Progressing from JLPT N4/N2 to N2/N1

Hi all,

I feel compelled today to share this article.

Today, we were watching a Japanese drama in class for my Intermediate 2 students.

In the show, there was this lady who had a miscarriage. After that, her husband went up to her room and saw her eating…

The script went like this… (changed the script a bit due to copyright issues)

From here, why does the wife keep talking about the ごはん? What do you think would be the next sentence that the wife say? Scroll all the way down to find out…

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Wife:今は　全部おいしい。
あかちゃん。。

そう。Did you guys guess it correctly…? She was talking about the baby… Also why 「ごはんはおいしい」,but 「ごはんがおいしい」. Her focus was on the rice, not the matter about it being delicious.. Why not 「ごはんはおいしい」, at this stage when 「が」 was mentioned, i was already able to tell that she was referring to her miscarriage (amended after constructive comments from Reddit forumers)…

What i am trying to say here is that, in order to progress from N4 to N2, one of the important points while watching drama, reading the passages or even listening to the conversation in the exam, you need to be able to link the relationships of the people in the story, being able to “be” them while you are in the conversations. All my students at the earlier stage was unable to tell that she was talking about the baby, but i could. (didn’t watch the drama beforehand btw). Any N1 pro out there and i think they would be able to tell it too. I feel that currently our conventional language schools out there are not so good in teaching this component (reading the 心情 of the characters while reading the passage/watching drama/listening to the conversation) to the students.

In order to pass your N1 and N2, the JLPT examiners want you to be able to grasp this important skill, else in future, you would not be able to follow whatever conversations when you work for a Japanese company or talk to a Japanese. Being able to 空気を読む is very important. Else, from your answers, they will know that you can’t grasp this skill and fail you straightaway.