Nara Public High School Entrance Examination - Japanese (Kokugo) common mistakes
Nara Public High School Entrance Examination - Japanese (Kokugo) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the expository passage, answering by matching a keyword from the question to the same word in the text and copying that sentence, without checking what the surrounding paragraph is actually claiming.
Expository passages in this exam deliberately reuse key terms (e.g. 「文化」「伝統」「個性」) in several paragraphs with different shades of meaning, so surface keyword matching feels productive and saves time under pressure.
What to do instead
Before writing an answer, locate the paragraph that defines or concludes the term, then trace how the writer's claim about it changes from paragraph to paragraph. Write a one-line summary of each paragraph in the margin as you read; answer only from the paragraph whose role matches the question (definition, example, counterargument, conclusion).
Treating the final paragraph of an expository text as automatically the main idea and quoting it wholesale as the answer to a 「筆者の考え」 question.
School instruction often says conclusions sit at the end, so candidates stop reading analytically once they reach the last paragraph, missing that the final paragraph may be a qualification, an example, or a call to the reader rather than the central claim.
What to do instead
Identify the 中心文 (topic sentence) of each section and check which claim the examples and counterexamples are actually supporting. Test a candidate main idea by asking whether every other paragraph can be read as support for it; if one paragraph contradicts it, the main idea is wrong.
In the literary passage, describing a character's feelings with a single adjective taken from the text (「悲しい」「うれしい」) and stopping there, without explaining what in the scene produced that feeling or how it changed.
Emotional vocabulary appears literally in literary texts, so it looks like the answer is already written. Candidates also fear over-interpreting and retreat to the safest literal word.
What to do instead
For each feeling question, answer in the form 'because X happened, the character felt Y, which shows in action Z'. Anchor every claim in a specific 情景描写 or 行動 (a gesture, a silence, a change in gaze) and quote or paraphrase that detail in your answer.
Reading dialogue in a literary text as reliable information about other characters, and ignoring the narrator's descriptive passages between lines of dialogue.
Dialogue is visually salient and easy to follow, while narration carries the interpretive weight; candidates skim narration to get back to the conversation.
What to do instead
Mark narration and dialogue differently on the page. Treat dialogue as evidence of what a speaker believes or wants, not as fact, and use the narrator's descriptions of setting, weather, and objects as the frame that tells you how to read the dialogue.
Translating classical Japanese into modern Japanese word by word and then answering from the modern paraphrase, without identifying the historical kana usage or the auxiliary that carries the meaning.
Candidates recognize a few familiar-looking words and assume the sentence means what the modern cognate means, skipping the 歴史的仮名遣い reading and the grammatical ending that determines tense, negation, or conjecture.
What to do instead
Read aloud with historical kana converted (ゐ→い, は→わ, けふ→きょう) before interpreting. Then isolate the auxiliary (けり, なり, べし, む, ず, る/らる) and state its function explicitly; the question almost always turns on that ending rather than on the content words.
In kanbun, reading the 返り点 in the wrong order or skipping the 置き字, producing a Japanese reading that is grammatically impossible but superficially plausible.
Return marks require spatial reordering that does not match left-to-right reading habits, and under time pressure candidates apply them partially, especially with 一・二点 combined with 上・下点 or with レ点 on adjacent characters.
What to do instead
Practise the fixed order rules until automatic: レ点 first, then 一二点, then 上下点, and never place a 置き字 (而, 於, 于, 乎) in the Japanese reading. Write the 訓読 order as numbers above each character before translating, and check the result reads as a grammatical Japanese sentence.
Writing a kanji that is homophonous with the intended one but wrong in meaning (e.g. 関心/感心, 対象/対照, 進行/信仰) in the writing section.
Candidates retrieve the sound first and accept the first character combination that matches the reading, without checking the meaning of the compound or the 送り仮名.
What to do instead
For each 同音異義語 pair, memorise a short distinguishing phrase and the meaning of each kanji's radical or core sense. In the exam, after writing a compound, re-read the whole sentence and confirm the meaning fits; check 送り仮名 separately, since 行う/行なう-type errors are also marked.
Answering grammar questions by ear, choosing the form that 'sounds natural', without naming the grammatical category being tested (活用形, 助詞の種類, 文の成分).
Everyday spoken Japanese tolerates forms that are wrong in written standard Japanese, and candidates have rarely been asked to label the category explicitly, so intuition substitutes for analysis.
What to do instead
Before choosing, identify what the question is testing: for 助詞, classify as 格助詞・接続助詞・副助詞・終助詞; for 活用, state the 活用形 (未然・連用・終止・連体・仮定・命令). Eliminate options by category rule rather than by feel, and review the classical 活用 table since it is tested in the 古文 section too.
In the composition task, writing a general opinion on the topic with no reference to the material or data given in the prompt, and exceeding or falling short of the specified length.
Under time pressure candidates default to a memorised essay template, and they count characters only vaguely, so the required 字数条件 is violated even when the content is decent.
What to do instead
Before writing, extract two or three concrete points from the prompt material and build the essay around them: state your position, support it with one point from the material and one from experience, then conclude. Allocate the last three minutes to counting lines and adjusting to the specified length; a composition outside the length condition loses marks regardless of quality.
Writing the 記述 answer as a fragment (a noun phrase or a single clause) that omits the subject or the reason, when the question asks 「どういうことか」 or 「なぜか」.
Candidates copy the key phrase from the text and assume the marker will infer the rest, and they run out of space because they did not plan the sentence before writing.
What to do instead
Match the answer form to the question word: 「どういうことか」 needs a complete sentence ending in 〜ということ; 「なぜか」 needs an explicit 〜から/〜ため clause with the cause named. Draft the answer in the margin with subject and predicate marked, count the characters against the limit, then copy it cleanly.