Shindan: Japanese Level Test

Find your next Japanese study priority. Take a timed diagnostic covering vocabulary, grammar and related skills, then see a JLPT-based level estimate and a profile of your weak spots. Your first test sheet is free.

TWO ANSWERS, NOT ONE

A level estimate on the JLPT scale, based on vocabulary, kanji readings and grammar constructions. This is a diagnostic of the material tested, not an official JLPT result or a guarantee of passing the exam.

Your weak spots, as a share of your mistakes: particles, verb forms, register, contractions, mimetics, counters and pitch accent. These have no JLPT level and never will – a particle you meet in week one and use for life. Measuring them on the same scale would make that scale mean nothing, so they are measured apart.

NO PRACTICE, NO REPETITION, NO STREAK

There is nothing to grind here and that is deliberate. A sheet measures once. Answers are not marked as you go, because seeing three mistakes in a row changes how you answer the fourth – and then the test measures your nerve instead of your Japanese. The result comes at the end, or not at all.

WHAT IT WILL NOT DO

It will not give you a level from half a sheet. If too much ran out on the clock, it says so instead of guessing – a number from a thin measurement looks exactly like a number from a good one, and someone would build a study plan on it.

It does not measure reading longer texts, and it does not measure listening comprehension. Both are missing, both are named on the opening screen, and neither is hidden in the small print.

PITCH ACCENT IS MEASURED BY EAR

One section plays you a recording of a single word and asks where the pitch drops. It does not ask for the name of the pattern, and it does not show you the word — because then your memory would answer, not your ear. The recordings are real, spoken by a voice actor with a Tokyo accent; speech synthesis does not render the melody convincingly, and a false sound in a diagnostic test is a false result.

What gets measured is what you can actually hear in a bare word: whether the pitch drops, and after which mora. Two patterns that sound identical in isolation share one answer instead of being split into two — because the difference between them only falls on the next word, and there is no next word in the recording.

BUILT ON THE FAMILY

The questions come from the catalogs of the Japanese-learning apps, all by the same author: grammar constructions, vocabulary in context, particles, conjugation, counters, casual speech, honorific register and mimetics. That is why the diagnosis can point somewhere specific – and why it says which app fixes what.

The first sheet is free.