These are the tips from the students who passed Grade 4 exam.

Tony McMahone in December 2004 - Paper 1: 100 / 100, Paper 2: 50 / 100, Paper 3: 143/200
Overall: 293/400- PASS

I just passed the Level Four exam which was a huge relief - taking it after about fourteen months of lessons with Kazuo. Breaking down the three papers, I'd give the following advice.



On Paper One, which focusses on vocabulary, I scored very highly.
I knew I had to get a good score here as my practice test scores on the second listening paper had been so bad in the lessons.


For Paper One, I'd advise any student to become best friends with their dictionary. Just keep one with you all the time and think up any word that comes to mind during the day. Good dictionaries always give examples of sentences these words are used in. The Oxford Starter Japanese dictionary (Oxford University Press) also explains how words like 'must' or 'get' or 'hope' can not be translated literally and also, how there is often more than one way of expressing these words/concepts in Japanese. I recommend this dictionary highly even if its range of words is a bit limited.



Early in my studies, I used a Romanji to English dictionary (Basic Japanese-English dictionary published by Bonjinsha) because it had more words and it was less scary to look things up in Romanji than hiragana/katakana. But you have to get away from the crutch of Romanji as quickly as possible and start thinking in Japanese characters. Tough, but essential. You need about a hundred Kanji to feel comfortable going in to this exam.



Having just returned from Japan, it's also clear that Kanji are the building blocks of the written language - you've only scratched the surface with hiragana and katakana. Go to the Japan Centre and see which Kanji learning book suits you - or if you prefer cards, buy them.


I know most people say they like to learn off cards but I found Basic Kanji Book Volume I, published by Bonjinsha, the best way to learn. You write the symbols over and over again and also you see how they work inside sentences. With the cards, I just find that the Kanji are looked at in an isolated manner and you don't see how single words in Japanese are split up between their Kanji and hiragana components.


The other extremely important thing you need to master for the exam is a solid knowledge of the basic particles you have learnt in Book I and Book II. I still trip up endlessly over the use of 'ni' and 'de' in the lessons but for the exam - I made sure I understood where those two particles are used. If it doesn't seem clearly explained in Japanese For Busy People, then look for a clearer explanation elsewhere.


Kazuo's list of particles should be memorised for both Paper I and Paper III. Ditto Kazuo's list of vocabulary. Don't turn up for the exam without having tested yourself on these lists. Japanese verbs can be quite infuriating because they can look so similar to western eyes. Tsukimasu, tsukaimasu and tsukemasu are all very different - I suspect it's easier to tell them apart when they're written in Japanese characters and you use them in conversation.


For Paper III, it was vital to know all the key verbs and how the various tenses work. Make sure you know when to use arimasu and imasu and how they decline for the past, present, future, positive and negative. You should really get your head round the dictionary and non-dictionary forms of the main verbs. Good dictionaries explain in this in the footnotes as well as Japanese For Busy People. At the back of Book I is a list of the most essential verbs.


Listening was and is my number one problem. Here is my biggest tip which I learnt from my biggest mistake. Please, please, please - buy and listen to the lesson tapes from the very beginning - to be honest, I didn't.

Do not just study Japanese from the books. Every day, you need to listen to a Japanese voice speaking in your ear. If you have an i-pod or a walkman, listen to the lesson CDs or tapes on the tube, at work or college. Once or twice a week isn't good enough. This is a language that needs your ear to make some major adjustments to tune in and understand the Japanese.


If you do this for months before the exam, then the practice tapes for the exam will not be the major shock they were for me. I scored abysmally and it took a lot of revision, listening endlessly to the tapes Kazuo leant me, to score 50% in the exam.

If it's any consolation, I found the audio loud and clear in the exam room and actually not as frightening as I'd expected. But only because I revised like a demon in the weeks before. A couple of hapless people in the exam room groaned in agony as they tried to understand the aural comprehension.

Don't be like them - listen to Japanese every day well in advance. Be aware that the folk who set these exams like to catch you out. If you do the practice papers, you'll see their little tricks. In the exam room, you'll smile to yourself at the red herrings they throw at us to try and fool the "gaijin".


On the day of the exam - revise some key points of difficulty in the morning, but then make yourself relax. You're not about to be tortured and the worst that can happen is that you have to re-take next year.


Take a pencil box to the exam room - I hadn't had one since school days! They don't accept pens - you have to use a pencil. Take a rubber that won't leave dirty great smudges across the multiple choice paper. And take some water - the exam rooms at SOAS are hot as hell.


Your concentration will suffer if you don't keep hydrated. Even the examiner said she felt faint at one point!