Welcome

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General tips for JLPT

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test requires you to be familiar with a lot of vocabulary and grammatical patterns that you never hear in everyday conversation and almost everyone who takes it expresses frustration about how many useless things they had to learn in order to pass it.
The listening section is full of trick questions and the test often includes somewhat archaic Japanese. If you have not taken practice tests and prepared specifically for the sorts of questions asked on this test, you are almost guaranteed to be in for a shock, no matter how good your Japanese is.
Most people did not grow up in a country that uses Kanji will have to go to a full-time Japanese school or practice using Japanese language software in order to pass the JLPT. Learning Japanese is not like learning French. Learning to read is difficult that it is not something that most people can do in their spare time. I started from a low-intermediate level and had to study reading and grammar for 7 months before I could pass the Level 2.
The JLPT gets more difficult every year. A lot of people say that the present level 2 is as difficult as the level 1 was when the test started. Just because you can pass last year's practice test is not a guarantee that you will be able to pass this year's test. The good news is that question formats do not usually change from year to year so you can improve your score a lot by taking practice tests.
Take a practice test before you start studying. You can buy a copy of previous test from most large Japanese bookshops. Find out what your weak-points are and work on improving them.

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Studying Kanji and Vocabulary

You don't have to be able to write a single kanji character in order to pass the test, so don't bother wasting your time studying how to write when you are studying. Writing out Kanji hundreds of times is not an effective study method. There are two best ways to study kanji and vocabularies.
1. Do a lot of reading. There are fairly decent textbooks and online reading materials that you can use. Another great way to study is by using Rikai.com , a homepage that will load in any Japanese homepage, and show you the pronunciation of every kanji. It even does family names and place names.
2. Make kanji worksheets for yourself. Print them out and fold the paper in half or You can also use microsoft excel. Then write out the pronunciations of all the kanji in the centre column and check them when you are finished. The secret to learning kanji is seeing them over and over in a short time every page and found it to be a very effective way of studying.

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Listening Section

Many people agree that the listening part is the easiest part of the test. If your reading is weak, you will need to get a very high score in this section to compensate. Here are few hints that will improve your score. Taking notes doesn't help at all and actually lowers your score because you tend to miss key points because you are concentrating too much on individual words or concentrating on writing the last sentence. You also miss a lot of the trick questions when you are writing. Sometimes you start concentrating so hard on what you are writing, that your brain stops thinking and you make mistakes that you wouldn't if you were just listening intently. You can learn to recognise these questions by taking a few practice tests.
Watch out for the graphs and maps. Most people agree that they are the most difficult part of the listening section. Also, the pictures in this test are not used to give you hints about the content of the questions as they are in other tests. They are there to confuse you and make the questions harder. Most people get better scores on the non-picture section than they do in the picture section. When the tape is playing the example questions you would be well advised to flip through the question book and familiarise yourself with the pictures carefully. Sometimes they have charts with lots of Kanji on them, so you should check the Kanji and write them in hiragana or romaji so that you don't have to waste time while listening.

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Reading and Grammar

Although they call it a grammar section, it's actually more of a vocabulary test. There are a few questions where they test your knowledge of passive, causative forms and polite language, but they are not a major part of the test and you can get away without a superficial knowledge of them. The best way to learn grammar/vocabulary is by learning short phrases rather than individual words. I had a terrible time remembering the difference between koto and mono until I memorised a few sentences that expressed the meanings of these confusing words.
There is a list of all the grammatical points which have appeared more than three times on the previous tests. The most important thing is time distribution. I like to do the short reading passages first because they are easier, and I can build up my confidence. Read the questions first. Especially the final question, which typically requires you to summarise the article. Just having seen the vocabulary and having been able to imagine what the story might be about from the words, gives you a big hint about the passage's meaning and gives you a sort of foothold for understanding the passage. You'll be surprised what a difference it makes.
Another important strategy is to familiarise yourself with the sort of reading passages and questions that are going to be asked. Common themes for the reading passages are: how the author learned something about himself or a friend or family member; a scientific explanation of something; a letter to a friend (They usually ask why the letter was written); a question about a graph (These are easier than they look); a question where you have to put a scrambled reading passage in order.

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NEW JLPT

JLPT will be divided into 5 levels instead of 4 levels starting July 2010. It will be held twice a year - respectively early July and early December. The score evaluation for listening module becomes higher up from 25% to 33%. The score of both overall and individual module have to be higher than the passing score.
No past exams published for the year 2010 and 2011. Instead of past exams, a JLPT mock exam booklet will be published.
>
N1 (2000 kanji) - former Level 1
Writing - Vocabulary - Grammar : 110 minutes (60 points)
Reading : (60 points)
Listening : 60 minutes (60 points)
TOTAL : 170 minutes (180 points)
>
N2 (1000 - 1300 kanji) - former Level 2
Writing - Vocabulary - Grammar : 105 minutes (60 points)
Reading : (60 points)
Listening : 50 minutes (60 points)
TOTAL : 155 minutes (180 points)
>
N3 (800 kanji) - newly added
Writing - Vocabulary : 30 minutes (60 points)
Grammar - Reading : 70 minutes (60 points)
Listening : 40 minutes (60 points)
TOTAL : 140 minutes (180 points)

N4 (320 kanji) - former Level 3
Writing - Vocabulary : 30 minutes (120 points)
Grammar - Reading : 60 minutes
Listening : 35 minutes (60 points)
TOTAL : 125 minutes (180 points)

N5 (120 kanji) - former Level 4
Writing - Vocabulary : 25 minutes ( 120 points)
Grammar - Reading : 50 minutes
Listening : 30 minutes (60 points)
TOTAL : 105 minutes (180 points)

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Body Parts

These are the commonly used term for body parts. You can use them in your medical consultations.

1. Head (あたま) - Atama

2. Eyes (め) - Me

3. Eyelid (まぶた) - Mabuta

4. Teeth (は) - Ha

5. Ears (みみ) - Mimi

6. Ear lobe (みみたぶ) - Mimitabu

7. Nose (はな) - Hana

8. Chest or breast (むね) - Mune

9. Back (せなか) - Senaka

10. Bone (ほね) - Hone

11. Shoulder (かた) - Kata

12. Neck (くび) - Kubi

13. Stomach (おなか) - Onaka

14. Arm (うで) - Ude

15. Hand (て) - Te

16. Wrist (てくび) - Tekubi

17. Fingers (ゆび) - Yubi

18. Nails (つめ) - Tsume

19. Hip (おしり) - Shiri

20. Leg or foot (あし) - Ashi

21. Toes (つまさき) - Tsumasaki

Basic structure:

(Body part) ga itai desu.

I have a pain in my (Body part)

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