The JFT-Basic reading section is not built from essays. It is built from the things you actually read at work and at home in Japan: a notice on a wall, a message from a colleague, an instruction beside a machine, a job advertisement.
These are read differently from prose, and the difference is worth practising deliberately.
Read the question first
Always. The question tells you which of the twenty facts on the notice you are looking for, and a practical text is full of facts that are there only as distractors.
Scanning with a target beats reading comprehensively and then trying to remember. This is the opposite of how you were taught to read at school, and it is correct for this exam.
Know the six shapes
Nearly every reading item is one of these:
| Shape | Typical question |
|---|---|
| Opening hours / closure | Which day is it shut? |
| Rubbish or duty schedule | Which day does this item go out? |
| Message between colleagues | What changed - the room, the time, the day? |
| Machine or procedure instruction | What do you do first? What if it fails? |
| Job advertisement | Which condition is required, which is optional? |
| Announcement of a change | What is different from before? |
Meeting each of these a few times in practice removes most of the surprise. Our free exam demo includes paired reading passages of exactly these kinds, with two questions each, as the real test does.
The words that decide the answer
Practical texts hinge on a small set of function words, and the answer almost always turns on one of them:
- までに - by a time. Different from まで, until. This pair alone decides a great many questions.
- から / ので - because. Marks the reason, which is a common question.
- が / でも - but. Signals the exception, and the exception is usually the answer.
- ないでください - do not. A negative instruction hiding in a polite sentence.
- なくてもいいです - you do not have to. The classic job-advert trap: it applies to one condition only.
- ときは / 場合は - when, in the case of. Introduces the conditional branch the question asks about.
If you learn nothing else for this section, learn these. More on the grammar underneath in the grammar you need.
Watch the numbers
Practical texts contain several numbers on purpose: an opening time and a closing time, a start time and a deadline, a price and a discounted price. The question asks about one of them.
Find the number attached to the thing the question asked about, not the first number you see. This is the single most common avoidable error in the section.
Practise on real texts
You do not need a textbook for this. Japanese practical texts are everywhere online: supermarket flyers, municipal rubbish schedules, part-time job listings, station notices.
Take one, ask yourself a question about it, and answer it. Five minutes a day on real notices does more for this section than an hour of reading exercises written for learners, because the vocabulary repeats and the formats repeat.
The exam’s own patterns are covered in the reading section, and the free practice test explains every answer in your language if you want the reasoning spelled out.