Japanese Continuers HSC Examination Specifications

• The examination will consist of a written paper worth 80 marks and an oral examination worth 20 marks.
• Time allowed: 3 hours including 10 minutes reading time.
• The stimulus texts and the writing tasks will relate to the topics as listed in the syllabus.
• Monolingual and/or bilingual print dictionaries may be used.
• The paper will consist of three sections.

Section I – Listening and Responding (25 marks)

• There will be approximately eight questions phrased in English.

• Each question will be based on an aural text in Japanese.
• The texts will be read twice. There will be a pause between the readings and a longer pause after the second reading to allow candidates to answer the question.
• The texts will vary in length ranging from approximately 35 seconds to approximately 60 seconds.
• The total time for one reading of all the texts will be approximately 8 minutes.
• The texts will include a range of text types.
• There will be a range of question types such as short-answer questions that require a response in English or the completion of a table, list or form in Japanese or English, and objective response 

Section II - Oral Examination  (20 Marks)

Section III & IV - Reading & Writing