Jisho.org Forum

First of all, remember that JLPT isn't about "This is correct, this is incorrect". It's about "This sounds natural and fits perfectly, this is grammatically correct but feels sorta odd, and this is incorrect." This is the issue in 1, it could be の but こと sounds better.

As for 2, あの is correct because said person is in another room and is being pointed out. If you said その, it would seem like the person is in another part of the same room.

As for 3, it again just sounds better with 来ました. You would probably not use この頃 if you were to use 行きます.

Thanks.

Is there any rule of thumb about whether to use こと or の like this? I thought they were completely interchangeable.

Just hazarding a guess, might ask my Japanese teacher tomorrow, but maybe something to do with the potential verb? のができる sounds funny to me...

Asked my Japanese teacher and this is what she told me. For this example, you should be using の not こと. Here are a list of examples that she said, basically boiling down to if there is an action like 聞こえる, then you should use の not こと.

～の＿＿＿＿＿＿
です。　（×）
が好き・嫌いです。（〇）
が見えます・聞こえます。（〇）
を忘れました。（〇）
を知っていますか。（〇）

～こと＿＿＿＿＿＿
です。　（〇）
が好き・嫌いです。（〇）
が見えます・聞こえます。（×）
を忘れました。（△）
を知っていますか。（〇）

I don't think your teacher is correct. Either she isn't, or you misunderstood her instructions. According to Louis, the correct answer was こと. And not only that, searching for "ことが聞こえる" gives a lot of hits, so I doubt it's incorrect.

Maybe you mixed up what she said? Imo, 聞こえなかったことが聞こえた sounds great. 聞こえなかったのが聞こえた however sounds completely wrong.

Tobb, I did the search too, and she's Japanese and in Japan (yeah incoming Typhoon today!). And what I wrote above is directly what she wrote on the board for me. So for Louis, what question is the test from? (Level/Year/Page) Maybe I can take that in with me next week and get a better answer.

Sorry, I was looking at the wrong set of answers, heh. The answer is actually の. I also asked this on a Japanese site and got the following:

「の」を使うもの
①：好悪・巧拙※ 例）私は映画を見るのが好きです。※「こと」もいいが「の」をよく使う
②：視聴覚的なこと 例）犬が喧嘩しているのを見ました。
③：速度 例）東京の人は歩くのが速い。
④：形式名詞の部分が事、物、人、所、時間などの具体的な名詞を表すもの
例）この服と同じデザインでもっと大きいのはない？（の＝服）
社員旅行に参加しないのは誰ですか（の＝人）
私が生まれたのは東京の杉並区です（の＝所）
⑤：具体的な用件 例）あ、コンビニで新聞を買うのを忘れてしまった。

この中の②番に該当しますのでね。

So according to number 2, with things that you see and hear, you use の for whatever reason. I imagine that ことが聞こえる is correct in some other context (no idea what), but here it seems you have to use の.

Also, it seems that the answer to the second question is その. =/

This is Level 3, 1996, Reading and Grammar.

Heh, a pretty old JLPT then... maybe not worth worrying about too much, I remember no such ambiguous answers from the JLPT3s I've looked at. In pretty much all of those sentences, either way works just fine. It might not be 100% perfect, but it's definitely errors natives make all the time.