jlpt 4

[paulwalth7002]

Well, I'd like to take the JLPT N4 this December and actually pass. Not sure if I'll make i though. I just did the first practice reading and found it really hard =/. There's literally NO kanji to help you?! How does one read Japanese without kanji (or spaces) to figure out where words end and whatnot. And I don't study words using hiragana - I have to sound it out instead of just visually looking at it and recognizing the word. This is a pain.

Oh well I have a lot of work ahead of me.

I guess some people don't like kanji and so the hiragana is welcome but I've spent a lot of time on it so I find it helpful.

[paulwalth7002]

Rereading it a 2nd time it clicked better. And I looked up words I didn't know. Again - I would love kanji. If we're not expected to know the kanji per se why not put furigana over it? Oh well.

So I can't figure out what はら八ぶんめ means. The kanji in that word isn't helping me unfortunately heh.

I'm doing the exercise on Japanese food where it defines the spices and I think they made up a word...

And while I'm doing this I can't help thinking they used a few words above beginner level to make it harder...

それぞれ is a synonym for 毎 I think.. 各々 I guess would be the kanji? the never seen this before but I know the kanji means each so the kanji would have been helpful. とうめい or transparent.. another beginner word right? For some reason I've never seen よって before. I guess it's similar to ので, and から, or ending with て form. Now I know it.. and わざ was new. 技 is a kanji I know the meaning so I could have guessed it I think.

I'll be doing all the reading samples here. I definitely need the practice. I had a hard time just understanding what the questions were asking heh.

[paulwalth7002]

So I thought I'd like to see what the N3 practice test questions look like and if there is actual kanji in them... I don't see any on the site? X(.

[natsukoy9313]

paulwalth7002-san,
I'm not too sure which material you're talking about because N4 definitely should have some kanji...
Anyway,

はら八ぶんめ means "(eat) moderately". This number "8" came from the image where 10 is when you eat a lot and you feel completely full.
So, 8 should be more or less full, but not too much.
This "eating moderately" is considered as a key to good health

> それぞれ is a synonym for 毎 I think..
Yes, you're right! 其々 could be the kanji for this, but it's not usually used at all. It has to be hiragana.
各々 is "ono ono".

Have you checked our lessons for N4? It might help you!! For instance, here's the Lesson Note from our newest N4 preparation:
http://www.japanesepod101.com/pdfs/JLPT ... pod101.pdf
This must be helpful!

And, regarding N3, yes, we do have lessons:
http://www.japanesepod101.com/index.php?cat=45

For any questions, please feel free to post! Good luck!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[paulwalth7002]

A friend of mine found it in a dictionary... I'm going to have to interrogate her and find out how she achieved that because I'm not finding it =/.

There's very very little kanji in the exercise I was doing. After reading through the text a few times it wasn't so bad but the first time through it's pretty painful. I was doing the reading #10 for the N4 under practice tests in the Japanese resources.

[natsukoy9313]

paulwalth7002-san,
Sometimes you might find the expression 腹八分目 if you see 腹 on a dictionary.
Or, はちぶんめ or はち (although it really depends on dictionary).

Reading session of JLPT might be difficult for many reasons. If there's any way we can help you,
please feel free to post here!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mwbeale6642]

I think the best way to find out what the N4 test is like is to buy the example exam that the Japan Foundation publish. I had several N4 textbooks with sample questions in them and quite frankly, some of them were pretty frightening. The actual test was a lot more sensible than the practice questions in the ARC academy books for example.

I thought that the N4 test had quite a lot of kanji in it. There were only a few pure kanji questions at the start of the first section of the test, but the reading section had more kanji in it, sometimes with furigana too.

I also found it somewhat frustrating that there were bits of the test that were pure hiragana, but maybe that is actually something they are trying to test: whether you can extract the meaning of what some text is about phonetically rather than with kanji. If you understand the listening questions, then presumably you should be able to parse phonetic stuff aurally, so maybe they think you should also be able to parse phonetic text visually.