These are the tips from the students who passed Grade 3 exam

Gregory Roath - February 2007

I started studying Japanese with Udagawa-sensei in November of 2005 without having had any formal lessons in Japanese prior to this. A general interest in Japan and Japanese was my sole motivation...


I've been to Japan 3 times, but never for more than 2 weeks. I picked up a few words through self-study on the internet but certainly had no knowledge of grammar or sense of structure. However, I have studied other foreign languages as well as linguistics at university.

A few months in to the lessons I decided to take the JLPT exam simply as a benchmarking exercise. However, during the Summer months...about 6 months into my lessons....Udagawa-sensei and I decided to aim for JLPT 3 rather than 4. I wasn't sure what to expect but I trusted Udagawa-sensei and looked forward to a slightly tougher challenge.


In addition to the weekly 2 hour lessons, I was able to get some studying in on flights, on the tube, and on weekends. I found that for the kanji, the flashcards from white rabbit press were quite good .


For general vocabulary I simply wrote out lists and used Udagawa-sensei's materials. Lastly, I used prior Level 3 exams to test my progress and record areas that required further study. Beyond that I can't say I did anything special.


Udagawa-sensei guided me through the various grammar points that the exam would cover as well tested me on the listening part. Finally the day of the exam arrived...approximately one year after starting lessons.


Truthfully, I could have better prepared myself (but work was very very busy).
I missed a couple of kanji that I should have known but I also did much better on the listening part of the exam than I had expected.
I found the reading/grammar part also went quite well. I didn't approach the exam in any special way...I did every question in order and found that I generally had 5-10 minutes to go back and check some of the questions I wasn't sure about. Of course, there's no time go back on the listening section.


When I finished the exam I wasn't quite sure really how I had done...it seemed as if I knew the majority of the questions...but I thought the same for some of the practice exams only to find out I hadn't scored so well.


However, this time, I really did know the answers:
81/100 kanji/vocab
70/100 listening
170/200 reading/grammar
321/400 total (80%!)

Thank you Udagawa-sensei!
Greg san passed this exam after he studied for about 70 hours with me.


本当に、おめでとうございます。