HSC Japanese Continuers (NSW) common mistakes
HSC Japanese Continuers (NSW) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the listening section, candidates write down isolated words they catch (for example a number or a place name) but never reconstruct the speaker's overall purpose or attitude, so answers to 'why did she say this?' questions are guesses.
Under exam pressure and a single hearing, attention narrows to lexical decoding; candidates have not practised holding a message in working memory long enough to infer intent, and they confuse 'I heard the word' with 'I understood the point'.
What to do instead
Practise a two-pass routine in every practice task: on the first listen note only the situation, speakers' relationship and purpose in a few Japanese keywords; on the second listen fill in details and the speaker's stance. After each item, restate the gist in one Japanese sentence before checking the transcript.
Candidates treat keigo and register as decoration, replying to a teacher or workplace senior in plain form or with casual contractions, and mixing humble and respectful forms within one sentence.
Textbook dialogues present polite forms as a block to memorise, so learners do not map each form to a specific relationship or situation; they also overgeneralise sonkeigo to their own actions.
What to do instead
Build a three-column table (own action / other's action / neutral) for the ten most frequent verbs and drill converting one message into three registers. Before writing, decide who is speaking to whom and mark every verb for direction of respect.
In reading tasks, candidates translate every sentence line by line and run out of time, or answer from a single matching keyword without reading the sentence that qualifies it (for example missing a following 'but' or 'only if').
Schools reward full translation, so candidates believe comprehension means rendering everything; keyword matching feels efficient and is reinforced by simple practice questions that do not contain distractors.
What to do instead
Train skimming for structure first: identify the topic sentence, the conclusion and any contrast markers (が、しかし、ただし、場合) before looking at questions. Then locate the exact sentence supporting each option and underline the qualifier that eliminates the wrong choices.
Candidates answer opinion or evaluation questions with description only, listing facts about the topic instead of stating and justifying a position, so responses to 'what do you think' prompts read as an information report.
Topic vocabulary is easier to rehearse than argument structure, and candidates have rarely been taught an explicit paragraph shape for Japanese opinion writing, so they default to accumulating content.
What to do instead
Use a fixed scaffold: state the position in one sentence, give two reasons each with a concrete example or personal experience, acknowledge one counterpoint, then restate the position. Practise the same scaffold on five different prompts until it becomes automatic.
Candidates write long English-influenced sentences that lose their subject and topic particle, producing Japanese where it is unclear who did what, or where は and が are chosen by habit rather than function.
English requires an explicit subject and Japanese does not, so learners either omit needed clarification or insert は everywhere; particle choice is taught as vocabulary rather than as information structure.
What to do instead
After drafting, reread each sentence asking 'who is doing this, and is it new or known information?' Mark new information with が and established topics with は. Break any sentence over about forty characters into two, and check that each clause has a clear actor.
In the changing nature of work domain, candidates recycle generic statements about long working hours or 'black companies' without engaging with the specific stimulus, such as a text about telework, automation or foreign workers, so answers do not address the question asked.
Candidates memorise a small set of topical phrases and try to fit them to any prompt; they lack the vocabulary to describe trends, causes and effects precisely.
What to do instead
For each work-related subtopic, learn a short set of functional expressions (増加する、背景にある、一方で、課題となっている) and practise applying them to unseen short texts. Always quote or paraphrase one specific detail from the stimulus before adding your own view.
When discussing the individual as a member of society, candidates describe Japanese social norms as uniform stereotypes ('Japanese people always...') and do not distinguish between generations, regions or the perspective of the individual versus the group.
Simplified cultural summaries in study materials encourage overgeneralisation, and candidates lack comparative language to express variation and degree.
What to do instead
Practise hedging and comparison language (～傾向がある、～とは限らない、若者と高齢者の間で、都市部では). For every claim, add a qualifier about who or where, and include one example of change over time or of an exception.
Candidates answer extended-response questions in Japanese by lifting whole phrases from the reading passage, which the marking criteria penalise, or by writing memorised paragraphs that only loosely connect to the question.
Reusing source language feels safe and saves planning time under exam conditions; candidates have not practised paraphrasing or planning under a time limit.
What to do instead
Practise a paraphrase drill: read a sentence, cover it, and rewrite the idea using different vocabulary and structure. In the exam, spend two minutes writing a three-point plan in note form before composing, and check that no more than a short quoted phrase appears verbatim.
Candidates misread hiragana, katakana or kanji in the prompt itself, or confuse similarly shaped kana and kanji compounds, producing answers that are plausible but off-topic.
Script recognition is often practised in isolation from meaning, and speed pressure causes guessing from the first recognisable character rather than reading the whole word.
What to do instead
Do daily timed script recognition with meaning attached: read short authentic notices and menus aloud, then summarise. Keep a personal list of confusable pairs and compounds you have actually misread, and review it weekly with meaning, not just shape.
Candidates manage time poorly, spending too long on early multiple-choice or short-answer items and leaving insufficient time for the writing task, which is then short, unplanned and unproofread.
Candidates have not rehearsed under full exam timing, and perfectionism on early items feels productive because feedback there is immediate.
What to do instead
Do at least three full timed rehearsals with a written allocation for each section, and enforce a hard stop per section. Reserve the final minutes for a proofreading checklist covering particles, tense, register and kana accuracy, and practise writing to length within the target time.