Aomori Entrance English common mistakes
Aomori Entrance English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Reading the four answer choices before listening to the audio and then waiting to hear a matching word, so the choice that repeats a word from the dialogue is selected even when the meaning is reversed.
The audio plays once, so candidates grab the choices first as a safety net. Distractors are usually built by reusing vocabulary from the recording, and a single-pass listener has no time to check meaning against the option.
What to do instead
Before playback, read only the question stem and underline the information type needed (time, place, reason, number, speaker's feeling). During playback, mark the moment each distractor is contradicted. Choose the option whose meaning survives the whole exchange, not the one with the loudest keyword.
Writing the numeral heard in the audio directly as the answer when the task requires a calculation, such as a departure time plus travel minutes, or a price after a discount.
Numbers are the easiest thing to catch, so attention stops once a number is heard. The second half of the sentence, which contains the operation, arrives after the listener has already committed.
What to do instead
Treat number questions as two-stage: note every number and its label in a small table while listening, then compute after the audio ends. Practise with tasks where the correct answer never appears literally in the recording.
In short-passage reading, answering from general knowledge or personal opinion instead of locating the sentence that supports the choice.
Short passages feel easy, so candidates skim once and answer from impression. Options are written to sound reasonable, so plausibility replaces evidence.
What to do instead
For every answer, point to the line number that proves it. If no line can be cited, mark the item and return later. Train with a rule of one supporting sentence per question, written in the margin.
Confusing referents of pronouns and demonstratives (it, this, they, such) across sentences, so a question about what a word refers to is answered with the nearest noun rather than the correct antecedent.
Reference questions require tracking back past intervening nouns. Candidates match the closest noun grammatically, which is often a distractor.
What to do instead
Substitute the candidate noun into the sentence and reread it for sense; reject any substitution that changes the meaning. Practise on paragraphs with three or more possible nouns between the pronoun and its true antecedent.
In information-transfer tasks, copying a phrase from the passage into a table or chart without changing its form to fit the cell, so a verb is placed where a noun is required or a full clause is squeezed into a heading.
Candidates treat transfer as copying. They do not check the grammatical frame of the empty cell or the word limit stated in the instructions.
What to do instead
Before writing, identify the part of speech and the maximum word count the cell demands. Convert the source phrase accordingly (arrive → arrival, because of → due to). Check every completed row reads as a grammatical phrase on its own.
Choosing a grammar answer by how natural the sentence sounds in Japanese word order, producing errors with articles, prepositions, subject-verb agreement, and tense sequencing.
Japanese has no articles and marks case with particles, so the English signals that decide these items have no counterpart in the learner's first language and are not noticed.
What to do instead
Build a short personal checklist (article before singular countable noun, preposition collocation, agreement with the real subject, tense anchored to a time expression) and run it on every item. Keep an error log of the specific patterns missed, reviewed weekly.
In sentence-reordering items, arranging the fragments into a sentence that is grammatical but ignores the given anchor position or the punctuation, so the answer is marked wrong despite reading smoothly.
Candidates build the sentence from meaning alone and skip the constraint that one fragment is already fixed in place or that a comma marks a subordinate clause.
What to do instead
First place the fixed fragment and note what must precede and follow it grammatically. Build the sentence around that anchor, then verify the whole sequence against the punctuation and the anchor number before finalising.
In dialogue-completion items, selecting a response that is polite and topic-related but does not answer the function of the preceding line, such as replying to an invitation with an opinion instead of an acceptance or refusal.
Candidates match on topic words rather than on the speech act. Japanese politeness instincts also favour a vague reply, which the item does not accept.
What to do instead
Label the first speaker's line by function (invite, apologise, request, offer, ask for opinion) before reading the options. Eliminate any option that does not perform the required function, then check tense and pronoun consistency with the prompt.
In guided writing, answering the prompt in one long sentence or listing points without linking them, and omitting one of the required content points because the prompt was read only once.
Time pressure pushes candidates to start writing immediately. Japanese writing conventions also allow longer, loosely connected sentences that read as under-developed in English.
What to do instead
Spend the first two minutes numbering the required content points and drafting one sentence per point plus a linking word. Write a short plan, then compose. Finish with a check that every numbered point appears and that each sentence has one clear subject and verb.
In integrated tasks, summarising the source material sentence by sentence instead of combining it with the second source or the candidate's own stated position, so the response repeats input and earns no credit for synthesis.
Candidates treat the reading or listening as content to reproduce and lack a routine for comparing sources. They also run out of time on the summary and never reach the required comparison or opinion.
What to do instead
Use a two-column note sheet (Source A / Source B) with points of agreement and difference, then write one sentence per point of contrast plus a clearly signalled own view. Allocate time by task stage and leave the final minutes for the comparison, which carries the marks.