Japanese Proficiency Test Pre-exam Summary Grammar Organization Level 1, 2

Author: (Japan) Sasaki Jinako
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-04-01
Features: Is learning a foreign language difficult? Not really. Especially learning Japanese, for Chinese people living close to Japan, offers many advantages. Years of teaching practice have shown that with three months of serious study, most people can basically master the basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. Japanese has fewer vowels and simple, easy-to-learn, and easy-to-remember pronunciations. Japanese characters consist of kanji and kana, with kanji accounting for over 50% in Japanese newspapers, magazines, and official documents, and many of them are similar in meaning to Chinese words. Memorizing vocabulary doesn’t require as much effort and time as learning English. Japanese grammar is also the simplest and most flexible among major foreign languages. In recent years, the listening section of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) has evolved from simple to complex, from general to detailed, and from rough to precise. The number of words beyond the exam standards, especially repeated ones, has increased. Questions requiring comprehension of detailed information in sentences have also increased. The selection of questions has become more similar, the differentiation of diagrams has decreased, and the difficulty of judgment has increased. Currently, some candidates who have studied Japanese for three or four years in professional settings score only an average of 50-60 on the Level 1 listening exam, while non-professional candidates perform even worse. Clearly, the listening exam has become a major hurdle for candidates.