Reading Comprehension of English Expository and Argumentative Prose
Kyoto's reading section presents long expository or argumentative passages-often on language, science, or social change-and asks you to explain underlined spans in Japanese, identify paragraph function, and choose paraphrases. It rewards structural reading over vocabulary guessing.
Map the argument first
- Locate the author's claim; Kyoto passages often open with a received view that is later qualified.
- Mark contrast and concession: but, yet, admittedly, to be sure, that said. A concession is not the thesis.
- Label each paragraph's job: claim, evidence, counterexample, concession, restatement.
- Separate the author's voice from quoted scholars. Japanese answers must attribute correctly: 〜と述べている versus 筆者は〜と考えている.
Worked example
Sentence: "It is not that the model is false, but that its assumptions hold only in a narrow range." Reasoning: not that A, but that B does not assert A; it denies that A is the issue and puts B forward. The author accepts the model but limits its scope. Answer: 「モデルが誤りだというのではなく、その前提が成り立つのは狭い範囲に限られる、というのが筆者の主張である。」 Keep both halves; do not write only "the model is limited."
Traps
- Treating an illustrative example as the main claim.
- Missing negation scope, especially not ... because.
- Rendering a quoted scholar's view as the author's own.
- Writing fluent Japanese that drops the concession.
Exam habit
Underline the exact English span you are explaining and identify its grammatical subject before drafting the Japanese.