Since I entered Japanese language school, I have maintained one pretty good record:
I had passed every school exam I took.
From N5 to N3, I had taken dozens of tests, and that record had never been broken.
So when our teacher asked everyone which level they wanted to take this time, I chose N2.
To be honest, I had already prepared myself for the possibility that my perfect record might finally come to an end.
After all, I had already taken the official JLPT N2 in July—and I failed.
My results in July were:
- Language Knowledge: 32
- Reading: 23
- Listening: 30
- Total: 85
The passing score for N2 is 90, so I was just five points short.
And after the July exam, my study intensity dropped quite a bit.
Right after the exam, I still had some motivation. But as time went by, I gradually stopped studying as regularly as I had before.
Compared with the period before the exam, I was spending much less time studying Japanese.
So I didn't have particularly high expectations for this N2 test at school.
In fact, I had already prepared myself to accept another failure.
But when the results came out, I was honestly a little surprised.
97 points.
I had actually passed.
What surprised me even more was the breakdown of my scores.
- Language Knowledge: ?
- Reading: 40
- Listening: ?
My reading score was actually the highest of the three.
That really confused me.
Because just about two months earlier, in the official JLPT N2 in July, my reading score had been:
23 points.
And it was the lowest of the three sections.
From 23 to 40.
That's a 17-point increase.
What happened?
I'm Starting to Question My Own Ability
Actually, before this test, I had done many N2 practice tests on my own.
Whenever I did them, I never felt that my reading ability was particularly problematic.
If anything, I thought my reading was relatively okay.
The section I was genuinely worried about was always:
Listening.
Listening in Japanese has been one of my more obvious weaknesses for quite some time.
So during the test, I was actually paying more attention to the listening section.
But when the results came out, the biggest surprise was reading.
The section I was least worried about ended up being my highest score.
And the listening section, which I had always been most worried about, wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected either.
That made me think again about how the JLPT is scored.
Could It Really Be the Scaled Scoring System?
At this point, I'm seriously starting to wonder:
Could the JLPT's scaled scoring system have something to do with it?
Of course, this is just my own guess.
The JLPT isn't scored simply by saying, "You got this many questions right, so you get this many points."
According to the official explanation, the JLPT uses a Scaled Score, rather than simply adding up the number of correct answers.
In other words,
the number of questions you get right does not directly equal your final score.
So perhaps there are times when you feel that you didn't do particularly well, but your final score turns out to be higher than expected. And there may also be cases where you feel that you got quite a few questions right, but your final score doesn't increase as much as you expected.
However, I don't know whether the scaled scoring system is really the reason my reading score went from 23 to 40.
Maybe my reading ability really did improve this time.
Maybe the questions happened to suit me better.
Maybe I was simply in better condition on the day of the test.
And, of course, perhaps the JLPT's scaled scoring system played a part as well.
In the end, I simply don't know.
But there is one thing I do know for sure.
Somehow, I passed N2.
And I passed it after failing the official exam in July and then significantly reducing the amount of time I spent studying.
That was honestly quite unexpected.
Sometimes, perhaps our judgment of ourselves isn't as accurate as we think it is.
Even when you think you're still not good enough, you may actually be moving forward little by little without realizing it.