JLPT Level 4 Update: 18 days to go...

It had been my intention to provide more frequent updates on my Japanese Language Proficiency Test revision but frankly I've been too busy actually revising to even think about updating my blog.

If you recall, I had planned on making Anki flash cards from the large collection of example sentences and short conversations found in The Preparatory Course for The Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 4. However, in hindsight I believe there are two problems with this approach:

1. It's incredibly time consuming to construct the flash cards
2. I'm not sure the range of sentences covers enough vocabulary

Perhaps with more time to prepare this method may have worked out. Right now I'm really being held back by a poor vocabulary. I'm sticking to the Anki flash card approach but I'm supplementing the sentence flash cards with very basic vocabulary ones, and I'm about to make a new deck (of flashcards) for Kanji and Kanji compunds.

If you're also studying for JLPT Level 4 I'm sure you're already well aware of Peter van der Woude's excellent JLPT Study Page which covers not just Level 4 but also Levels 2 and 3. This is a great resource for the official Kanji list and vocabulary that I'm using to help make my flash cards. I'm also a huge fan of the Denshi Jisho web-based dictionary.

With 18 days to go and plenty of work still to do, I have no real idea whether I'll be able to pull this off. The plan is to do as much prep work as possible before taking a look at the past papers from 2004 - 2006 when I have a week to go, which should give me some contingency if these past papers throw up any concerns. がんばって ください!