Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Listening Practice

It’s about time to start applying for this year’s Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), so I’ll be making a few posts sharing some studying materials with you all. This first post will focus on listening comprehension resources on the internet.

If any readers out there know of good links that aren’t on the list, let me know and I’ll add them!

Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) Listening Comprehension Resources

PlaySay – This is a great new study product for those of us with digital music players. PlaySay has used professional voice artists to record Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese mp3 sets of the entire vocabulary study lists for levels 1-4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

(Samples and purchasing links have been embedded near the bottom of this post.)

mic-J – A site with links to several downloadable listening comprehension exercises. These include a few listening exercises that are set up to match different levels of the JLPT. [Link]

N-H-K Radio News – Japan’s public broadcasting network posts its daily radio news shows online for free. The best thing about their site is that it allows users to select between slow, normal, and fast announcing speeds. [Link]

(N-H-K also puts some of its TV news online for free, along with written versions of the same news stories.)

Podcasting Juice – A portal site listing popular Japanese language podcasts in a variety of categories. [Link]

Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime – Kasumi Kobayashi’s blog of downloadable mp3′s of famous Japanese literature that has fallen into the public domain. Her readings include works by greats such as Matsuo Basho, Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and Kenji Miyazawa. [Link]

Breaking into Japanese Literature – The website of Giles Murray’s book Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text has free professionally-recorded mp3 audiobook versions of several classics of Japanese literature. I recommend the book as well, but even the mp3′s by themselves can be great listening practice. [Link]

Children’s Stories – T-Wave internet radio has a few audio versions of classic children’s stories available for download. [Link]

(hat tip to menrui!)

Samples and ordering info about the PlaySay Japanese audio sets mentioned at the beginning of this post: