NAT-TEST 4Q study guide
NAT-TEST 4Q · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
NAT-TEST 4Q (formerly labelled 4級) is the second-easiest of five levels in the NAT-TEST, a Japanese-language proficiency exam produced by a private Japanese publisher and used mainly for language-school placement, specified-skills and vocational pathways, and in-house corporate assessment. It targets learners who have completed an elementary course: confident kana, roughly 300 kanji and about 1,500 vocabulary items, and enough grammar to follow short, predictable conversations and passages. This page is independent study material and is not affiliated with the exam body. The paper is sat with pencil and mark sheet in three blocks: 文字・語彙 (kanji reading and writing, orthography, word choice in context), 文法・読解 (sentence grammar, sentence ordering, short and medium passages) and 聴解 (task listening, point comprehension, utterance selection, audio played once with no replay). The NAT-TEST 4Q study guide has 3 sections and about 944 words.
01文字・語彙 (Moji/Goi): Reading, Writing, and Choosing the Right Word
文字・語彙 at NAT-TEST 4Q checks whether you can read and write basic daily kanji accurately and choose vocabulary that fits a short sentence. Expect 漢字読み, 漢字書き, 表記, and 文脈規定-style items: kana-to-kanji, kanji-to-kana, okurigana, small っ/ゃ/ょ, long vowels, and near-synonyms.
298 words, about 1 min02文法・読解 (Bunpou/Dokkai): Sentence Grammar and Short Reading
This section combines sentence-level grammar, sentence ordering, passage grammar, and short/medium reading. At 4Q, the grammar core is basic sentence patterns: particles は/が/を/に/で, tense and politeness, て-form, た-form, ない-form, comparison, request, permission, and simple conditionals.
334 words, about 2 min03聴解 (Choukai): Task Listening, Points, and Natural Responses
聴解 at 4Q checks practical listening: task-based comprehension (what to do next), point comprehension (one detail such as time, place, person, or reason), and utterance/response selection (the natural reply to a short line). The Japanese is basic, but distractors often reuse the same words as the prompt, so you must listen for the relationship between the words, not just the sound.
312 words, about 2 min