Organizational Efficiency

Many facets of registering for, taking, and getting results for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験), or JLPT, are bothersome.

80,000 application forms are printed up each year and distributed to various bookstores around the country to be sold starting in early July. If your local bookstore runs out of application forms, you must go hunting. Last year I
went to the next prefecture hunting for a form and came back empty-handed and unable to take the test. Minor additional gripe: application forms cost 500 yen, as opposed to my preferred price – 0 yen.

Testing occurs in early December (only once per year) and applications must be completed and posted by early September. Three or more months prior to the test you need to decide what level you will attempt and commit your 5500 yen. Being on the cusp between level 1 (the top) and level 2, creates a difficult decision for me. The gap between the levels is tremendous so the right decision must be made. FAQ on the official website recommend registering for both levels and only showing up for one test (and forfeiting the extra 6000 yen you sent.) Only one level may be attempted at a time.

Although registration is sent in as early as July, participants receive no acknowledgment of successful registration until early November. FAQ assistance for your uneasiness recommends paying for registered mail; a solution that puts an additional cost burden on the customer, and really doesn’t give knowledge of anything more than whether the package arrived.

The area of knowledge being tested is not consistent with the order that material is taught in Japanese classrooms. Rather, each level contains characters and words from various different grade levels in school. Should a fourth grader take the level 4 test with content from 1st through 3rd grade? Or level 3, with content from 1st through 6th or 7th grade? (I don’t have my notes handy, so this data is not exact, but hopefully gets the idea across.)

Results of the test take two months or so to be returned. This is a pretty minor issue, but it speaks to the efficiency of the organization, JEES, which I will address a little. FAQ respond to concerns about all of these issues with a lengthy, defensive blurb about how difficult it is to properly handle 80,000 applications for more than 20 test facilities.

Now, let’s compare them with the Kanji test (日本漢字能力検定試験) provided by the Kentei Society. This comparison is to let you know that I’m not slamming Japanese efficiency. You will see a distinct difference between the accomplishments of two entities, both Japanese, with similar goals and objectives.

	JLPT	Kanji test
Applications	80,000	unlimited
Participants	~80,000	>2.5 Million
Tests per Year *	1	3
Test Sites	>20	>100
Registration Deadline	T – 3 months	T – 1 month
Test Results	T + 2 months	T + 1 month
Levels	4	12
Cost *	6000 yen	2000 yen
Alignment to Class Levels	none	exact
Simultaneous Testing	forbidden	allowed
Format	bubble sheet	handwritten

So, one group complains about how hard it is to provide one test per year for 80,000 people and the other organization quietly offers the test three times a year to ten times as many people each time.

Also, Computer Based Testing is available for the Kanji test, with about a one week turn around, and some locations offer testing everyday.

Perception is really the key here. I think the only factor holding JEES back is their belief that they couldn’t possibly do better.