JLPT guide
How to practise JLPT listening
Sixty points at every level, its own minimum to clear, and the recording is played once.
Listening is the section people lose on. It is 60 of the 180 points at every level, it has its own minimum you have to clear, and it is the one part of the exam you cannot go back and check: the recording is played once.
Why it is harder to practise than the rest
Reading you can do anywhere with anything. Listening needs audio that is at exam speed, in exam format, with the answers — and the free material tends to be one of those three at a time. So people practise the sections they can practise, and walk into the exam having never sat a full 聴解 booklet under the clock.
The format, which is half the battle
| 問題 | What it asks | Options printed? |
|---|---|---|
| 課題理解 | What must this person do next? | Yes |
| ポイント理解 | One specific fact, named before the clip | Yes |
| 概要理解 | What is this talk about? | No — read out |
| 即時応答 | One line; choose the natural reply | No — read out |
| 統合理解 | Long clip, two questions, often two speakers | Sometimes |
Two of those print nothing at all on the question paper. If the first time you meet 即時応答 is in the exam hall, you will lose the question to the format rather than to your Japanese — the answers go past in four seconds and you were still waiting to read them.
A method that works
- Sit the section cold, once, at full speed. No pausing, no rewinding. That is the exam.
- Mark it before you look at anything. The score on a cold pass is the only honest measurement you get.
- Now read the script — and find the exact word where you lost the thread. It is usually one connective or one piece of vocabulary, not the whole clip.
- Listen again with the script in front of you, then once more without it.
- Come back to the same section a week later. If it is now easy, the problem was vocabulary. If it is still hard, the problem is speed, and speed only comes from volume.
What this site gives you for it
Every listening question here carries its script, and the script sits behind a fold on the question itself — so step 3 is one click, not a hunt through a PDF. Where the original recording was lost, your own device reads the script aloud, so no listening section is a dead page. Every word in the script has its meaning and its reading a tap away, and furigana goes over the whole thing if you want it.
On the questions whose options were only read out and never printed, the four choices are recovered from the recording and shown after you answer — so you can see what you were choosing between.
Start with a full section at your level: N5 · N4 · N3 · N2 · N1.