I need some ideas here 🙂
I have a private SHS2 student who needs to pass eiken pre-2 to get a uni recommendation. He’s a basketball jock, a nice kid, but his English is pretty poor, especially his listening.
Normally with eiken I will teach students the structure of the test and some strategies to approach it, then give them some past questions to practice with. Usually that is enough.
With this student though, that is not enough. He doesn’t really want to learn English, just pass the test. How can I best help him? Any recommended textbooks or approaches?
5 comments
I usually find with poor listeners that their biggest problem is that they get too hung up on understanding every word. In reality, we don’t need to understand every word perfectly to understand the overall meaning. Usually, I try to get students to write down what they hear after a couple repetitions and work through the question just based on that to demonstrate this concept to them. Once it clicks that you might be able to understand only half the listening and still answer the question, their confidence builds and they don’t stress out as much.
What section is the student struggling on? The written test or the speaking test? Both?
Hi! I’m also at a private high school and do a lot of EIKEN prep, but I’m still new and would love a chance to chat with you/share worksheets.
As for your question I’m not sure I can help with this, as most of my students are pretty motivated but… idk, if they’re a sport student, is it possible to create some content that involves moving? Sounds tricky now that I’ve typed it, but just I’m kind of thinking about getting them in the zone.
The lack of desire is the rub as I see it.
The first suggestion would be to have a talk with him about his lack of motivation. Perhaps start with a basketball example, so you want to learn to shoot the ball but not play basketball ? Both serve a function…
Next up is to talk about his love for the game and that the best league uses English. Don’t want you want the opportunity to learn a higher level of hoops from a foreign coach ? Understand a broadcast ?
The answers will indicate how difficult a task he has ahead of himself. There aren’t any right or wrong answers, just honest productive talk.
As I see it, he must attempt to memorize the grammar patterns and begin the process of swimming in an ocean of English.
Specifically about the listening, he needs to spend the time hearing the test questions, reading the answer sets and practicing the test during his lesson time. No substitute really, but I think those of us with experience know that already.
He hears the question, then verbally answers. You read the question again, he verbally answers. He reads the question, you answer aloud. Its like a tennis match.
For challenging students I start with a long list of irregular past tense verbs. We drill that page at the beginning of every lesson, then ask the student to read the paper aloud once a day for 5 minutes at home. Go, Went, Gone. See, Saw Seen. For listening the silent study process is pointless. He needs to speak, and listen to you speak as well. Student reads aloud “Bring, brought brought”, teacher repeats “Bring, brought, brought.”
Then build up from there
I bring, I don’t bring, do you bring ? Yes I do, No I don’t
What do you bring ?
I brought, I didn’t bring, did you bring ? Yes I did. No I didn’t
What did you bring ?
Can he function at that level ? if not anything else is pretty much a waste of time imho.
If he can function juggling those tasks, then its a straight memorizing of target words. Just buy a Eiken pre 2 word book and drill it back and forth.
Eiken is vocab-heavy. You’re basically gonna have to level with him and say, “Look, I know you don’t like studying English, but you’ve gotta learn a lot of words if you want to pass.” If he’s not putting in the study at home he is wasting his time.
You need to work on past papers, particularly for section 1, and set him vocab to memorize. Test him to make sure he is doing it.
For books, I recommend the “でる順” series by 旺文社. For his listening, I recommend structured listening activities based on repeated listening of passages, including filling in gaps of the text in dictations, comprehension questions, and gist listening activities. For example, have him listen to the reading of a listening question from a past paper but prepare extra questions with repeated listening to promote noticing of common patterns in the listening questions.