My experience of the A2 exam - Summer 2008
After passing the AS exam in Summer 2007 with an A grade, I was looking
forward to taking the A2 exam in Summer 2008.
Udagawa sensei advised me at
the start that I would need to study hard to achieve an A grade at A2. He
was right!
The A2 paper is a step up from the AS paper.
However, I took
Udagawa sensei's advice and achieved an A grade in the A2 paper with a
mark of over 84% (253/300).
The key steps for me to achieve this grade
were:
Study harder. I spent more time studying every week both in formal lessons
and in writing essays. Even though I have a full time job, this was
essential. I tried to spend the same number of hours studying as a sixth
form A level student would and I had a week of "study leave" before the
exam.
Concentrate on the Essay topics. I chose (in consultation with Udagawa
sensei) the Bokko-chan short stories by Hoshii Shinichi as my texts for
one essay and 日本 の 一年 as the topic for the other.
The topics
introduced me to many new Kanji and a lot of vocabulary. By writing essays
every week I gradually mastered the vocabulary and Kanji and this study
also prepared me for the other section of the exam (Reading and writing).
Know the standard essay topics. As with many subjects, the examiner often
asks similar questions on certain topics. Therefore it was important to
review past exam essay questions and to be able to write clear answers
based on the actual questions (and not the questions that I wanted to
answer!). I wrote many practise essays and reviewed them all in my
lessons.
Gradually this improved my understanding of the topics, grammar
and vocabulary.
Practise writing Kanji. I practised writing Kanji both in essays and on
scrap paper at home. This helped me to remember the Kanji as well as to be
able to write them.
Don't worry too much about the Reading and Writing section. Much of my
writing practice was achieved through writing essays so in the exam I
was able to answer the questions on the passage in Section 1, without much difficulty.
When I opened the exam paper, I was surprised by two points:
The translation from English to Japanese used some more complex English
words that had to be translated. It is not really possible to prepare very
much for this part of the exam and on the day I had to think carefully to
remember the best words that I knew to prepare the translation.
The 日本 の 一年 questions were slightly different from the topics that
I had revised.
However, I was able to adapt one of the topics that I had
studied to write my essay.
I believe that because I had prepared thoroughly I was able to deal with
these two "surprises" from the examiner.
Shaun De Boo
19 August 2008