Is Japanese SAT II for native speakers only?

<p>D is an excellent Japanese student, but not a native speaker. (Nobody in our family is ethnically Japanese. She is the first to study it.) She is interested in pursuing Japanese and other languages in college, maybe as a major. She was disappointed in her SAT II score.</p>

<p>I have read on CC that Chinese SAT II scores are skewed by native speakers, so that 800s are common and it's not worthwhile to take it if you are merely studying Chinese in school. I hadn't read anything about Japanese. Is this true of Japanese as well?</p>

<p>If you got a good score (700+) on the Japanese SAT II, could you post what your background is (e.g. native speaker, studied for 3 years, etc)? Curious!</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>IMO, The Japanese test is a joke.
I got a 790 and I am in no way Japanese (ethnic background is Russian/Belarussian/Ukrainian) </p>

<p>However, I have studied for around 5 years.</p>

<p>To zorahk:why is it a joke? Did you find it too easy?
I got a 780 and I’m a Chinese. 5 years of studying</p>

<p>Too easy?
It has both forms of romaji on it for christ’s sake.</p>

<p>Plus, as far as kanji is concerned, they wouldn’t even use the kanji for boku because apparently that’s too hard for people taking this test.</p>

<p>I couldn’t see any kanji on this test that weren’t out of the first 100 joyou kanji.</p>

<p>As far as I’m concerned they need a test called “Japanese for people who actually know Japanese” versus their current “Japanese for people who dropped out of Japanese class”</p>

<p>"IMO, The Japanese test is a joke.
I got a 790 and I am in no way Japanese (ethnic background is Russian/Belarussian/Ukrainian)
**
However, I have studied for around 5 years**. "</p>

<p>ding ding ding ding ding! oh my, maybe that’s why it was easy for you? either way, it shouldn’t give you the right to be so condescending.</p>

<p>I couldn’t find anything on the test that wasn’t covered in 1st year Japanese except maybe the keigo but regardless 5 years of study is uneccessary to get over a 700 on this test.</p>

<p>I took the test after taking a first-year course freshman year and skimming through a second-year textbook and got a score of 800 combined (disclaimer: not this year, not perfect subscores). I certainly come from an Asian family, but I never spoke Japanese before high school, and I thought the test and the corresponding curve were reasonable.</p>

<p>The test is probably skewed by native speakers, sure, but not as much. Seeing how its average (689) is significantly higher than that of Latin (618 - no native speakers), there are certainly some skewing in Japanese. However, Chinese and Korean tests are far more skewed: their average is 763. In fact, there aren’t that many first generation Japanese immigrants.</p>