The Announcement That Corrects Itself
A ninety-second campus announcement plays once. The office states that the 説明会 for the exchange program, originally 火曜日・4限 in room 302, moves to 木曜日・5限; the sign-up sheet closes 水曜日正午; students who have already registered need not register again but must bring a 成績証明書. Halfway through, the speaker says 「あ、訂正します。会場は201ではなく、209です。」 Later: 「締切は水曜の正午…いや、水曜の五時まで大丈夫です。」 The student writes down Thursday, 5th period, room 201, sign up by Wednesday noon, then stops writing once each slot looks filled and lets the rest of the announcement pass.
1. Correct the notes and explain the rule that generates the correction.
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The notes should read: Thursday, 5th period, room 209, sign-up by Wednesday 17:00, bring a transcript. Two principles produce this. First, a later utterance overrides an earlier one, and both 訂正します and いや are explicit self-repair markers that announce the override. Second, the last number attached to a category is the operative one, so 正午 is replaced by 五時, not supplemented by it. The student's failure was attentional rather than linguistic: he stopped writing once each slot looked full, so the corrections had nowhere to land. Keep one line per category, write the correction beside the original instead of erasing, and keep listening to the final sentence, where conditions and corrections cluster.
2. The student's Wednesday class ends at 12:10. Does the correction change his plan?
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Decisively yes. The extension to 17:00 pushes the deadline past the end of his 12:10 class, so he can sign up in person afterwards; under the original noon deadline he would have had to sign before class or send someone else. Note the asymmetry: an extension changes his plan, and a shortening would too, but the direction of the change matters more than the exact figure. The room change to 209 is a separate risk, since room numbers transpose easily and the original 302 is still in his notes. The judgement being tested is whether a correction is treated as the new fact or merely as an extra fact sitting alongside the old one.
3. A question asks what students who already registered must do. What should the student listen for, and where is the distractor?
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Listen for conditions, not just times. The announcement said such students need not register again but must bring a transcript. The distractor is the reversal: an option claiming they must sign up again is defeated by 必要ありません, while an option claiming the transcript is optional is defeated by 〜なければなりません or 持ってきてください. Track polarity markers - 〜なくてもいい, 〜たほうがいい, 〜てください, 〜なければなりません - because they flip the meaning of an otherwise identical sentence. Record the speaker's role as well: office staff stating policy, not a friend giving advice, which is what makes the obligation answerable from the text alone.