Listening Comprehension: Business Conversations and Announcements
What this section tests
Listening items present short business exchanges and public announcements spoken once at natural speed. You must extract the practical outcome: what the speaker wants done, when, by whom, and under what condition. Three knowledge blocks carry most of the marks.
Honorific direction. Track who is the actor. いらっしゃる, おっしゃる, and ご覧になる elevate the other party; 伺う, 申し上げる, and 拝見する lower the speaker's own side. A question may ask what a junior employee should say to a client - the answer must lower the junior and elevate the client, never the reverse.
Request and refusal patterns. Indirect forms dominate: ～ていただけますか, ～をお願いできますか, 差し支えなければ. Refusals rarely use いいえ; listen for ちょっと難しいですね, 検討させていただきます, or あいにく. The tested skill is deciding whether a request was accepted, postponed, or declined.
Numbers and self-repair. Prices, times, and quantities are often corrected mid-sentence: 「三時、いや、三時半です」. The last stated value wins. Watch for までに (deadline) versus まで (endpoint), and for unit shifts such as 千円 and 万円.
Traps
- Hearing the first number or name and ignoring the correction that follows.
- Mixing up who received the action in a passive or benefactive sentence.
- Treating a polite deferral as agreement.
- Confusing similar-sounding quantities (十五分/五十分, 四時/七時).
Rule of thumb
Before choosing, answer three questions silently: who acts, what exactly changes, and what is the final stated figure or time. If two options sound plausible, the one that requires the corrected number or the indirect refusal is usually right.
Worked example. A manager says: 「資料は明日の二時までに、いや、正午までに送ってください。」 The correct answer is noon tomorrow, not two o'clock, because までに marks the deadline and the speaker revised the figure.