Osaka Public High School Entrance Examination - English common mistakes
Osaka Public High School Entrance Examination - English · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
During the listening section, students read the printed answer choices while the audio is still playing, then answer from the words they saw rather than from what was said.
Osaka public high school listening passages are read at natural speed, often once, and the choices deliberately repeat vocabulary from the audio so that a superficial match looks correct. Candidates who read ahead get a plausible but wrong answer because the question turns on a contrast or a number that comes later in the passage.
What to do instead
Train a two-pass habit: on the first hearing, keep eyes off the choices and note only who, what, when, and any number; on the second hearing, check the choices against those notes. Practise with single-play audio at natural speed and force yourself to write keywords in the margin before looking at the options.
Students write the answer to a listening question using a number or time they hear early in the passage, ignoring the correction that follows.
Japanese school listening tasks frequently include a self-correction pattern (a speaker says one time or price, then changes it). Because the first number is heard clearly, it feels like the answer, and candidates stop listening for the revision.
What to do instead
Learn to listen for correction markers (actually, sorry, I mean, let's make it, on second thought) and treat any number heard before them as provisional. Do dictation drills where you write down every number you hear in order, then circle the last one that is confirmed by the speaker.
On longer reading passages, students answer each question by matching a word in the question to the same word in the text, without reading the surrounding sentence.
The exam's reading questions often test inference and paraphrase; the option that copies the passage's wording is usually the distractor, while the correct option restates the idea in different words. Word-matching is faster and feels safe under time pressure, so candidates default to it.
What to do instead
Before choosing, underline the exact sentence that supports your answer and ask whether the option says the same thing in different words or merely repeats a word. Practise by covering the options, writing your own one-line answer, then picking the option closest to what you wrote.
Students treat every blank in a cloze or fill-in passage as an independent grammar question and choose the option that sounds natural in isolation.
Grammar-and-vocabulary-in-context items depend on the surrounding sentence: tense choice, pronoun reference, and connective choice are decided by earlier clauses. Choosing by local sound leads to errors such as a present-tense verb in a past-tense narrative or the wrong conjunction for a contrast.
What to do instead
Read the whole sentence, and where needed the previous sentence, before looking at the options. Identify the time frame and the logical relation (reason, contrast, addition) first, then eliminate options that contradict them. Do timed cloze sets and mark the cue word that decided each answer.
Students memorise single Japanese translations for English words and pick the option with the closest Japanese meaning, so they confuse words like lend/borrow, bring/take, or hear/listen to.
Vocabulary items in context test collocation and direction of action, not dictionary equivalence. Because many Japanese learners store one translation per word, pairs that share a Japanese gloss look interchangeable, and the sentence's grammar (who receives what) is ignored.
What to do instead
Study vocabulary in pairs and groups with example sentences rather than single translations, focusing on verbs of giving and receiving and on prepositions that fix meaning. Keep a personal error list of confusable pairs and write one original sentence for each after every practice test.
In sentence-reordering items, students arrange the words into a sentence that is grammatical but does not fit the blank's position in the surrounding dialogue or paragraph.
These items usually sit inside a short exchange, so the reordered sentence must also match what the previous speaker said and what the next line responds to. Candidates focus only on internal grammar and ignore the discourse cue.
What to do instead
Read the lines before and after the blank first and predict what the sentence must mean, then order the words to express that meaning. After building the sentence, reread the whole exchange aloud to check that it flows. Practise by writing the predicted meaning in Japanese before touching the word cards.
Students place the words in a reordering task using Japanese word order, putting the verb at the end of the English clause.
Japanese is verb-final and English is verb-medial, so under time pressure learners fall back on first-language order, producing structures like 'I to the store went' or misplacing adverbs such as always and never relative to the verb.
What to do instead
Drill the core English patterns until they are automatic: subject-verb-object, adverb before the main verb but after be, question-word plus auxiliary plus subject plus verb. Use a physical routine: place subject and verb first, then attach the remaining chunks, and check the verb position before finalising.
On short-answer questions, students copy a full sentence from the passage as the answer, or answer in a fragment that omits the subject or verb.
The instruction may limit the answer to a few words or require a complete sentence, and candidates do not check the condition. Copying feels safe but often includes irrelevant material, while fragments fail the grammar requirement even when the content is right.
What to do instead
Read the condition line (word limit, 'in English', 'complete sentence') before writing, and answer the question directly with the minimum words needed. Practise by rewriting passage sentences into short answers of the required length and checking subject-verb presence every time.
When writing a summary or a short opinion paragraph, students translate a prepared Japanese sentence into English word by word, producing sentences with missing subjects or articles.
Exam writing is timed and candidates rely on memorised Japanese-to-English conversion rather than on structures they can control. The result reads as translation and loses points on accuracy even when the idea is good.
What to do instead
Build a small set of reliable sentence patterns (I think that..., because..., for example...) and reuse them. Write the idea in simple Japanese first, then express it using only patterns you have already used correctly in practice, and leave two minutes to check subjects, articles, and verb endings.
During the interview or oral component, students answer with a single word or a memorised speech, and do not ask for clarification when they miss the question.
Candidates fear making errors, so they give minimal answers or recite a prepared self-introduction regardless of the question. Examiners assess interaction and content, so a memorised monologue or a one-word reply scores poorly, and silence after a missed question is worse than asking for repetition.
What to do instead
Prepare short, flexible answer frames (two sentences: a direct answer plus one reason or detail) for predictable topics such as school, club activities, and future plans, and practise them with a partner asking unpredictable questions. Learn and rehearse clarification phrases such as 'Could you say that again, please?' and 'Do you mean ...?' so you can use them without panic.