How to get a 7 in B SL?! Is it possible?

[TykeDragon]

Hello everybody, I made the silly choice of taking Japanese B SL after achieving an A* in Year 10. I am now in Year 13, however the bane of my IB diploma is Japanese, in which I am struggling to achieve a 6! Now, I don't really expect it but I would like a 7. But my biggest question is if it is possible, and how on earth to achieve it? I'm at my wit's end with Japanese.

Not sure if this is any different to other languages, but it is Paper 1 /40; Paper 2 /25; Written Assignment /25; Group Oral /10; Individual Oral /20.

This language is really pulling me down. I struggle to achieve 50% on the paper one as we are not taught as much as 25% of the kanji that come up on the paper, and it becomes guess work! My paper 2s are my best aspect, and I get decent 6s but cannot seem/don't know how to push them up to 7s. Same goes for the written assignment. As for my orals, I seem to blank under the teacher's stare and mess up - I achieve 5s in my individual orals, and only have a couple of chances left to redeem them. Does anyone know how to get 15+/20 instead of 10/20? :/ Fortunately for the group oral though, I have a good 8/10 from one we have already done that was done in controlled conditions so can be counted - thank God!

Any advice or encouragement needed and greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Edited March 6, 2013 by TykeDragon

[Guest HayashiEsme]

Ah the dreaded skill-based languages. I found watching tv or just popular media with translations side by side really helpful when I found myself in the same trouble. I guess since you're in the UK it's hard to speak to someone, but definitely find every opportunity to speak it too. What I did for a month was to only tweet/text/facebook in my second language as well. That really helped in fluency because I threw myself into a do or die situation.

Anyway good luck for everything!

[TykeDragon]

Heh, not a bad idea! Thanks for the reply, too I've had the mock result, and I managed to get 20 in both paper 1 and paper 2... difference is, paper 1 was out of 41 and paper 2 was out of 25, so paper 2 was really good but paper 1 was awful that's exactly it though, I don't understand how to improve paper 1! I've tried asking my teacher for additional help but he can only tell me to revise all our kanji, and give me tips such as looking for key words in question and text etc which are slightly obvious... Isn't there supposed to be a list, even if it's got 500 characters, that they can only use those kanji in paper 1, and basically knowing all of those would allow us to know what the texts in paper 1 say?

I see you do Chinese B, so I guess you feel the pain. :/ how do you do in the various components of chinese B? Good luck back, good to hear from another person who has to deal with obscure characters

[Geldyn]

As someone who has just finished his final Japanese exams, I know and share your pain - I've been in a very similar boat to you this year! doing alright on paper 2s but struggling to get a 50% on paper 1 is a very familiar feeling... and to be honest, one that I never entirely got past...

Here's a website I found (possibly posted somewhere else on this site... I can't remember now), but I found it very useful for learning vocab and kanji

http://japaneseclass.jp/

unfortunately, I found it 2 days before my final exam, so it was too late to be of help, but even still, there was some useful vocab that I picked up just in time!

anyway, the site tests vocab and kanji in multiple choice format, translating from japanese to english, and the other way around, and is really helpful.

it also scores you (you get 'exp' like in an rpg, and level up, unlocking new vocab on), and I found that if you sign up with a friend, you are very motivated to try to beat the other in terms of progress. so yes, very worth a look at!

other than that... other ways of improving are a lot of hard work... I found going through past paper 1's and highlighting vocab I didn't know making lists (which incidentally you can put into the above program to quiz you), and finding words that came up repeatedly to learn helped. for instance 'じゅんび' (preparation) is a word that I found came up in just about every paper - it helped to learn!

another useful website (while I think of it) is jisho.org - this is a japanese dictionary that is very useful, and unlike a lot of other sites, you can type in the roomaji of words and it will still understand what you're searching. it also has a find kanji by radicals function, which is very useful...

I have the list of 500 characters as well, but being a newbie to this site, haven't worked out how to upload that... I'll put it up when I find out how

(although the list doesn't include kanji combinations, which seem to be half the battle... don't have any advice on learning them)

we had a textbook that had IB kanji (although it wasn't an official one - a teacher once went through past exams and found every kanji and combination he could). This is probably too late to help you now, but i'ts name is 'IB Diploma Japanese B Standard Level Kanji Book' by Simon Tennent.

hope this is helpful, and you can get those marks up! I very much share your pain!

(and I'll get onto uploading that list)

-Geldyn

(oh, and just on re-reading your original post - I had thought paper 2 was out of 30, but may be wrong... might be worth checking this...)

EDIT: I have just uploaded the list onto the files section of the wesbite (pending approval), although I understand you need to be a VIP member to be able to download it. If you want, I can email you the file directly if you give me an email address

Edited November 20, 2012 by Geldyn

[TykeDragon]

Ahh, someone who shares the pain of Japanese B SL, excellent Not that I'm relishing another's pain...

I have been using jisho and I have that 500 character list, I just wondered if it was... legit or accurate really But thanks a lot for the first website, I'll be sure to be continually using that one! Just... yeah, it's ridiculous how we aren't even shown these random kanji, which in turn screws our marks up... plus then making the grade boundary for a 7 85%... harsh :/ How do you think you did??

Another question though, where were you getting these paper 1s?? That sounds very useful and I'd love to be able to do that! (Inbox me them if you aren't allowed to post it here?) Thanks We have a couple of textbooks for kanji, a volume 1 and volume 2 where each week we learn about 10-15 kanji (not including combinations) and get tested on that test weekly. We're currently on something like Kanji Test 35 out of 50 But it's too much overload - how on earth does all that stick?? I even often don't find I have the time amongst everything else to BE studying kanji, grammar and vocab constantly!

My other pressing issues are how to score 16 or 17 on the individual oral... and as for the written assignment, I scored low in the practice because we weren't told the task properly, so I barely used the sources. As a result, I got 4/10 for criteria B and 1/3 for rationale. Still don't quite know what they wan't and we don't get any further practice - the real one is next month.

Either way, good job on finally finishing your IB diploma, hope you did well

[Geldyn]

hey, sorry I haven't responded - haven't been on in a few days (and I suppose that'll become less and less frequent now... hmm...)

anyway, yeah, I completely agree with how ridiculous it is (the 7 grade is insane! I've been aiming for a six, and even that seems hopeful...). and it's difficult to have any idea of how I went, considering the number of practices I've thought I've improved on, and then ended up the same... in any case, here's hoping

in terms of the practice paper 1s, there's a website I found in my final holidays before exams that has them for all IB subjects:

______________

it's use is sometimes limited... I think for japanese it only has 2 or 3 papers, but even still, it's quite useful!

otherwise, does your teacher have any past exams? we had to repeatedly ask, but eventually our teacher pulled out exams from the past few years - might be worth asking...

for kanji, I made flash-cards, which helped with recognition (having the kanji on the front, and meanings on the back), and if you have books with the combinations, that would make them easier to make. although it's time consuming, they were very useful when I finally had them done. but yeah - it's probably not so useful for you now, because there are probably more productive things you can do with your time but that was how I did most of my kanji revision

in terms of the orals, I really don't know what to suggest. I think each school does them slightly differently, which doesn't help... but yeah - don't think my orals were too much to envy either... and we didn't have a written assignment...

actually, are you on the new syllabus? I'd thought there might be one more semester, but come to think of it, I believe I was the last group of the old syllabus... so you're assessment is probably slightly different. so don't think I can be much help there... sorry.

in any case, I hope you manage to pull this all together and show the IBO a thing or two! good luck!

-Geldyn

Edited November 23, 2012 by Sandwich
Please don't hand out links to past papers as these are technically illegal! I suggest that Google is a good resource to search for anything and I'm sure you can find the link that way if you wish. Just not on IBS.

[TykeDragon]

Aah, sorry Geldyn, and thanks

yeah my written assignment is about the environment and is being done in a few weeks. No idea how to hit criterias B or D... This is what our written assignment is:

4 criterias, we have to write an 800 character essay and rationale based on a few sources/articles we are given, which look like the paper 1 articles except they're longer. up to 8 marks for Criteria A Language, which is actually the same criteria and markband as in paper 2 for 8 marks, so isn't hard to achieve! Criteria B is about content and linking to the sources but I've not been told how to do this or even that I need to!! Criteria C text type, as per, 4 marks, and Criteria D is about the rationale. The rationale is basically the abstract of our 800 character written assignment and needs to be about 200 characters. It needs to discuss what my aims were, if i feel i fulfilled them, what i'm happy with, the source(s) that inspired me, that sort of thing. They need to be directly linked to the sources too and we haven't been taught how to hit the rationale markscheme or even the sort of vocab needed for this.. :/

Questioned my teacher about that list of a few hundred characters, but he said it was more of a list of 'if you know all of these youre on the right track' and that the IB refuse to produce a list of kanji they will use, partially because it would be unmanageably long! Plus, that list does not include compounds :/

Gonna be tough!!