Having a pretty hard time finding concrete answers to some of these questions:
1) Can you bust out study materials during the breaks between sections?
2) Do the proctors give you time remaining warnings, like ‘OK everyone, 2 minutes left”?
3) Are the instructions for each section given in English and if yes, how much detail do they go into, do they explain what you need to do in each subsection?
4) On the listening section, is there a practice example? I don’t want to accidentally find that I’m answering the practice example and thus all of my answers are off by one row on the answer sheet after that.
5) Mechanical pencils – I can’t for the life of me find a concrete answer, JLPT’s US website doesn’t forbid them but ‘strongly recommends’ regular old pencils. I therefore bought both HB/#2 mechanicals and regular old pencils with a sharpener, but I’d prefer to just use the mechanicals like anyone else from this century.
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I’ve taken practice tests so I’m pretty familiar with the test format, and I know I am to bring a basic watch with hands to set on my desk to keep track of time myself, but I’m still curious about the above as I just don’t know what to actually expect having never taken this before.
3 comments
1. No you can’t even have that kind of thing in the room with you. The test site information sheet tells you everything you can bring in the test room with you, if you don’t have the sheet you can look it up on the aatj website.
2. Different proctors do different things, but generally no. You’re responsible for keeping track of the time with your own watch, some test rooms won’t even have a clock for you to look at.
3. Nope. Take a look at the sample tests on the JLPT website for an idea of what the instructions will look like.
4. There is an example, but it’s clearly marked in the test questions so shouldn’t cause you any issues.
5. As long as it’s a pencil you should be fine
I took the test a few years ago, so things may have changed a bit.
You can’t have any study materials out during breaks, they pretty much only allow pencils and an analog watch if you have one. Make sure it doesn’t go off during the test. I think some places allow a clear water bottle.
I don’t remember sample questions outside of the proctor spiel before each section.
The listening section only got played once, so make sure to pay attention.
As for the pencil thing, I think it is because they use scantron forms and some lead isn’t dark enough to be picked up.
Did you read through the your test site info? It’s pretty thorough as to what to expect day of the test and it’s tailored for the test site you’re taking it.
https://www.aatj.org/jlpt-us/
>1) Can you bust out study materials during the breaks between sections?
That’s wild lol there is a list of “Prohibited Materials” and any “handwritten or printed materials/cheat sheets” is one of the things listed. It explicitly says “Do Not Bring the Following Items to the **Test Site**”. I’d think it would be an instant fail if they saw you do that.
>5) Mechanical pencils – I can’t for the life of me find a concrete answer, JLPT’s US website doesn’t forbid them but ‘strongly recommends’ regular old pencils. I therefore bought both HB/#2 mechanicals and regular old pencils with a sharpener, but I’d prefer to just use the mechanicals like anyone else from this century.
My test site doesn’t make any recommendations and says only to bring “several sharpened HB/#2 pencils” so I would just err on the side of a regular wooden pencils.
I’m taking it for the first time too so I don’t know about your other questions.