fifteen points

i had grand plans to come home from fabric shopping (oh. yes.) to tell you about my wonderful finds and the dress and tops i'm going to make and elastic thread and all that good stuff.

but as i grabbed the mail, a small, familiar looking postcard dropped to the bottom. i reached my hand into the slot (i always worry the neighbors think some weird foreigner is pocketing other peoples' mail when i'm too lazy to actually open my mailbox and just jam my hand down and fish the mail out.) and, i was right: my JLPT results.

i put my purchases down, took a deep breath, and opened it.


不合格（Failed）


oh 15 points.



i guess i'll see you again in december, mr. JLPT.



sigh.





just after taking the test here's what i wrote:

kanji/vocab (100pts)
i went through once and was able to (only semi confidently) answer about 45% of the questions. while reviewing yesterday, someone tried to tell me that the character 黙る was the same character in 沈黙 and at the time i didn’t visualize 沈黙 just remembered how to say the word, but when it appeared (in a “how do you read the underlined kanji?” question) on the test, i just smiled and confidently circled ちんもく. too bad the other 55% of that section didn’t go like that. some of the questions were so hard, with so many kanji i’d never even seen before, or words that i didn’t know. i’ll be more than lucky to come out with a 50%.

well, i guess i was lucky then; i got exactly 50/100.

listening (100pts)
listening is my strength, without a doubt. i went in hoping to make up for my weaknesses in the other sections with a stellar listening score. frustratingly enough however, there were several questions where i wasn’t sure exactly what i was supposed to be listening for, or i couldn’t follow the conversation because there were suddenly too many words i didn’t know. i wanted to get 90% or better, but i was unsure of 5 questions, which will knock me back to 85%.

happy to say i pulled out with 90/100.

reading comprehension/grammar (200pts)
this section is broken into two larger parts. there are several passages and then questions about the reading in the first half and grammar fill in the blank type questions in the second half. on the reading comprehension, i got tripped up on quite a few questions but on my first run through i at least answered 70% of the questions. my reviewing yesterday helped a lot on the grammar section, but i still only answered 65% on the first go through. then i went back and tried to answer the skipped questions. i could have used more time, but in the end was sort of rushed and for more than a couple questions, just picked something. since it’s a multiple choice test, it’s smart to at least filled in an answer for every question, hoping to get lucky here and there with a 25% chance. the reading questions are weighted more than the grammar questions, so i’m hoping i got somewhere between 60-70%.

i got 125/200 (62.5%).

however, with a little math, those scores still only put me at 65%. the passing line for level one is 70%. so, either i need to have done better than i imagined, or really get lucky with my guessing. i could sit here and beat myself up for not studying as much as i “should have” but i’ll just get down on myself and there’s nothing to be done now anyway.

funny though how i was pretty much right on with my estimates on how well (or, in this case, not so well) i did.


so yeah, 15 points.



let the kanji studying resume.



ugh.