Looking for some advice

10 comments

1. 3rd grader in elementary school Jr high school or high school? If they hate English you’ll need to become friends with them and make a connection first before they’ll be willing to study or listen to you. Otherwise it will just be a repeat.

2. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

   You’ll need an insight to the home situation, as well as support of his parents. The 45/60/90/180 minutes that you have with him each week, by itself, isn’t going to radically change his attitude towards learning English.

   All you could probably do, is just make your classes interesting; but you’re probably already doing that for all your students.

3. Eiken 2 is the test that MEXT hopes for Senior High School, Year 2 to pass.

   Does the elementary child know how to discuss if immigration policy should be changed? If bullying is increasing? How to express a 4 panel story with detail including thought process and emotion, and probable outcome?

   Eiken 2 is not suitable for elementary children. Not because of English, but because of content knowledge and life skills.

   No wonder the child feels horrible and hates English. He is being told to operate at the emotional and knowledge level of a 15-16 year old when he is 8-9 years old.

   Some of the parents in this country are idiots. Only interested in status.

   So if you want to try, you need to explain to the parent that you need high school textbooks so you can teach their kid about social issues, conversion of story, and logical thinking – all skills that usually older kids develop.

4. Is this regular Eiken 2 or Junior Eiken 2? Ideally you should be getting the parents onboard to do Junior Eiken or Junior TOEFL. They aren’t ‘easier’ than the adult counterparts- it’s just that the subject matter is closer to what they will have studied in school.

   I also once had an elementary school 2nd grader mournfully tell me her mom had slapped her face for failing adult Eiken 2 kyu. It was so sad because this little girl already spoke like a mini-adult and had wonderful English but for her mother it just wasn’t enough.

   The heartbreaking thing was that she said that she understood a lot of the English words by themselves but just didn’t understand the meanings of the words all put together. Basically, she was too young to understand the concepts involved. She left our school a couple of years later (I had already gone so only know about it through hearsay). Not because she was unhappy at the school, but because the mother wasn’t happy that we weren’t pushing her child as hard as she wanted us to. Very sad really.

   If I were you I would be looking at more age-appropriate material. Maybe even stories etc for that age group aimed at native speakers. Find out what he is interested in and adapt lessons to that. If his mom doesn’t like it I don’t think you should worry. If she wants to’fire’ you as a teacher then that will be a pressure taken off you.

5. Before reading the comments, I already know that the main thing is going to be that Eiken 2 is not aimed at an Elementary level and thus attempting to teach an Elementary student Eiken 2 English is, quite frankly beyond the call of duty for any English teacher.

   I don’t know how much you need the job, but as I see it you have three a choices.

   1 ) Negotiate with the parents and try to get them to see the merits of building “functional” English ability rather than “Test” English ability. Make your aim to get to Eiken in a couple of years but with the main goal of your lessons being to maintain and re-enforce the language, the student is already capable of. Get the student to a level where he can start improving his English within his own capacity ( reading English comics, watching English movies/series etc. ). The parents may not be able to see it at first, but that is a life skill that will open far more opportunities than a forced pass on a test.

   2 ) Throw everything you have into gratifying the parents’ request. It will be an uphill battle that will eventually leave you dreading the weekly English lesson as much as the student does, but if you’ve got the grit and are willing to let a small part of your love of teaching die you can probably do it.

   3 ) If you can’t get the parents to see the merits of point 1, and point 2 doesn’t sound like something you want to do… walk away. In my limited experience, a major skill of teaching comes down to your ability to negotiate with your client. If they can’t/won’t budge it’s not really going to do anyone any good in the long term.

6. I had a 10 year old pass the test. He’d lived abroad for two years and spoke relatively fluently, so the biggest challenge was building vocabulary.

   Studying vocabulary is boring, so we mainly did it through reading and talking.

   I was worried about the interview, because the topics are way over a kids’ head, but in the end his genuine fluency got him through.

   This was before the writing component was there though, and that is like the interview in that the topics are beyond that age group.

7. I work at a few elementary schools.

   If they hate the subject you might have to have a sort of come to Jesus moment.

   In the form of questions, ask the student to make sense of why they hate English. If they hate the subject, tie it back to an ambition they have in life. Tie it back to the economic/geopolitical relationship Japan has with the United States, Canada, and others (obviously In a way a kid can grasp something)

   If they just hate work in general (like alot of kids do)
   Press them on the fact that they can’t go anywhere else, they can’t do anything else, and they’re never getting that time back. My kids are entitled to hate (kind of a strong word. Dislike) work. Part of the educational process is establishing a healthy relationship with commitment so it’s easier on them in the future.

   I’ve legit posed to some of my rowdy boys “Where else would you be right now. . . Disneyland? You’re here. Let’s make it tough now so it can be easier for you in middle school.” We’re not talking about the content of work, but the relationship with work.

   Other’s I’ve been like: “don’t you want to make shohei money in the MLB instead of Nippon league? Where is the ML- oh that’s right it’s in America!

   It may not be an English thing. It may be a child needs help managing themselves thing.

   Obviously handle things the way you feel comfortable with. And any advice related to coursework is probably really great/resourceful stuff.

   Just offering advice in an area of the gig I think I have a handle on: the relationship with the kids.

   – last bit. The relationship with failure is something I try to tackle out here too. Kids who freeze up (honestly, grown adults out here to) and can only do it if it’s right.

   腕立て. We do push-ups, our body fails, It learns, it gets stronger. We speak loud and proud, we make mistakes, we learn, we get stronger. 1% my heart is happy. 0, and it’s sad. Never angry, and never disappointed. Growing up is the time for brave failures. And with my girl students it seems to really stand out to them.

8. Best advice? Try to get whoever decided this kid should take Eiken 2 to reconsider.

   Otherwise keep torturing him with past papers until he flukes a pass or becomes catatonic.

   https://sendaiben.org/2016/03/07/young-children-and-step-eiken/

9. Are you sure it’s not 児童英検？ Kids that age have kids version of Eiken. Jidou eiken.

10. I think this thread has you going in the wrong direction. People mean well, but they’re encouraging you to focus on things that are completely out of your control. The parents are going to do what they’re going to do, the school is going to do what they’re going to do and there’s nothing you can do about any of that. The more you try to negotiate with parents, convince them that their expectations are too high, argue one way or the other you’re only going to be entangling yourself in drama that you don’t need. And none of it is going to help this kid. Your function here is to help the student to the best of your ability. Right now extreme levels of patience, understanding and a gentle attitude are going to work the best for you. Militant drilling and repetition is only going to make the situation worse.

    Eiken 2 has a large set of vocabulary and grammar usage. Drilling vocab and repetition isn’t going to help. If I was in your situation, I’d go to the site [https://www.irasutoya.com/](https://www.irasutoya.com/) and randomly select a few images each class I had with the student. I’d print out a few of them each time and ask the student what he thought the person was doing and try to create some context of the situation with the student. Listen to the student’s explanation of the image and teach words that fit the situation better than the ones the student uses. Write down lots of notes he can take home. Teach the verbs and nouns he would need. If the student responds positively or at least participates, slowly move the complexity of the images up. This is to practice vocab and thinking skills in English. Using simple, understandable and relatable images might take some of the pressure off.

    I’d also include lots of older tests so he’s accustomed to the pattern of the test. Do lots of reading, correct misused vocabulary and try to teach as much as you can. Write lots and lots of simple notes.

    What happens after that is largely out of your control. All you can do is the best job you can for this kid, and hopefully it has some impact.