Dialogue and Situational Reading (対話文・場面読解)
The dialogue section gives you a conversation, often set in a shop, restaurant, station, school or on the phone, with numbered blanks. You choose the utterance that fits each blank. It tests functional language (requesting, offering, refusing, apologising, inviting) and your sense of register: whether the speakers are friends or a customer and a clerk. Grammar alone will not decide the answer; the flow of the exchange will.
What is tested
- Speech acts: 依頼, 許可, 申し出, 誘い, 断り, 謝罪, 道案内.
- Polite versus casual forms: Would you like~? versus Want to~?
- Cohesion: the blank must answer the line before it and set up the line after it.
- Implied meaning: a refusal is often softened with I'd love to, but…
Method
- Read the line after the blank first. A reply such as Certainly or Sure tells you the missing line was a request or an offer.
- Name the speech act: is the speaker asking, offering, accepting or refusing?
- Match pronouns and tense: a reply with I'd love to needs an invitation before it.
- Watch for but, actually and I'm afraid, which signal a refusal.
- Check politeness: a clerk does not say Gimme; a friend rarely says Would you care to.
Worked example
Waiter: Are you ready to order? Customer: ______ Waiter: Certainly. Would you like anything to drink? Options: (a) I'd like the pasta, please. (b) Yes, I am ready to cook. (c) No, I don't like pasta. (d) It's on the table. Reasoning: Certainly accepts an order, and the next line offers a drink, so the blank must be an order. (b) misreads ready; (c) refuses without reason and breaks the flow; (d) is unrelated. Answer: (a).
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing a grammatically correct but pragmatically wrong reply, such as Yes, I am to Would you like~?
- Ignoring register between a customer and a clerk.
- Missing a softened refusal and treating it as agreement.
- Answering from the blank alone without reading the following line.