EXAM QUICK REFERENCE
This subject tests not how much grammar you know but whether you can process academic Japanese under time pressure. The twelve chapters follow the syllabus's four sections: the reading chapters match the drills now open, while the listening-reading, listening, and writing chapters are marked as official scope with their banks still in preparation.
Written from the four sections of JASSO's Japanese syllabus. The current bank leads with reading; the listening-reading, listening, and writing chapters describe official scope while their drills are added in later batches.
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QUICK REFERENCE
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三段構成
Introduction states the position, the body gives two reasons with examples, and the conclusion restates it — the most stable frame.
Keep the introduction to 60–80 characters.
Give each of the two body paragraphs 130–160.
Keep the conclusion to 60–80 characters.
Three or more reasons in 400–500 characters leaves all of them shallow; two is the right density.
接続表現の使い分け
Connectives such as 第一に, 第二に, たとえば, and したがって make your structure visible to the marker.
Fix the connectives while outlining.
Check they match the actual logical relation.
Avoid repeating the same one.
Overusing them reads as stiff; one or two per paragraph, at the head, is natural.
常体と敬体の統一
Expository writing uses the plain style (〜だ・〜である) and must stay consistent throughout.
Decide on the plain style before writing.
After writing, scan the sentence endings alone.
Unify immediately if you find a mix.
Mixed style is the most visible and most avoidable deduction — check it first when reviewing.
原稿用紙の使い方
Indent one square at each paragraph, and give punctuation, contracted sounds, and geminate consonants one square each.
Practice on real manuscript paper.
Make sure your character count matches the squares.
Check no line begins with punctuation.
Punctuation cannot begin a line; it shares the last square of the previous character — a fixed rule of Japanese writing.
根拠の示し方
Abstract reasons need concrete examples — personal experience, social phenomena, or data all qualify.
Attach one concrete example to each reason.
Give the example a time, a place, and an outcome.
Avoid figures you cannot verify.
Do not cite statistics you are unsure of; 近年増えている is far safer than a misremembered percentage.
よくある誤り
Particle misuse, inconsistent tense, and Chinese-Japanese divergence in Sino-Japanese words are the three commonest errors.
List the particles you get wrong repeatedly.
Build a personal list of words that diverge between the languages.
Update both lists after every practice session.
Words like 勉強, 大丈夫, and 検討 differ in meaning across the two languages, so transferring your own usage skews the sense.
