jlpt 2010
I took the revised JLPT level N1 exam yesterday. It was tough as always but different from previous years.
One of the changes was a new grading system. In addition to an aggregate minimum score, there's now a minimum score for each section (around 30%, according to wikipedia). Given how low that threshold is, I'm not sure who they intend to exclude with this requirement.
There were a bunch of new question types:
Synonyms. A phrase was underlined in a sentence, and the test taker had to choose an equivalent phrase.
Arranging sentence fragments. Like this:
The cat sat __ __ __.
a. the
b. on
c. mat
Compare/contrast reading. One of the reading sections included excerpts from two articles on the same subject. The questions got at things like "Author 1 thinks X but Author 2 thinks Y."
Micro-dialogues in the listening section. Each problem involved one speaker saying a single sentence followed by another speaker listing three potential responses.
Speaker 1: "I'd like to have some ice cream, but..." EDIT: slight change of wording for clarity
a. Speaker 2: "Why don't you?"
b. Speaker 2: "Ice cream is delicious."
c. Speaker 2: "Thanks, but I'm on a diet."
Some other question types were removed:
Same-onyomi words. I miss this one. Each question consisted of five sentence: one 'main' sentence and four choices. Each sentence had a word spelled out in kana, and each word had one syllable the same.
....こうつう...
a. .... こうきゅう ...
b. .... こうかん ...
c. .... ぎんこう ...
d. .... こうえん ...
(key: main=交通, a=高級, b=交換, c=銀行, d=公園, so the answer is b)
"Mark the wrong answers as wrong." There used to be a section in listening where, in addition to filling in the oval for the correct answer, test takers had to fill in ovals for each of the other three answers indicating that they were incorrect. I imagine it was meant to help test takers keep track of their answers as they listen, but in practice it was just a hassle.
One thing that hasn't changed is the lag time for score reports. I'll know how I did sometime in February.