

I'm not too knowledgeable about which qualifications Japanese employers particularly like, so I won't say too much about that. However, I'd be surprised if employers weren't at least slightly impressed by foreigners passing higher levels of tests made for native speakers.

I hadn't heard of the Nihongo Kantei and it still doesn't seem that famous within Japan - no Wikipedia entry for example which is surprising even if Japan's Wikipedia coverage sometimes is a bit lacking. By contrast on their Kanji Kentei page there is a list of which various celebrities (none of whom I seem to have heard of) have passed different levels of the test. The first person mentioned on the Level 1 list is a female pro-wrestler! So I guess Kanji Kentei has the name recognition.

My girlfriend passed level 2 of the kanken in junior high but she tells me now she thinks the test (at least at the highest levels) is pretty meaningless and it's more for bragging rights than actual real-life application.

Still, being a gaijin level 1 kanji card-carrier would be a nice feather in my cap, so I won't give up the dream yet and would encourage others, like Richard, to keep at it. I also agree with the comment that studying for tests like this or JLPT are an excellent way to guide one's studying and the different levels give you checkpoints to shoot for.

Incidentally, I was asking somebody about the Kanken and they told me a couple things. One, lots of university students take level 2 because it looks good for employers. Second, they are probably pretty strict on grading the written part, e.g., if you miss a はね you get the kanji wrong. Also, they seemed to think the Nihongo Kentei was mostly for fun, but not too many people take it.

Posted By: tamatama

Second, they are probably pretty strict on grading the written part, e.g., if you miss a はね you get the kanji wrong.

The main thing that would put me off taking the real test is if there's too much emphasis on handwriting and not enough on kanji knowledge. My handwriting in English is not all that great, but it's not really a handicap to my literacy. I imagine a worst case scenario where my answers in hiragana on multiple choice questions are rejected for not being sufficiently neat etc.

Posted By: julianjalapeno

[p]My girlfriend passed level 2 of the kanken in junior high but she tells me now she thinks the test (at least at the highest levels) is pretty meaningless and it's more for bragging rights than actual real-life application.[/p][p]Still, being a gaijin level 1 kanji card-carrier would be a nice feather in my cap, so I won't give up the dream yet and would encourage others, like Richard, to keep at it. I also agree with the comment that studying for tests like this or JLPT are an excellent way to guide one's studying and the different levels give you checkpoints to shoot for.[/p]

While this is true, the difference is the usefulness. The words and kanji and grammar you need to know for JLPT1 are important in Japanese society. If you don't know this stuff, you can hardly be considered even close to fluent. However, the stuff they test you on in the higher levels of kanken are just crazy. When will it ever matter to you how a certain kanji looked 1000 years ago unless you're going to research how kanji developed?

Therefore, IMO, studying actively for JLPT has the benefit that everything you're learning is directly useful and a must if you're aiming for fluency. Studying for the kanken takes time away from studying useful Japanese to study things which really are just for bragging rights.

Posted By: Tobberoth

Therefore, IMO, studying actively for JLPT has the benefit that everything you're learning is directly useful and a must if you're aiming for fluency. Studying for the kanken takes time away from studying useful Japanese to study things which really are just for bragging rights.

You can't really compare Kanken Level 1 with JLPT Level 1. Kanken Level 2 is more of an equivalent to JLPT 1, though it covers a wider range of language. If you're not interested in handwriting kanji then I agree that there are irrelevant parts to the Kanken. In terms of other aspects like jukugo and unusual readings then I think it's a matter of debate whether JLPT is more useful. With JLPT you learn more kanji more quickly, but with kanji kentei you know them more thoroughly.

Posted By: Richard

[quote]

Posted By: Tobberoth

[p]Therefore, IMO, studying actively for JLPT has the benefit that everything you're learning is directly useful and a must if you're aiming for fluency. Studying for the kanken takes time away from studying useful Japanese to study things which really are just for bragging rights.[/p]

[p]You can't really compare Kanken Level 1 with JLPT Level 1. Kanken Level 2 is more of an equivalent to JLPT 1, though it covers a wider range of language. If you're not interested in handwriting kanji then I agree that there are irrelevant parts to the Kanken. In terms of other aspects like jukugo and unusual readings then I think it's a matter of debate whether JLPT is more useful. With JLPT you learn more kanji more quickly, but with kanji kentei you know them more thoroughly.[/p][/quote]
But like you said yourself, that's unusual readings. They are unusual and used in rare words, you often won't need to know them and you won't be expected to. My approach to learning kanji is learning words, I already know how to write the kanji from memory and what it means. Unless I learn a word using a kanji, I don't care about that kanji, it doesn't mean anything to me. When I run into it, I will need to learn that word anyway. IMO, there's hardly any benefit of knowing kanji outside of a useful context. Knowing a certain kanji can be read a certain way without knowing any word using that reading, is just bragging rights.

By 'unusual' I don't necessarily mean 'obscure'. After all, JLPT1 kanji are more unusual than JLPT2 kanji. In the game, readings (unusual or otherwise) are always given within the context of a sentence. Presumably it's the same in the test (though I'm less keen on taking the actual thing after hearing tamatama's comments).

I can't deny that I like kanji, but I don't think I'm particularly sentimental about them to the extent that I want to learn them even if they're not useful. At the moment I'm solidifying my knowledge of vocabulary connected to the kanji I already learnt to pass JLPT1. To some extent, you could say that I'm really learning vocabulary now rather than kanji, though learning words in kanji helps me to remember them (in the same way learning about Latin and Greek roots helps some people when learning English). This is just my personal experience and kind of connected to the big argument in the other thread, but I don't want to argue about that here.

I think the debate about what's useful underlines the fact that once you get to higher levels, it's up to everyone individually to decide what is useful for them and set priorities. I'm particularly interested in improving my reading, even though it's my strongest skill, and this means I have to learn as many words as possible, and I find the game is helping me do that.

Posted By: Richard

[p]By 'unusual' I don't necessarily mean 'obscure'. After all, JLPT1 kanji are more unusual than JLPT2 kanji. In the game, readings (unusual or otherwise) are always given within the context of a sentence. Presumably it's the same in the test (though I'm less keen on taking the actual thing after hearing tamatama's comments).[/p]

I didn't mean to discourage you. I'm not sure that "penmanship counts," I think it's more about making the right strokes. Of course, whether it's worth it for you to take the actual test, I don't know, but presumably if you try out a lower level test first, you'll have a better idea (and I think the lower levels are pretty inexpensive).

Posted By: Richard

[p]You can't really compare Kanken Level 1 with JLPT Level 1. Kanken Level 2 is more of an equivalent to JLPT 1, though it covers a wider range of language.[/p]

Is that true? I would think JLPT Level 1 is closer to Kanken level 4 or 3 (though still not as in depth), but I don't know. I looked on the JLPT website to try to see what the JLPT 1 covers (both kanji and otherwise), but I couldn't find it. Does it cover all the 常用漢字? 人名漢字？

PS I also saw some books for a 日本語文章理解検定, so apparently there's another kind of 日本語の検定 also.

JLPT1 covers all the 常用漢字. Of course, kanji is just a very minor part of JLPT.

Posted By: tamatama

I would think JLPT Level 1 is closer to Kanken level 4 or 3 (though still not as in depth), but I don't know.

Thinking about it, kanji-wise JLPT 1 is equivalent to pre-2. Kanji Kentei is more in depth on the kanji, but of course JLPT covers lots of other areas as well as kanji.

I had a look on the Kanji Kentei website and it seems the next opportunity to take the test is 31st October. There are significant differences in price with the biggest jump between pre-2 at 1800 yen and 2 at 3500 yen.

Incidentally, looking again at the kanji covered, the number of kanji go up quite steadily to level 2 (which I think is educated graduate level) at 2000 plus names, before jumping to 3000 at pre-1 and 6000 at 1. That really is a ridiculous difference between the top two levels.

You may also want to check out http://nihongoup.com/ - it's a Japanese learning community with many different lessons, resources, apps, games, etc.