The BJT’s high level of precision has been maintained through the continual efforts of experts in Japanese language education, linguistics, psychology, statistics and other fields, as well as professionals in business world, who help develop the BJT through ongoing discussions of the test itself, methods of scoring, etc.
Abilities tested by the BJT
Knowledge of Japanese grammar and vocabulary and business practices is regarded as premise knowledge. The main objects of measurement are the ability to process information and business skills.
Three-part test measures overall proficiency.
Section |
Number of Questions |
Time |
|
| Listening Comprehension | Description | 10 Questions |
50 Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expression | 10 Questions |
||
| Listening | 15 Questions |
||
| Listening & Reading Comprehension |
Description | 15 Questions |
30 Minutes |
| Listening and Reading | 15 Questions |
||
| Reading Comprehension | Grammar and Vocabulary | 10 Questions |
40 Minutes |
| Expression | 10 Questions |
||
| Reading of Short Texts | 15 Questions |
||
| TOTAL | 100 Questions |
120 Minutes |
|
Scaled score produces highly reliable results.
A single response to each multiple-choice question (with four options) is marked on an answer sheet. The results are evaluated not merely as raw scores (i.e., 1 point for each question), but calculated through statistical processing of raw scores based on item response theory (IRT). The data is processed with a conversion equation that enables the final result to reflect the difficulty of each question.Known as “scaled score,” this is a highly precise internationally recognized method.
The greater the complexity of information processing, the higher the score.
Communication in business situations is performed successfully through the parallel processing of various information streams. The BJT is designed to award higher scores in proportion to the volume and difficulty of the information processing required for communication.
Communication is regarded as the performance of the information processing tasks listed on the vertical axis, through evaluation and judgment of information, as required for each task listed across the horizontal axis.
A survey was cosnducted to determine what levels BJT examinees had achieved on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). The graph on the right shows the BJT score distribution of the level 1 and 2 graders of the JLPT. The results showed that a higher JLPT score does not necessarily coincide with a higher BJT score.
