N3 Passage Grammar (文章の文法)
文章の文法 (passage grammar) is the JLPT N3 task that moves grammar out of single sentences and into a real passage. A short text has blanks, and you choose the form that fits the flow — testing whether you can track meaning across sentences, not just inside one.
How the question works
Instead of one isolated sentence, you read a connected paragraph with a blank in it. The four options are often all grammatical in the blank by themselves — what decides the answer is the surrounding context: what came before, how the sentences connect, whose action it is, and where the writer is going next.
This is why it feels harder than the single-sentence grammar section even when the grammar points are familiar: you have to read the whole passage, not just the line with the blank.
Strategy & common traps
Read the entire passage once before you choose anything, so you know the overall situation and tone. Then, at each blank, ask what relationship the sentence has with the ones around it — reason, contrast, sequence, conclusion — and pick the connective or ending that matches. The classic trap is an option that fits the local sentence but contradicts the paragraph's direction (a "because" where the flow needs a "even though").
Watch perspective and politeness across the passage too: giving/receiving verbs (くれる・もらう・いただく), and modal endings (はず・つもり・そうだ) all depend on who is acting and how certain the writer is — details that only the full context makes clear.
About this N3 drill
These 9 questions are built from short original passages written for N3, each with several grammar blanks. The distractors are grammar points learners genuinely confuse in context, and every answer links to the full guide for that point — so a miss takes you straight to the explanation.
Practice now
学生時代は、毎日遅くまで友だちと遊んだ＿＿＿だ。お金がないながらも、みんなで工夫してずいぶん楽しんでいた。今思えば、あの時間をもっと大切にしておくべきだった。文章の流れに合うように、＿＿＿に入れるのに最もよいものを選びなさい。