My Review of JLPT Level 4 for Year 2007

I had mine in Jakarta, where there were approximately 1000 people attending the exam (for levels 2 to 4) in my venue alone.

The JLPT this time round took place on a bloody sunny Sunday, 2 December 2007 in a relatively-unknown-yet-far-faraway university of Darma Persada located in the suburbs of Eastern Jakarta.

As expected of a 3^rd class college, the campus looked pretty dilapidated to me, kinda like a public high school (or an SMU Negeri in Indonesian) with twice of the average size.

The exam commenced at 9 o’clock sharp with the Moji-Goi section, followed by the Chokai and Dokai-Bunpou sections respectively with interspersions of respites between each sessions, and ended at 11.55

Here are my review of those 3 sections that I’d gone thru:

1. Moji-Goi (Kanji&Vocabulary)

I knew it all along that if I rote memorised all the 800 vocabs from faraway before the D-day; I could’ve mastered this section better. However, my lax attitude coupled with my indiscipline had myself studying like hell the whole 800 lexicons needed for the exam. Thank God I managed to memorise around 90% of the vocabs in the end and able to answer all the questions without any difficulties. ;P

2. Chokai (Listening)

I blamed myself for failing this section. I could’ve bought the past-year exam cassettes needed for the test (at least so that my ears could get lil’ bit used to it), but I didn’t. I looked for the cassette in my Gakushudo centre in Gran Wijaya, wherein I was faced with the fact that they had run out of the cassetes. So be it; even though the questions were supposedly easy, my sense of hearing missed a lot of points. Damn, I should’ve killed myself, lols.

3. Dokai-Bunpou (Reading&Grammar)

All the three days before the test was spent drilling on the Japanese particles to (such as O, No, Wa, Ga, E, To, Ni, etc) as I was well aware how often this ilk of question came out in the lvl4 JLPTs. Well I had them downloaded actually, because I bought nothing (I mean it!) for the preparation of the JLPT… Lols. I think I could score at least 80% on the whole paper.

So… what’s left now? My tips and tricks for you who are having the exam next year, of course.

To be noted here, things aren’t the same for different levels in JLPT. People who had gone thru the level 2 and 1 mostly say that the order of sections in increasing difficulty for their exam is like this:

Chokai, Moji-Goi, Dokai-Bunpou

However, for me (and I believe for most people too), the order for JLPT4 in increasing difficulty is like this:

Moji-Goi, Dokai-Bunpou, Chokai

Weird huh, how Chokai as the hardest section in level 4 could get turn into the easiest one in level 2? My logic says that it’s due to the fact that when you’ve studied Japanese for a long time and acquired more lexicons, your ears could finally get a better grip on listening to Japanese speakers and comprehending them would be no big problem. Anyway, That’s just apiece of my thinking.

I still hope I could get 90% or above though.

Can’t wait till March, lols.