Hey there!
I am so sorry for the lack of activity lately. I have been under so much I have been stressed out and unable to focus on my blogging.
However I do have an update.
I did the JLPT N5 today. It was absolutely nerve wracking when I got there. I felt ill, I wanted to go home and curl up in a corner. But I stayed and I went through it. I met some lovely people, shame I didn't get their contacts! We had a good laugh and kept in good spirits through the whole afternoon. I think it helped, being able to have a laugh and a chat in between exams to keep the nerves and stress level down.
How did I do?
I honestly have no idea if I passed or not. Looking at the grading method, I might have scraped by. Maybe I passed fine, maybe I failed. If I didn't pass, at least I can take the one in December - online registration is August. We should get the results in September? I think they get posted online earlier than that. I shall keep you posted!
About the exam:
Paper 1: Paper 1 was Kanji and vocabulary. This paper was quite easy to go through. It is only 25 mins long. Which is plenty of time. It isn't as scary as it sounds. There was roughly 32 questions on this paper. First part of the paper is Kanji recognition. So it was a sentence and you had to chose which the correct kanji or vice versa of a certain word was.
Second part of the paper was sentence construction. You had to complete the sentences with the words given. Fill in the blank!
Paper 2: Paper 2 was Grammar and Reading Comprehension. The first part was to correctly insert the right particle into the paragraph. It was all one written paragraph and had numbered squares in places. Each one numbered with the question number, you had to fill in the box with the particle.
Second part of the paper was another sentence construction. So you had the start of a sentence then you had to fill in the blanks with the words or particles given, and you are marked on the star ★. The final part of the second paper was reading comprehension. You had huge paragraphs that you had to read through, then answer questions based on that paragraph.
For example: it could be about someone's shopping day. What did they buy? Where did they buy it? It is all written in the paragraph.
Paper 3: Paper 3 was Listening. This paper you sit at your desk and a series of conversations are played out loud into the room, each one ending with a question. First series of questions were pictured on the exam paper. To give an indication of what the conversation was. The next part was just words on the paper, the last part had nothing on the paper and it was just concentration on the conversation itself and you picked from the choices spoken out-loud what the answer was.
For example: the CD will say a phrase, the answers will be a response. you have to choose which is the correct response for the initial phrase.
Paper 1: I think I did quite well on this one. My Kanji recognition is quite good. My katakana not so much but I think I did well on that one.
Paper 2: I did terribly on this. I thought my reading was up to scratch, but apparently not. I ended up looking at the answer choices then finding the similar thing in the paragraph.
Luckily, paper 1 and 2 are marked as 1 paper. So hopefully, one out-weighs the other!
Paper 3: I think I did rather well, even though I changed a few answers...then realised I should have kept the initial answer. We shall see how much I messed up. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, a lot easier than I imagined.
Hope I did well, if not, I can always re-sit in December! All in all, it was a very good experience. Met some nice people and learned a lot!
I will keep you updated!
