The Announcement That Corrects the Handout
You are a first-year student at a high school in Akita City and a member of the English Club. On Friday the adviser plays a 90-second recorded announcement about the club trip to the Oga Aquarium, and you take notes.
The recording says: 'Bus A leaves the north gate at 7:40. Bus B, which used to leave at 7:55, now leaves at 8:05 because of roadworks on Route 7 - the 7:55 printed on your handout is no longer correct. Students on the yellow list take Bus A; everyone else takes Bus B. If you miss Bus B, the 8:20 city bus stops at the same gate, but the ride takes 25 minutes longer than Bus B's 45-minute run, and the nearest stop is a 15-minute walk from the aquarium. Bring a packed lunch: the aquarium restaurant is closed on Mondays, and our visit is on a Monday. We leave the aquarium at 3:30 and expect to be back at school at 4:15, not 4:50 as the handout says. Students who want the student price must show their school ID.'
The handout from last week says: Bus B 7:55; lunch at the aquarium restaurant; return 4:50.
1. Your friend Yuki, whose name is on the yellow list, says: 'Great - we can both take the 8:05 bus.' Identify her two errors and state exactly when and from where her bus leaves.
Read the worked answer
Error 1 - wrong bus. The recording links the list to the bus directly: 'Students on the yellow list take Bus A; everyone else takes Bus B.' Yuki is on the yellow list, so she is on Bus A, which leaves the north gate at 7:40.
Error 2 - she assumes a shared fact. Nothing in the announcement says which list you are on. 'We can both' is an inference, not information. The correct statement is conditional: if you are on the yellow list you join Yuki at 7:40; if you are not, you take Bus B at 8:05. Both buses use the north gate, so the gate is the one detail she gets right.
Why the handout is a trap, not a source. 7:55 is the old Bus B departure, replaced because of roadworks. It is not Bus A's time and it is no longer Bus B's time either. The exam is testing whether you overwrite printed information with the newer spoken correction instead of averaging the two.
2. You reach the north gate at 8:10 and Bus B has already gone. Using only the numbers in the announcement, work out the earliest time you could reach the aquarium, and judge whether the city bus is a safe plan.
Read the worked answer
Arithmetic, step by step. City bus departs 8:20. Bus B's run is 45 minutes, and the city bus takes 25 minutes longer: 45 + 25 = 70 minutes, so you reach the stop at 9:30. The stop is a 15-minute walk from the aquarium: 9:30 + 15 = about 9:45.
Comparison. Bus B leaves 8:05 and arrives at 8:50, so the city bus puts you roughly 55 minutes behind the group and leaves you at a stop, not at the entrance.
Judgement - is it safe? Only as a fallback. The announcement gives no promise that the city bus runs on time, the walk is unaccompanied, and you would arrive after the group has entered and possibly after the opening talk. A plan built on a stated departure time has to be checked against every other stated condition - duration, extra walking, and the fact that the bus 'does not go to the aquarium'. Choosing the 8:20 because it is the only remaining number is the mistake the item is designed to catch.
3. The handout and the recording disagree in three places. Which disagreement would cause the most serious problem, and why?
Read the worked answer
The three disagreements: bus time (7:55 vs 8:05), lunch (restaurant vs packed lunch), return time (4:50 vs 4:15).
Most serious: the bus time. It is the only one that is both irreversible and unannounced in the moment. A wrong return time means waiting at school, and a wrong lunch plan can be fixed at a convenience store the night before. But a student who trusts 7:55 on the day arrives after Bus B has gone, and the only recovery route adds about 55 minutes and a walk.
Ranking logic worth writing down: judge by (a) whether the error can still be repaired after you notice it, and (b) how much of the day it destroys. The lunch error costs money and choice; the bus error costs the arrival time and the group's programme.
A second defensible answer: lunch, because the restaurant being closed on a Monday means there is no food on site at all, and the announcement gives the reason ('closed on Mondays') rather than just a rule. If you argue this, say explicitly that you are ranking by severity of consequence rather than by difficulty of repair.