Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Listening Practice
It’s about time to start applying for this year’s Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), so I’ll be making a few posts sharing some studying materials with you all. This first post will focus on listening comprehension resources on the internet.
If any readers out there know of good links that aren’t on the list, let me know and I’ll add them!
Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Listening Comprehension Resources
PlaySay - This is a great new study product for those of us with digital music players. PlaySay has used professional voice artists to record Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese mp3 sets of the entire vocabulary study lists for levels 1-4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.
(Samples and purchasing links have been embedded near the bottom of this post.)
mic-J - A site with links to several downloadable listening comprehension exercises. These include a few listening exercises that are set up to match different levels of the JLPT. [Link]
NHK Radio News - Japan’s public broadcasting network posts its daily radio news shows online for free. The best thing about their site is that it allows users to select between slow, normal, and fast announcing speeds. [Link]
(NHK also puts some of its TV news online for free, along with written versions of the same news stories.)
Podcasting Juice - A portal site listing popular Japanese language podcasts in a variety of categories. [Link]
Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime - Kasumi Kobayashi’s blog of downloadable mp3’s of famous Japanese literature that has fallen into the public domain. Her readings include works by greats such as Matsuo Basho, Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and Kenji Miyazawa. [Link]
Breaking into Japanese Literature - The website of Giles Murray’s book Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text
Children’s Stories - T-Wave internet radio has a few audio versions of classic children’s stories available for download. [Link]
(hat tip to menrui!)
Samples and ordering info about the PlaySay Japanese audio sets mentioned at the beginning of this post:
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Wow, awesome post! I find the mic-J website very helpful. I’m not taking the jlpt because there is no test site close to my location. But I am using it to set a goal for my self, and studying for a monbusho scholarship exam. Im aiming for level 2. Here some websites i use:
This contains audios of easy childrens story. The speaker intentionally speaks very slowly and exhaggerates the tones.
http://www.t-step.jp/t-wave/
This one has alot of very simple and corny scary stories
http://www.1101.com/fear/
haha, i’m doing the monbukagakusho scholarship for this year. been nominated, now i just need to do the application and medical and stuff and wait for a response from them. good luck to you
anyways these are really useful guides. one thing that has greatly assisted me in learning japanese vocabulary and especially kanji is a program called JEDict for mac. its free and contains a kanji view for searching kanji, a dictionary (word search), text editor, and other things. however, one of the most useful tools in this program is the JLPT list, which has a list of words dealing with all 4 JLPT levels. the words are alphabetical (alphabetical in japanese, not english), has the kanji and the bottom box has the translation and meaning. there is also a button to click so you can hide the translation/meanings and go through the list as a test. there’s a LOT of words in the JLPT list so its its really helpful, and probably the best japanese dictionary for mac out there. here’s a link: http://www.jedict.com/