Japanese?

aisling.laura

how many people here are stuck like me in exam limbo till the 19th?
and if so what have you all prepared?
we never learnt from an actual leaving cert textbook so i'm not sure how prepared i am...

i've seen the past exams and they don't seem overly hard, just a bit worried something crazy will come up this year.

Swizz

aisling.laura wrote: »

how many people here are stuck like me in exam limbo till the 19th?
and if so what have you all prepared?
we never learnt from an actual leaving cert textbook so i'm not sure how prepared i am...

i've seen the past exams and they don't seem overly hard, just a bit worried something crazy will come up this year.

Are you japanese? Im finished the 15th WOOHOO

SugoiHito

Yeah,I do Japanese...What do you wanna know bout it?

Topsnakebite

wow only if my school done japenese

piggies

in in til the 19th for technology, not studying anything til the 18th!

SugoiHito

Oh god yeah,I havnt looked at Spanish or english in like a month!!Gonna focus on them after Im done with the rest.....

Richyj_0

My class is bad at Japanese, I'm worried! :eek:

challengemaster

In til the 19th alright, but for applied maths not japanese... christ, i'd prefer japanese at this stage!!

Best of luck to you all anyway

SugoiHito

I ment spanish and japanese....sorry,the lack of sleep is getting to me!!

RetroRainbow

^ 'Amazing person', eh?

And I wanted to do it. Was fully prepared, but I left getting a teacher far too late, sadly. Know how you feel about limbo though~ I'm doing Italian myself!

BLARG

はい. I'm in until 5:30 on the 19th for Japanese aswell. I did it once a week, 3 hours in a row for 2 years. And yeah, our teacher did alot of work based on handouts. I haven't really prepared anything in particular, I'd say, for the aural, know the weather stuff, and the directions stuff. Know your Kanji well enough. Also, for the comprehensions, alot of the answers are pretty obvious if you understand the question words (how, why, how many etc.).
This is a checklist of essays my teacher emailed us, which might give you an idea what comes up or might come up on the essay questions.

１　 Self introduction
２　の My week
３　 My weekend
４　 My school
５　ともだち My friend
６　/ Holiday
７　なとき My free time
８(イベント) Travelling/event
９　 My hobby
10に When I go to Japan
11の Japanese study
12　 Future dream/plan
13　Eメール e-mail
14　ブログ blog

Hope that helps.

aisling.laura

yeah that's pretty much what i've revised too.
thankfully i have a full week off to revise for just music and japanese beforehand!

NerdPantzz

Hi Ash! I am also very unsure as to how to go about preparing for the exam. Out mock wasnt based on a leaving cert paper so I'mm worried! Anyone do well in an actual mock leaving cert paper? If so how do you study??

BLARG

NerdPantzz wrote: »

Hi Ash! I am also very unsure as to how to go about preparing for the exam. Out mock wasnt based on a leaving cert paper so I'mm worried! Anyone do well in an actual mock leaving cert paper? If so how do you study??

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=60587609&postcount=11

SugoiHito

Yeah,I did an actual japanese mock and got an A1 in it...im not japanese btw!
Id say study kanji well and for essays,just whatever you studied for orals....
I dunno,i just really like it so it makes it so much easier to learn

NerdPantzz

SugoiHito wrote: »

Yeah,I did an actual japanese mock and got an A1 in it...im not japanese btw!
Id say study kanji well and for essays,just whatever you studied for orals....
I dunno,i just really like it so it makes it so much easier to learn

Wow well done! At this stage I'm not sure where to even start! I have 8 exam-free days between now and japanese so I'll take a topic a day and the associated Kangi or something like that!

SugoiHito

NerdPantzz wrote: »

Wow well done! At this stage I'm not sure where to even start! I have 8 exam-free days between now and japanese so I'll take a topic a day and the associated Kangi or something like that!

Yeah,going by topics might be a good idea!Thats how i revise too!If you have the Kantan Nihongo book its very good...colourful and all,i love it!
Id say youll be alright,just know vocab and readings of kanji!Best of luck with study!!

pervertedcoffee

Sorry to ressurect a dead topic...but I thought it better than starting a new one.

Regarding the "essay" topics: if a topic came up in the oral do you think it wouldn't come up in the written? I know Japanese is a hard one to predict but, any thoughts?

And just for fun: I heard last year only 28 of us took this exam, any estimate on the numbers for this year?

Richyj_0

pervertedcoffee wrote: »

And just for fun: I heard last year only 28 of us took this exam, any estimate on the numbers for this year?

127 people took the exam last year, 28 of them did ordinary level. Don't know how many this year, I'm one of them.

pervertedcoffee

Richyj_0 wrote: »

127 people took the exam last year, 28 of them did ordinary level. Don't know how many this year, I'm one of them.

Woo! That's at least 2 of us then...

127? Awsome. I did think 28 was an understatement but my excuse is I have dyscalcula!:pac:

SugoiHito

pervertedcoffee wrote: »

Sorry to ressurect a dead topic...but I thought it better than starting a new one.

Regarding the "essay" topics: if a topic came up in the oral do you think it wouldn't come up in the written? I know Japanese is a hard one to predict but, any thoughts?

And just for fun: I heard last year only 28 of us took this exam, any estimate on the numbers for this year?

Well,most people in this thread are doing japanese id say so you can count them..there are 3 people doing it in my school anyways,including myself.
The topics that came up in the oral are different for every person...they had a few and you pick one of them and everyone picked different ones..i wouldnt say the oral and the written topics are connected....
Id suggest having a look at the topics that came up in the past few years and make some sort of conclusions,like what came up last year isnt likely and some topics come up more then others...
Here is a list:
Q4(short essays)
2004:fav sports or fav country
2005: (no info)
2006:fav books or hobbies
2007:fav sports or fav sports personality
2008:mobile phone use

Q5(long essay)
2004: japanese culture or why study japanese
2005: diary entry
2006: email:life about ireland or asking about japan
2007: personal profile for website + blog
2008: schedule or plan for trip

aisling.laura

my teacher reckons it could be an essay on your hometown or an essay about food.

don't know how easy it is to predict but thats what he thinks...

once you have a good knowledge of vocab and sentence structure any essay should be ok to write.. in theory anyways!

and generally a comprehension relating to the essay titles is on the paper too so they give a bit of help in that way.

BLARG

Even if you don't have time to write a practice essay, just quickly go through what you'd say in english, and learn the key words you'd need in Japanese.

SugoiHito

I dunno..i dont really care what topics are gonna come up in essays..as someone said above if you know grammar and vocab,which i do anyways...you can write any essay:cool:

aisling.laura

so anyone got any advice on what to study for the last few hours tonight and tomorrow morning?

i'm just planning on looking over vocab, sentence structures, kanji and knowing the question words..

hopefully everything else will come back to me in there, its worked so far for everything else!

SugoiHito

Id say go over vocab for directions, weather and sickness as they may come up in the listening...But generally,all you need is grammar cos youll hardly learn all this random japanese vocab in a few hours!

Saruwatari

Ah man I'm screwed. Haven't really studied much, and I was never good in the first place.
Guess I'll look over some vocab, structures and try to learn some Kanjis (although what ones in particular I do not know)...

aisling.laura

SugoiHito wrote: »

Id say go over vocab for directions, weather and sickness as they may come up in the listening...But generally,all you need is grammar cos youll hardly learn all this random japanese vocab in a few hours!

yeah i was thinking weather, seasons etc for the listening.
looking over last years paper, it was pretty manageable, hopefully it'll be as straightforward this year!

i'm keeping my fingers crossed for a true or false question, i love them

NerdPantzz

starting to get a bit panicy... I find japanese pretty hard to study! Can't learn off facts or definitions or anything! I'm thinking last minute revision of counters, question words and time phrases (tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week etc) and a look over my kangi notes.. Havent had much practice at the listening tho...

SugoiHito

Oh yeah guys,last piece of advice!!I hope people still see this before the exam...Take kanji from the passages they give you and put them into your own essays(if you know what they mean) just copy them..cos the more kanji you have the more points you can gain!The same for grammar structure and vocab i guess....but kanji!!Good luck everyone,im off for the last few hours of cramming!

NerdPantzz

good plan!!

Richyj_0

Ikimashou! Gambatte minasan.

aisling.laura

so what did everyone think?
my essay on my part time job is pure waffle. never learnt anything remotely relating to it!
the second essay was great though, i love self intro's!


the listening was really really really really hard!
the last question on the family tree, WTF???
it was awful! way too much to take in at once, there should be time to actually read over the paper like in music we got five minutes at the start.
disaster!

SugoiHito

Yeah the written paper was grand axcept that in the last question,the long essay they usually give 2 options and you choose one and this time i only chose one too the first one but as it turns out..i think you had to do both cos it didnt say "or"...damn i hope i dont miss out on many marks...or maybe they just forgot the "or" and it really was a choice:( fingures crossed!!

Yeah,the listening part D was so hard with family tree and all these Uganda names??It doesnt even have anything to do with japanese...

awel,we are freeeeee now!:D