speak fluent Japanese

Well, I’m happy to announce that I passed my N5 exam, making me the proud holder of a Japanese Language Proficiency N5 certificate! Yay!

My local testing centre has announced that they will now be holding tests twice a year, so that’s also good. A semester away from Japanese has left me a little rusty, but I’m hoping to get myself up to speed in time to write (and pass!) the N4 exam in December.

I’m pleased to report that I’m making steady progress with this one! I’m nowhere near fluent just yet, but I’m working on it.

A few weeks ago, I wrote the JLPT N5 (an official assessment that will certify my mastery of beginner’s Japanese), as well as the final exam for Japanese 201 (my university’s 2nd year intermediate Japanese course). I haven’t gotten the results back from either test yet, but I’m very hopeful that things went well.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fit Japanese 202 (the next course I need to take) into my timetable for Winter semester, but I’m hoping I will be able to take in in the Spring or Summer, or even next fall, so I can be ready to take the JLPT N4 (or repeat the N5, if need be) next December.

Well, I just got my grade back from my first University Japanese course, and it’s a “B”... which is well above the “C+” I needed to advance to the next level of Japanese. Right now, I can write a basic essay in Japanese, I know just over 100 kanji, and I can read hiragana without getting stuck. Although I can’t watch Japanese shows without subtitles just yet, if I turn off the subtitles I can get the gist of what they’re saying.

Huge progress? I think so.

こんいちわ！
私は日本語がべんきょうしたい！

I’m a bit rusty from being off school on break, but I wish to study Japanese until I am fluent. I’ve been studying the language at my high school for the past two years, and next year I’ll be finishing it off as a high school second language.

I have a good basic grasp of the language – hiragana memorized, katakana memorized, sentence structure, verb conjugation… I just need to expand my vocabulary and really practice holding conversations in Japanese. Definitely something to work on.

じゃね！