Why you can't do reading comprehension questions
Yutaka先生
We will discuss why most learners have difficulty with reading comprehension questions and what to do about it.
It is a common problem at all levels, so please read to the end.
If you are reading my article for the first time, let me first introduce myself.
Since I was a junior high school student, I had good grades only in the Japanese language subject, but I did not know why. However, when I came across a book called "Japanese is a technique!" My test scores improved dramatically. The book was written by a popular teacher at a famous prep school cram school in Tokyo. After reading and studying from that book, I had no fear of exams. I was even able to pass a single subject exam at one university, and my Japanese language grades helped me to pass the test at the university of my choice. Incidentally, most Japanese language tests that Japanese people take are reading comprehension questions.
I'll tell you specially why you can't do reading comprehension questions when I teach Southeast Asian students as a Japanese teacher.
①They do not read Japanese sentences. Or cannot read.
"Minna no Nihongo" or other textbooks used around the world are not designed for “reading” as they are textbooks for communication. Of course, this is not a bad thing, but it is a mistake to think that if you study all the textbooks, you will also be able to do reading comprehension questions.
②you are lost in the writing style that is unique to Japanese texts.
It's embarrassing to say, but when I was younger , there was a time I wanted to be a novelist or a sports writer and I studied how to structure sentences. Many of them are unique. The obvious in a sentence is often omitted. For example, I, he, she, the victim in passive sentences, the person who received the command to do so in causative sentences, etc. If you are not used to Japanese sentences, you often have trouble understanding who is saying what in Japanese.
③Watching on mobile.
This is a recent trend: many people will be watching and studying SNS such as YouTube. Aren't you doing the same? How do you watch it?
I think most people watch it on their phones. "my students participate on my lessons with their smart phones.'" That's why I felt like I couldn't do practice for reading in the lesson. JLPT reading comprehension questions include short, medium and long sentences, as well as questions that require students to look at diagrams and tables to answer. The medium,long sentence questions are used around 200-500 characters.
The text is too small to read on their mobile phone. Teachers giving online lessons and YouTube videos for reading comprehension are designed to be watched on a computer.
Solving the problem
I thought about how to solve the above problems and created a free course with N5 reading comprehension questions to try out.
For those who want to try the N4 exam, this is a great way to revise and get to grips with the questions.
I hope that you will have no problems living in Japan and that you will have a happy life in Japan after completing these reading comprehension questions.
