These are the tips from the students who passed Grade 4 exam.
Oliver Spindler in December 2003
My main recommendation for preparing the JLPT Level 4 is to practice, practice
and practice!
Knowledge of basic Japanese is not enough to pass this exam, you need to be
very familiar with the kind of questions and be able to answer them within
seconds.
Therefore you should aim to do as many past papers as you can.
I started in mid October and I did a paper per week up to the exam.
The grammar
and kanji/vocabulary papers I did as homework and the listening paper I did
with Kazuo during the lesson while Kazuo was marking my homework.
We then went over the mistakes that I had made together. My main difficulty
with the grammar paper was initially getting the verb ending or particles
right and finishing the paper on time was also a challenge.
Kazuo had an amazing way of explaining grammar, so that I rarely made the
same mistake twice, became more confident and answered questions more quickly.
I could see my scores improving week by week.
As for the kanji and vocabulary, I did not have so many difficulties as I
had been taught a lot of it previously.
Nevertheless, some practice was definitely
necessary to gain familiarity with the specific exam format and finish the
papers within the time limit.
In the actual exam I achieved the weakest result in listening. I had practiced
a past paper with Kazuo every week, but it would have helped to get additional
exposure to Japanese.
The vocabulary and sentence structures used are not
necessarily very hard but the dialogues are long and read quickly. Some of
the questions are also explicitly designed to mislead candidates.
I therefore suggest listening to a Japanese radio station on the web or some
language learning cassettes on a regular basis.
I would always recommend taking
the JLPT Level 4. The prospect of just doing past papers for several months
might seem boring but don't worry: Kazuo has an amazing way of providing encouraging,
yet realistic, feedback so you can see how you are improving, which is motivating!