Nara Public High School Entrance Examination - English common mistakes
Nara Public High School Entrance Examination - English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
While the listening passage plays, the candidate tries to write a full Japanese translation of each sentence and misses the next two items entirely.
School English classes train translation-first habits, and candidates fear they will forget the meaning if they do not write it down; writing speed cannot keep pace with natural speech.
What to do instead
Practise note-taking in symbols and abbreviations only (arrows, numbers, initials), and answer the question printed in the booklet while listening rather than after. Do one dictation-free pass per audio and check answers only on the second reading, which mirrors the exam's typical two-play format.
The candidate hears a familiar word such as 'library' or 'Thursday' in the audio and immediately marks the option containing that word, without checking whether the speaker accepted or rejected that plan.
Distractor options are deliberately built from words that appear in the recording; sound-matching feels like comprehension and gives false confidence.
What to do instead
Before listening, underline the question word (who, when, where, how much) and the verb. After listening, re-read the chosen option and ask 'did the speaker actually say yes to this?' Train with recordings that contain one rejected suggestion and one accepted one.
On short passages, the candidate reads the passage first, then the question, then hunts through the text again, spending several minutes per item.
Candidates treat the passage as the main task, but the questions define what information matters; without a target, every sentence feels equally important.
What to do instead
Read the question stem first and mark the keyword, then scan the passage for that keyword and read only the sentence before and after it. Time yourself at roughly one minute per short item and stop when the keyword sentence is found.
The candidate answers a 'what does the writer think' item with a true statement from the passage that is not the writer's opinion, or with their own opinion about the topic.
Fact and opinion are not distinguished in many junior-high reading lessons, and personal reaction feels like a safe answer.
What to do instead
Circle opinion markers (I think, should, better, important, seems) and cross out plain facts. Before choosing, say aloud which sentence in the passage supports the option; if you cannot point to it, eliminate the option.
On graph and chart items, the candidate reads the numbers but ignores the axis labels, units, or the year the question asks about, and picks a value from the wrong row or column.
The English surrounding the chart is skimmed under time pressure, and percent, people, and times per week look interchangeable at a glance.
What to do instead
Before reading any number, label the axes in Japanese in the margin and circle the unit and the year in the question. Then trace the correct row with a finger to the correct column and write the value next to the question before looking at the options.
The candidate chooses a verb form by how it sounds, producing errors such as 'He go to school' or 'I have went there' in fill-in and rewrite items.
Spoken input is limited and the third-person -s and irregular past forms are rarely pronounced distinctly, so the ear gives no reliable signal.
What to do instead
Keep a personal error list of only the forms you actually get wrong, and drill them in full sentences with a time marker (every day / yesterday / next week) so the tense is forced by context. Rewrite each corrected sentence by hand once.
In situational English items, the candidate replies to the literal words of the prompt while ignoring the setting, so a polite offer is answered with 'Yes, I like it' instead of accepting or declining the offer.
Function (inviting, apologising, asking permission, offering) is not taught as a separate skill, and the candidate reads only the content words.
What to do instead
Classify each prompt by function before choosing: is the speaker asking a favour, offering, or complaining? Match the function to a fixed reply pattern (Sure. / I'm sorry, but ... / Yes, please.) and reject options that answer a different function.
The composition is written as a direct Japanese-to-English translation, producing sentences that are grammatically English-shaped but wrong in word order or article use, and the candidate runs out of lines before giving a reason.
Candidates compose in Japanese first and translate word by word, and they do not plan the paragraph structure that the marking scheme rewards.
What to do instead
Spend two minutes on a three-line plan: opinion, reason, example. Write only sentences you can control, using 'because' and 'for example' as fixed connectors, and keep one idea per sentence. Check subject-verb agreement and plural -s on the final read-through.
The candidate pronounces 'read' in 'I read a book yesterday' like the present tense, or stresses 'reCORD' when the noun 'REcord' is required.
English spelling does not mark these differences, and Japanese loanwords fix a single stress pattern that may not match the English word.
What to do instead
Learn the small closed sets explicitly: read/read, live/live, use/use, and noun-verb stress pairs such as REcord/reCORD, PREsent/preSENT. Say each pair aloud in a minimal sentence and mark the stressed syllable with a dot above the vowel.
In integrated tasks the candidate writes the summary or opinion using only the reading, ignoring the data or the listening passage that the task requires, so the response is accurate but incomplete.
Candidates treat each section as a separate subject and do not notice the instruction to use information from more than one source.
What to do instead
Underline the instruction verb and the required sources before starting ('using the chart and the passage, write ...'). Then make a two-column note of one fact from each source and build the answer so that both appear, with an explicit link such as 'The chart shows ..., and the passage explains why'.