The four macroskills at beginner level, and the text types the course requires students to produce.
These are the statements the Japanese Beginners syllabus makes about Language Skills and Text Types. Dux records each one against the questions you answer, so you can see which of them you have actually been tested on and which have never been asked.
Recognising familiar words in speech, and answering a question about what was said.
Reading short texts for gist and for one specific detail, and answering in the form the question asks for.
Sustaining a short conversation on a familiar topic, and repairing a breakdown when a word is missing.
Producing message, postcard, email at beginner level with the structure the text type requires. Three scripts carry different work: hiragana for inflection, katakana for loanwords, kanji for meaning. Reading a beginner text means recognising which is which, and writing it means choosing correctly.
Word order, questions and negation: the structures whose absence makes a beginner's writing unreadable.
Learning words as they are used, including the particles, counters or prepositions that go with them.
Producing the sounds and rhythm of the language, and using them to recognise a word heard rather than only seen.
Writing legibly and correctly at speed, and the specific errors that make a beginner's writing hard to read.
Looking a word up without mistaking the part of speech, the register or the sense that fits the sentence.
Reading the question in English first, answering in the language asked for, and using the marks to decide how much to write.
HSC Japanese Beginners - Written Paper Shape is 100 marks in 150 minutes. Questions on Language Skills and Text Types are not one shape repeated: the command word decides what the marker is looking for, and the mark value decides how much of it. These are the ones Japanese Beginners uses.
Dux writes practice for this module in exactly these shapes, so the drill is the same task the paper sets — not a general knowledge quiz with the module name on it.
Language Skills and Text Types is module 3 of 3 in Japanese Beginners. Students routinely lose marks because a question spans two modules, so the neighbouring modules are worth reading next to this one.
Dux diagnoses Japanese Beginners dot point by dot point, then writes questions in the shape this course marks. Written answers come back marked against the bands.