Listening: Reconstructing the Order of After-School Actions
At a Tokushima junior high school, the listening section plays this dialogue once, with no transcript:
Mika: Ken, are you coming to the Awa Odori practice after school today? Ken: I'd like to, but I have baseball practice until five. Then I have to go home and help my father. Mika: The practice starts at five thirty and ends at seven. You could come late. Ken: Really? Then I'll go home first, and after that I'll join you.
Question: What will Ken do first after school? Choices: 1. Go to Awa Odori practice. 2. Play baseball. 3. Go home. 4. Help his father.
A student named Yui chooses 4. She explains, 'He says he has to help his father, so that is the first thing.' Her teacher asks her to listen again and draw a timeline. The class has been practicing note-taking with arrows, but Yui wrote only isolated words: 'practice,' 'father,' 'five.'
1. Which choice is correct? Reconstruct the order of Ken's after-school actions and identify the words in the script that fix that order.
Read the worked answer
The correct choice is 2. Play baseball.
Order of actions:
- Baseball practice, which runs until five.
- Go home and help his father.
- Join Awa Odori practice late, between 5:30 and 7:00.
The order is fixed by 'until five' (baseball ends at five), 'Then' (the next action is going home), 'first' in 'I'll go home first,' and 'after that' (after going home, he joins the practice). Yui's error is that she treated the most recent action mentioned as the first action. Listening questions often test sequence, not just whether you heard a word.
2. Why is choice 1 a strong distractor, and which phrase shows that Ken has not agreed to go to practice immediately?
Read the worked answer
Choice 1 is tempting because Mika directly invites Ken to Awa Odori practice, and Ken answers with 'I'd like to,' which sounds like agreement. But the phrase 'I'd like to, but...' signals a condition or obstacle. Ken follows it with baseball practice and a family duty, so his agreement is postponed. He only accepts Mika's suggestion to 'come late' after she gives the new time. A listener who stops after 'I'd like to' will choose 1; a listener who tracks the contrast after 'but' will not.
3. Describe a note-taking method Yui could use during the pause, and explain why it would prevent this specific error.
Read the worked answer
Yui should draw a vertical timeline with times on the left and arrows for sequence:
- 3:30?–5:00 → baseball
- 5:00 → home / help father
- 5:30–7:00 → Awa Odori (late)
She should write time expressions exactly as heard ('until five,' 'then,' 'first,' 'after that') and connect them with arrows rather than listing nouns. This prevents the error because her mistake came from word order in the text, not from missing vocabulary. A timeline forces her to ask, 'Which action comes first in time?' instead of 'Which action did I hear last?'