N3 Word Usage (用法)
用法 (usage) is the trickiest vocabulary task on JLPT N3: the same word appears in four sentences, and only one uses it naturally. It tests whether you know not just what a word means, but how it actually behaves.
How the question works
You're given a word and four sentences that all contain it. Three put the word somewhere it doesn't belong — the meaning is off, or it collides with the rest of the sentence — and one uses it the way a native speaker would. Your job is to spot the natural one.
This is where shallow knowledge gets exposed: you might know a word's gloss and still pick wrong if you've never seen how it's really used.
Strategy & common traps
Don't just check whether the sentence is grammatical — all four often are. Ask instead: does this word's meaning genuinely match what the sentence is describing? The wrong options usually drop the word into a context meant for a different word entirely.
Pay attention to what kind of thing the word applies to. A word that describes people won't fit a sentence about objects; a word for abstract change won't fit a concrete physical action. Mismatches like these are the giveaway.
About this N3 drill
The 250 questions pair each word's real example sentence with three "forced" sentences, where the word has been dropped into another word's sentence — exactly the kind of unnatural usage the exam asks you to reject. The explanation confirms the word's meaning so you can see why the right sentence works.
Practice now
In which sentence is 「取り上げ（る）」 used correctly?
とりあげる