Hello all,
As the title says, I have been tasked with tutoring two Japanese kids living in America (they’ve been here for a few years now) with helping them pass the Eiken Grade 1 Exam in June. Their listening skills are solid but their parents would like me to help them with essay writing and reading. They have gone through Eiken Pre-1 with a few mistakes in the reading portion.
Do you guys have any resources for me to help teaching them the necessary skills to pass Grade 1? I have been searching for essay topic questions so they can practice but nothing that was particular to the EIKEN, just general ones.
12 comments
The concepts in Grade 1 are pretty advanced for 10-12 year olds. Language skills aside..
The concepts of Eiken 1 are very advanced, but you could teach the kids some test-taking skills like skimming and scanning, or Process of elimination to help them have better chances of guessing the answers.
Start with the EIKEN site if you are unfamiliar with Eiken. Here’s a list of all past essay questions and model answers.
https://www.cel-eigo.com/contents/essay/0410.html
The actual Eiken site holds the 3 most recent tests available for download.
A 10 year old is never pssing step 1. I hope the parents realize that.
I have done this once. Kid 12 when he started. Passed eiken 1 when he 13.
He was a returnee from the states.
You’re problem is not going to be vocabulary or anything like that. It’s the concepts being presented in the reading or interview questions.
The students has to be really lucky when it comes to the questions.
Went through old interview questions with my student and many of them he just couldn’t understand.
How is a 12-13 year old gonna give a satisfactory answer about communism??? It just ain’t happening.
When he did do the interview he got really REALLY lucky. It was a question about AI and robots.
Check the eiken website for older tests and I know I downloaded older opinion questions from a website… sorry to say I don’t remember where tho.
Other than that I would say that your main focus should just be conversation.
Your main focus should be on content, rather than language. While the language aspect is very difficult and academic, the topics discussed are very complex for 10-12 year olds. They also expect well-composed answers in reply. Best of luck
I have a student who passed this year, he’s in 5th grade so around 10/11 years old. He’s super fluent though and reads Tolkien books as a hobby. He’s a returnee from the UK and is very studious and studies at home on his own too. But apparently he’s not the youngest who passed Eiken 1 from my school. So it’s not impossible but it’s pretty difficult.
They’re going to get owned by the essay writing unless you make them grow up quickly.
I had a JHS student take Pre-1 three times, all three times the writing threw them. **They had a perfect score outside of the writing**.
It’s just not where kids are at. So unless you’re going to teach them about nuclear weapons and how wages go up in Japan based on age rather than actual merits, they’re going to have a tough go of it.
Other than for bragging rights, why would kids as young as 10, 11 or 12 want to take Eiken 1 anyway? The accreditation sunsets after a few years they would have to retake it. It’s of no use to them until they’re trying to enter a university or get a job where that language ability is required.
A quick search turns up practice tests and writing prompts.
[https://www.eiken.or.jp/eiken/exam/grade_1/pdf/202203/2022-3-1ji-1kyu.pdf](https://www.eiken.or.jp/eiken/exam/grade_1/pdf/202203/2022-3-1ji-1kyu.pdf)
[https://quizlet.com/325519942/eiken-1-writing-prompts-flash-cards/](https://quizlet.com/325519942/eiken-1-writing-prompts-flash-cards/)
*Sure you don’t mean Grade 5?
Vocabulary is huge. They will need to be cramming vocabulary like crazy. Most of the reading questions are just vocabulary checks, they change words from the passage to others with the same meaning and you have to know those to pick the right answer.
The other point is that the concepts are going to be beyond their abilities. Eiken 1 is aimed at last year of high school or university students, and the questions will assume levels of social knowledge that your students will not have. They probably cannot even answer these questions in Japanese. It won’t be a language issue, it will be an overall development issue. If the parents aren’t aware of this, it is important that you make this clear so expectations are realistic.
Eiken 1 is designed for university graduates who are going to be working in English. The essays and interviews are going to consist of topics from politics, social issues, economics, etc.
Not appropriate for 10+12 year olds. Whoever wants them to pass this test (parents? a school?) doesn’t understand eiken or children.
(I was a grade one speaking examiner for about ten years)
I taught a kid that age who passed Grade 1. The main focus was just on unfamiliar vocabulary (there are quite a few words in there that I’ve never seen used in real life) and getting him familiar with news and current affairs. The biggest hurdle with the writing and speaking was that he didn’t have any opinions on the topics in Japanese, not that he couldn’t write or speak well.
He would watch/read English news every week, tell me about what he saw in the lesson, and then we would brainstorm different opinions on it. A good thing to remind EIKEN students is that it doesn’t have to be your real opinion, just whatever opinion is the easiest for you to imagine content for.