Reading and responding to extended written and visual Japanese texts
Reading and responding to extended written and visual Japanese texts
This domain assesses extended written and visual Japanese: articles, blogs, emails, notices, essays, manga-style panels, advertisements and graphs. You must show gist, locate details, infer purpose and stance, and combine verbal and visual information. Level 3 texts often state a claim indirectly, so reading for structure matters as much as vocabulary.
Core rules and concepts
- Skim the architecture before close reading: title, headings, lead sentence, captions, source, layout and any chart axes or units. Visual elements can carry the main claim.
- Build meaning from kanji compounds and okurigana; if one kanji is unknown, use radicals, the sentence frame and known vocabulary.
- Resolve reference words: これ, それ, あれ, この, その, こうした, 前者, 後者. Always ask what the writer points to.
- Use connectives: 一方で, しかし, そのため, つまり, たとえば, ただし. They mark contrast, cause, restatement, example and exception.
- Separate fact from opinion: ～そうだ, ～らしい, ～かもしれない, ～べきだ, ～と考えられている.
Worked example
Text: 「コンビニの袋は有料になった。しかし、客の七割はまだ袋をもらっている。理由は『ゴミ袋に使えるから』だという。店は、袋を減らすより、再利用をすすめるべきかもしれない。」 Question: What does the writer suggest? Reasoning: しかし contrasts the policy with behaviour; 七割 is data; ～だという reports customers' reason, not the writer's; ～べきかもしれない is a tentative recommendation. Answer: Promote reuse rather than merely reducing bags. 'Most customers refuse bags' is wrong.
Traps that cost marks
- Selecting a true statement that is not the writer's main point.
- Misreading double negatives such as ～ないわけではない.
- Ignoring graph units, dates or captions that qualify the text.
- Treating a quoted opinion as the author's own view.