I signed up for the February 2016 test on the last day of registration, so I had about a month or a little more to prepare for KK5 and KK4.
As soon as those tests were over, I started studying for KK3, planning to take it in June 2016. I was able to make enough progress that I decided to skip KK3 and instead I took KKpre2 and KK2.
From the time I started studying KK5 until I could first
barely pass a KK2 practice test took me 300 hours of study. By the test day I had spent 429 hours studying.
I used the app
Studyplus (
学習総合サイト Studyplus(スタディプラス) to keep a record of what I studied and how long I studied. I find that keeping a detailed record is useful, as you can see what you
actually studied....which is never as much as you
think you studied or as much as you
intended to study if you don't keep track of it. It also helps you view what you studied and maintain a balance, instead of tending to do only the things you enjoy and not doing the things you don't enjoy as much.
I used several apps which contain questions from previous exams. There are many free apps and many paid apps. The free apps are, in my opinion, each and every one worthless crap. The paid apps aren't
all good, but
none of the free ones are good.
Looking at the kanji and copying them isn't as good as being prompted and having to recall them, so I used SRS flash cards to provide the prompts. I am a big fan of
SS :: Kanji and it was a vital part of my studies.
I would drill by school grade level (which mostly parallels KK levels), always being sure to heavily review the lower levels while learning the higher levels.
Actively, not much. It has increased my passive vocabulary, though, and has had an overall positive effect on listening and literacy as well.
The higher you go in the levels the more obscure and useless the new vocabulary becomes. This is especially true for the 四字熟語, which I suspect they include for the sole purpose of making the test difficult. I would say over 90% of the 四字熟語 covered are absolutely useless to you in daily life, as
nobody knows or uses them.
Nothing. My writing skills have atrophied because I don't write much in daily life and because I haven't maintained a habit of reviewing. The listening and literary improvements remain, though.
I'll be honest and tell you that the most satisfying benefit, and one which I never expected when I started studying for KK, is the incredible amount of
respect you get from Japanese people for having passed KK2. It is a notoriously difficult test, and even Japanese people who study and prepare for it have a pass rate that is usually 20% or lower. They don't know what JLPT N1 is and they don't care....but they know about the 漢検.
One of the disheartening aspects of foreign life in Japan is having people always assume you are either totally illiterate or at least can't read kanji. When people are writing things very simply for you or asking if you can read something, it is very fun to say こう見えても漢検2級持っている and watch their eyes bug out and their jaws drop. They also instantly become
very self-conscious and worried they're going to mess up in front of you. It is a most delightful change from being treated like an illiterate idiot. Last year I had to see a surgeon and he was very obviously uncomfortable as he drew and labeled diagrams for me explaining my condition. He was trying to recall the English terms for some things, and other things he was writing in katakana. He was simultaneously the most surprised and most
relieved man I have ever seen when I said 先生、漢検2級持っているから普通に書いていただいてもいいです。特別な配慮は入りません。 After that the consultation went
much better for
both of us. (Much to my surprise, he even entered it into my electronic medical records at the hospital. So it even eased things later on when I was staying in the hospital for surgery, as all the nurses also saw it).
You might also be interested in taking the 日本語検定, which like the KK is created for native speakers of Japanese but which anyone is free to try.
日本語検定-ビジネス,就活,学力アップ。日本語力を高める検定です。
Nihongo Kentei Results | Japan Forum
