Reading: Structure, Reference, and Inference
What this section tests
Reading passages in this course range from notices, emails, and menus to short essays and opinion pieces. You must identify main idea, writer's purpose, supporting detail, and tone. Three skills carry most marks: finding the topic sentence (often first or last in a paragraph), tracking referents of これ・それ・あれ・この・その, and separating fact from opinion (〜と思う, 〜のではないか, 〜べきだ signal opinion).
Text types and their conventions
Notices use short imperative forms and dates; emails open with a set greeting and close with a request; essays move from a claim to an example to a restatement. Recognising the format tells you where the answer usually hides.
Traps to expect
- Referent confusion. 「田中さんは山田さんに本を貸しました。それはとても高かったです。」 The referent of それ is the book, not the person.
- Negation stacking. 「行かないわけではない」 means the person does go. Double negatives appear often.
- Contrast markers. しかし, ところが, ただし reverse or limit the previous sentence; answers often sit immediately after them.
- Plausible but unsupported choices. An option may be true in real life but absent from the passage. Always locate the line.
Rule of thumb
For each question, find the exact sentence that proves your answer and mark it. If you cannot point to a line, the choice is probably a distractor. Read the question first, then scan for keywords.
Worked example
Passage: 「この店は安い。しかし、味はあまりよくない。」 Question: 店について正しいものは? An option saying 「安くておいしい」 fails because しかし marks a limitation: cheap, but not tasty.