聞き取りメモの訂正：英語デーの校内放送
Ken is a second-year student at a junior high school in Kitakyushu. On Monday morning his school played a five-minute announcement in English, once only, at natural speed. The speaker said: "English Day is on Friday, November 14 - sorry, I mean Friday, November 21. The gym is being painted, so we will meet in Room 203, not the gym. Bring a notebook and a pencil. You do not need a dictionary. The sign-up sheet is on the door of the teachers' room, and the deadline is Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., not Thursday. The time on your printed handout is wrong: the event runs from 3:50 to 4:40." Ken's notes read: "Nov 14 / gym / dictionary / Thursday 4:30 / 3:50–5:40." He also has a dental appointment at 5:30 p.m. in Kokura, about twenty minutes from school by bus, and a basketball game on November 14.
1. List every note of Ken's that is wrong and give the corrected version. For each correction, explain the listening signal that should have told him the first version was not final.
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Corrected list: Nov 21 / Room 203 / no dictionary / Wednesday 4:30 / 3:50–4:40.
Reasoning, note by note:
- Date: the speaker repairs herself - "sorry, I mean Friday, November 21." In English the later version wins; the first date is a slip, not an option. Ken even wrote the correction somewhere and then crossed it out, which is copying his own earlier guess rather than following the audio.
- Place: "Room 203, not the gym." A negative after a place name cancels the place just heard, so the note must be replaced, not merged.
- Dictionary: "You do not need a dictionary." Ken recorded the noun and dropped the negation. The safe note is "dictionary: NO", because a bare noun looks like a positive instruction.
- Deadline: the day is corrected (Thursday → Wednesday); the time stays.
- End time: 4:40 was misheard as 5:40 (see the next task).
The printed handout is explicitly described as wrong on the time, so in a conflict between paper and speech, the speech wins here.
2. Ken heard "3:50 to 4:40" but wrote 5:40. Give the two most likely causes and state two concrete changes to his note-taking.
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Likely causes:
- Sound confusion: 4:40 ends in "-ty" and 5:40 begins with a similar vowel; number pairs like 4/5 and 14/40 are the standard trap in this kind of question.
- Carrying a stale digit: he was probably still writing "Thursday 4:30" when the next two numbers arrived, so a digit from the previous item leaked into the new one. Holding numbers while writing a full word is what causes this.
Changes:
- Write digits, never words ("4:40", not "four forty"), because digits take a fraction of the time.
- Predict before listening: read the question first and decide what kind of answer is coming (a date, a room, a time). A listener who expects a year will not mistake 4:40 for 5:40.
- Treat markers such as "sorry", "I mean", "not", and "instead" as flags: they almost always introduce the answer, so they deserve full attention rather than relief that the sentence is nearly over.
3. Can Ken attend English Day and keep his dental appointment? Show the arithmetic, and say what a student who kept the first date would wrongly conclude.
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Yes. 4:40 finish + 20 minutes by bus = 5:00 arrival in Kokura, leaving 30 minutes before the 5:30 appointment. That is enough, but only if he leaves at 4:40 sharp, so he should not volunteer to help clean up afterwards.
Date check, which is the real judgement:
- The dental appointment is on November 21, the corrected date of English Day - so the appointment is the same day as the event, not a conflict with the basketball game.
- The basketball game is on November 14, the date the speaker first said by mistake.
So the correction removes a conflict instead of creating one: he can play on the 14th and still attend on the 21st. A student who kept "Nov 14" would conclude he must give up basketball, or would turn up to school on a day when the gym is being painted.