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How is the Japanese AS Level?

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So I've currently got Spanish, Latin, Economics, History, and Govt+ Pol on my A-Level choices, but I'm seriously considering self-teaching Japanese till AS Level. I passed the JLPT N5 in Dec 2014, and would be taking the AS exam in year 13, so I'd hopefully be past N3 by then... but how much content is on the AS Level course, and how fluent are you required to be?

Hi! I've just finished my A-level Japanese so i thought I'd share what it was like.
What people have said is right. In AS, there's no specific research you need to have done. AS consists of a reading section (35 marks), a translation from Japanese to English (9 marks) and a writing piece (46 marks) for a total of 90 marks. In the reading, 5 of the 35 marks are for quality of language. In the writing, 28 marks are for content and response and 18 marks are for quality of language. On the specification, it does tell you all of the grammar and kanji you will be expected to know (they can put these in the reading and translations but they can be useful for writing). They can ask on a few topics which I've included in the image. So it's all about you "showing off" what you know. You have 2 hours 45 minutes to complete this exam.
The A2 is a little bit different. 56 marks out of a possible 80 are awarded for you doing two writing pieces of which you can choose from a wide variety of topics. I chose to write on Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's "Hana" and Ekuni Kaori's "Duke" which are two short novels. If you research them enough and read them well, you will have no worries answering any questions since you'll know it inside out (you can be very prepared for the A2 exam). There is also a reading section worth 14 marks and a translation from English to Japanese worth 10 marks. You have 3 hours to complete this exam. The topics you would need to know for A2 are included in the second image.
You dont particularly need to be fluent at Japanese to do it at Alevel because you wont speak it for the exam. There is also no listening, it is purely paper-based. So don't worry.
I have a quizlet website (www.quizlet.com/honestfires) which has a lot of AS and A2 vocab, words to help with the writing sections and some grammar. So feel free to use it.
if you need to know anything else, don't hesitate to ask 😄

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Reply 21

roarchika

Original post by karen-samue

Hi! I've just finished my A-level Japanese so i thought I'd share what it was like.

Thank you so much! I'm entered to do GCSE next year so I'll probably have to be content with just an AS Level, but it's really good to hear it confirmed that there's no speaking portion (it's a nightmare for me atm to try and find someone to host my speaking exam). Are you expected to know more than the defined vocab list, though? Because at GCSE that list has 1200 words (when other language GCSEs I've done are between 500 and 800), just for the common topic areas and not counting the sort of media, sports, culture areas? Thank you very much for the quizlet link, I'll most definitely be using that next year!!

Reply 22

karen-samue

Original post by roarchika

No worries! And good luck for your GCSEs. I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine 😃and if you can do the full A level and you think youre capable, definitely consider doing it. It's a lot of fun to be honest. And yeah i completely understand. Speaking and listening, in my opinion are more difficult than reading and writing.
About the vocab, I'd say it's useful to know some extra vocab purely for your writing but it's definitely not a requirement to know more than they ask. As long as you know the kanji from the list they give you on the spec and your GCSE knowledge, as well as AS grammar, you will be absolutely fine. But obviously do a little research into words for the topic areas and look at past papers so you know what kind of things they ask.

And no problem for the quizlet link :biggrin: