I know there are 8 million resources that go over potential interview questions. But I’m gonna ask anyway, what kind of questions do they ask aspiring ALTs who indicated some knowledge of the Japanese language on their application? There’s a Japanese language portion in the interview, right? What have past and current JETs been asked in Japanese?
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It will be basic conversation that gradually gets more difficult. It depends on the level you indicated.
Introduce yourself in Japanese. What did you do last night? General small talk that you can’t really prepare for.
The Japanese portion is so inconsequential if you’re an ALT. Don’t stress over it or try to cram Japanese study over interview prep.
Beginner –
What’s your name?
Are you working right now?（ている）
Between Shizuoka and Yamagata, which do you prefer and why? (This question is probably because I put Shizuoka 3rd on my placement requests). (より/のほうが)
Selected Elementary for speaking and listening.
What’s your name?
What do you for work?
What did you eat for breakfast?
What time do you wake up for work? (They asked this after I’d previously answered that I don’t have a job, haha.)
Do you prefer airplanes or ships? Why?
My questions:
Please introduce yourself (自己紹介お願いします)
What did you have for breakfast this morning (朝ごはん何をたべましたか)
What are your hobbies (趣味は)
If selected, what is something you want to do (JET参加者に選ばれたら、何をしたいですか)
Which do you prefer, cats or dogs (猫と犬、どちらが好きですか)
And a few more harder questions. It got progressively harder. I answered 7 questions (last two aren’t listed because I didn’t fully understand it at the time). After the last question, they stopped the Japanese section. I think those questions were standard for my consulate interview day (NYC 2020). The next day of NYC interviews had different questions (my friend interviewed the next day, me the day before).
But it went something like Japanese self introduction (basic), breakfast (past tense), hobbies (causal Japanese and listing things), things you want to do (expressing desire), cats or dogs (expressing opinion).
Got accepted either way. I was a solid upper n5 before departure, now I’m a lower n3.
For context I studied to intermediate level of Japanese in Uni. First they asked me what movies I like. After that they had me read a passage out loud that was about 15 sentences long. Afterwards they asked me about the contents of the passage and questions like “Do you think this is a good thing that~ so and so” “If you were in this position, would you ~ so and so”.