Not that it seems to be super necessary. But I'm having trouble finding an official reason
by Dry-Masterpiece-7031
Not that it seems to be super necessary. But I'm having trouble finding an official reason
by Dry-Masterpiece-7031
5 comments
They stopped publishing, because these lists are harmful. People just grind words and can’t actually use the language, which results in N1 people who can barely speak in basic phrases.
Because they want you to learn Japanese, not memorize notes.
From [https://www.jlpt.jp/e/faq/index.html:](https://www.jlpt.jp/e/faq/index.html🙂
“We believe that the ultimate goal of studying Japanese is to use the language to communicate rather than simply memorizing vocabulary, *kanji* and grammar items. Based on this idea, the JLPT measures “language knowledge such as characters, vocabulary and grammar” as well as “competence to perform communicative tasks by using the language knowledge.” Therefore, we decided that publishing “Test Content Specifications” containing a list of vocabulary, *kanji* and grammar items was not necessarily appropriate. As information to replace [“Summary of Linguistic Competence Required for Each Level”](https://www.jlpt.jp/e/about/levelsummary.html) and [“Composition of test items”](https://www.jlpt.jp/e/guideline/testsections.html#anchor01) are available. Please also refer to [“Sample Questions.”](https://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.html)”
The primary reason was to make it more difficult for Chinese students to power through JLPT N1 through raw kanji strength alone by just memorizing JLPT vocab lists and then just working everything else backwards from there.
Thus, to counteract this, they quit publishing the vocab lists, and simultaneously significantly increased the number of 外来語 terms on the list.
As most students here have… little-to-no issue with 外来語 terms, this means that the old 1級 lists are a 100% fully valid method of acing the vocabulary portion of the test.
Source: Japanese professor was on the JEES board when they did the changes.
NGL, JLPT Lists have done more harm for me than good.
I got one off the internet to learn and taught me a ton of vocabulary I’d never use in N5, and stuff I should have learned early at N3.
I’m convinced if you want to learn Japanese enough to pass any JLPT level, you should go off frequency lists. Japanese Frequency lists are a bit rough compared to other languages but they’re better than random lists.