Three Texts on a Notice Board and Ninety Minutes of Overlap
A student wants to volunteer and also compete in the speech contest. Three texts are on the board. Text A, a city flyer, recruits assistant staff for a Japanese class for foreign residents: every Saturday 10:00–12:00, 全8回, 先着15名, applications by April 10. Text B, a school notice, announces contest rehearsal from April 12, every Saturday 9:30–11:30, and states that attendance is required for anyone entering the contest. Text C, a message from a friend, says: 「4月12日からの土曜、10時から12時でボランティアやるけど、一緒にやらない？」 The student asks whether both commitments are possible and which text to trust.
1. State the conflict precisely and say what the texts do not tell us.
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The conflict is 10:00–11:30 on Saturdays: A runs 10:00–12:00, B runs 9:30–11:30 starting April 12. Ninety minutes overlap, so the two cannot both be done in full; a morning holds one, not both. What is missing matters as much as what is present. A gives no start date and no end date, only 全8回 and an April 10 application deadline. B specifies April 12 and 毎週土曜. C's 10時から12時 matches A exactly, so C is most likely a paraphrase of A rather than independent evidence, and a friend's message should not be used to fill a gap in an official notice. Naming these gaps is part of the answer, not a detour from it.
2. When A and C seem to agree but B imposes an obligation, how should the student rank the sources?
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Rank by genre and function, not by recency. B is a school notice addressed to students and creates an obligation; A is a public recruitment flyer whose fixed facts - time, quota, deadline - come from the organiser; C is chat, reliable for intent and enthusiasm, unreliable for dates and times. So the schedule is taken from A and B, and the meaning of required is taken from B. If A and B conflict, do not average them or split the difference: state the conflict and its practical consequence, namely that the rehearsal is compulsory and the volunteer coordinator should be asked whether a partial shift is possible. Recognising the conflict out loud scores better than silently choosing a side.
3. Which conclusions would be unsafe inferences from these three texts?
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Unsafe: that the volunteer program begins April 12 (only C hints at it), that it ends before the contest, that places remain under 先着15名, or that missing one rehearsal is permitted. Two traps recur. One is converting 先着順 into 'I can join whenever I like,' when it actually means places may already be gone and prompt application matters. The other is assuming 全8回 runs on eight consecutive Saturdays starting right after the deadline. A question phrased as 'what can be inferred' typically tests exactly this boundary: what two texts jointly state, versus what one text implies and the other never addresses.