NZ Scholarship Japanese common mistakes
NZ Scholarship Japanese · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating the passage word by word into English before answering, so that inference and tone questions are answered from the translation rather than the Japanese text.
Candidates trained on translation-heavy school tasks default to decoding every word; Scholarship reading items test understanding of the Japanese text's structure, stance, and implication, and a translated paraphrase loses register, honorifics, and connective logic.
What to do instead
Practise reading authentic passages (essays, newspaper columns, short fiction) and answering in Japanese first: summarise each paragraph in one Japanese sentence, identify the writer's claim and the connective that signals contrast or concession (しかし, とはいえ, 一方で), then answer. Only look up unknown words after forming a reading.
Ignoring keigo and register shifts, treating a humble or honorific verb as a neutral synonym and missing who is doing what to whom.
Candidates learn keigo as a vocabulary list (いらっしゃる = 行く/来る/いる) rather than as a system marking social relations; in longer texts the direction of an action (who receives the favour) is carried by てさしあげる/ていただく/てくださる and by humble forms like 伺う, 拝見する.
What to do instead
Build a three-column table (plain / respectful / humble) for high-frequency verbs and drill sentence-level parsing: for each keigo verb, mark subject and beneficiary. Read business letters and announcement texts and underline every keigo form, stating the social relationship it encodes.
Writing the composition in short, safe sentences with plain-style or mixed plain/masculine forms, avoiding complex clause linking.
Under time pressure candidates fall back on structures they can control and on casual forms picked up from anime or peers; the writing task rewards coherent argument, appropriate だ/である or です/ます consistency, and varied complex sentences.
What to do instead
Before the exam, memorise and rehearse a small set of argument frames (〜という意見もあるが、確かに〜しかし〜; 〜と考えられる理由は二つある。第一に…第二に…; したがって〜と結論づけられる). Practise timed 400-character essays with a fixed register (です・ます for opinion pieces unless instructed otherwise) and self-check for consistency and connective variety.
Misreading the task instruction in the writing section (for example writing a descriptive account when asked to argue a position, or exceeding/undershooting the character limit).
Candidates skim the prompt to start writing quickly, and in Japanese exams the task type (説明, 意見, 手紙, 要約) determines the structure and register expected; length limits are also part of the assessment.
What to do instead
Spend the first three minutes on the prompt: underline the task verb (述べる, 説明する, 主張する), the audience, and the length. Write a five-line plan (claim, two reasons with examples, counterpoint, conclusion) and count characters at the end, adjusting by adding or cutting a supporting example rather than padding.
Losing the thread in long listening passages by trying to catch every word instead of tracking the speaker's purpose and the discourse markers.
Listening passages in Scholarship-level exams are extended monologues or discussions with digressions; candidates who listen for individual vocabulary miss the signposts (えーと, つまり, そういうことではなく, ただ, 最後に) that carry the answer.
What to do instead
Train note-taking in Japanese with symbols: arrows for change of position, ★ for the speaker's conclusion, ? for unresolved points. Do repeated listens of 2–3 minute authentic audio (podcasts, news features) where you first note only structure and the final stance, then check details on a second listen.
Answering listening questions from a single keyword match rather than waiting for the full utterance, and not revising when the speaker corrects themselves.
Distractor options are built from words that appear early in the passage; self-corrections (いや、やっぱり, ちょっと待って) and negations reverse the meaning, and candidates lock in the first plausible option.
What to do instead
Practise 'hold and confirm': mark a provisional answer, keep listening for the correction or qualifier, and only commit at the end of the item. Drill sets of items containing explicit self-repair and negation, and note the exact phrase that changed your answer.
Treating cultural references as decoration and answering comprehension questions without situating the text in its social context (honne/tatemae, uchi/soto, seasonal and school-year references).
Candidates often read cultural content as background colour rather than as information needed to interpret politeness, indirect refusals, and implied criticism; indirectness is a meaning-bearing feature of Japanese discourse.
What to do instead
Study a short list of high-yield concepts (本音/建前, 内/外, 迷惑をかける, 遠慮, 甘える, 察する) with example dialogues, and practise identifying what a speaker implies when they say ちょっと難しいですね or 考えておきます. For each authentic text, write one line on the assumed social relationship.
Mis-segmenting kanji compounds and misreading okurigana or transitive/intransitive pairs, producing a wrong reading that changes the sentence's meaning.
Advanced texts contain unfamiliar four-character compounds and kanji with multiple on-readings; candidates guess from the first character or from Chinese-derived pronunciation, and confuse pairs like 直す/直る, 開ける/開く, 止める/止まる.
What to do instead
Keep a running list of compounds met in reading (制度, 傾向, 影響, 課題) with readings and a Japanese definition, and drill transitive/intransitive pairs in minimal sentences (ドアを開ける/ドアが開く). When unsure of a reading, infer from the particle pattern and the pair's transitivity rather than guessing the sound.
Running out of time because reading passages are tackled in order with equal effort, leaving the composition or later sections rushed.
Scholarship papers combine demanding reading with extended writing; candidates allocate time evenly and get stuck on one dense passage or on a single unknown word.
What to do instead
Rehearse a fixed time budget in full mock conditions (for example: skim all questions first, allocate minutes per section, cap time on any one item, leave a set block for planning and writing the composition). Practise abandoning a difficult item after a set limit and returning only if time allows.
Writing summaries that copy long stretches of the source text instead of condensing in the candidate's own Japanese.
Copying feels safer and avoids grammar risk, but summary tasks assess selection of main points and reformulation; verbatim lifting also shows weak control of nominalisation and clause combining.
What to do instead
Practise the 要約 routine: identify the topic sentence and the conclusion, delete examples and repetition, then rewrite each retained idea using nominalised forms (〜こと, 〜という点, 〜化) and a connective chain. Compare your version's length against the original and aim for roughly one third.