Hello everyone!
I started studying Japanese 6 months ago after moving to Japan. I really enjoy setting myself goals to show my progress.
This summer I plan to take my JLPT 4 and since I love kanji, I also want to take the Kanji Kentei.
I’m thinking of sitting the level 9 test.
The test requires more than just kanji knowledge as it’s in the context of passages and there’s a lot of vocabulary I haven’t encountered yet.
I’m not sure if anyone has done this before, but is anyone able to give a rough estimate of what JLPT level would match each kanji kentei level?
I’ve deduced that in terms of kanji knowledge:
Level 10 is N5
Level 9 is N4
Level 8 is N3
Level 7, 6, & 5 are N2
Level 4 onwards is N1
The kanji in those JLPT levels are equivalent, but I’m not sure about the vocab/grammar, since that’s just as important as the kanji themselves.
Any help is appreciated!
2 comments
Using the number of new kanji in each JLPT level from [Kanshudo](https://www.kanshudo.com/collections/jlpt_kanji) and the number of new kanji in each Kanken level from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji_Kentei), you can roughly assign them as the following:
– N-level (new kanji, total kanji) : kanken-level (total kanji)
– N5 (80, 80) : 10級 (80)
– N4 (170, 250) : 9級 (240)
– N3 (370, 620) : 7級 (642)
– N2 (380, 1000) : 5級 (1026, kyōiku kanji)
– N1 (1136, 2136) : 2級 (2136, jōyō kanji)
You were pretty close, but 7級 is in N3.
Basically any common word with the relevant kanji is valid for the kanken, so especially at lower levels there’s a huge gap between JLPT and kanken. For example if you pass N5 you know 大, 小, and 雨, but would you necessarily know how to read 大雨 and 小雨 as a beginner? You’re also expected to know synonyms and antonyms etc.
And of course you need a lot more knowledge about kanji and radicals than the JLPT requires, and be able to write the kanji too.