Every school I’ve worked at has had at least one person who was involved in Eiken interviews and shared their insights with students to make sure they passed. Based on that, I feel very comfortable with interview scoring. I’ve never encountered anyone who was involved in essay grading.
Does anybody have any insights into specific points re: essays? Specifically, I’d like to know the specific important features of a successful Pre-1 essay. Most web resources have pretty generic advice…
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The web resources are generic because a passing essay just follows a formula. There’s no creativity. Follow the five paragraph structure and have some impressive vocabulary words in mind that can be used for a variety of prompts. Growing up in the states, this kind of simple writing was taught in Jr high. Yet in Japan persuasive writing isn’t taught, even in Japanese.
I’d like a rubric so much… I’m a juku teacher so I don’t have any rubrics and I can’t find any online. I have no idea which criteria they’ve met…
I feel like a lot of students are being misguided into ‘wasting’ their word count too with their introduction and conclusion. Their intro will just be the question copied almost word for word and the conclusion is just their introduction phrased as a conclusion… I want to mark this as wrong if I see it in pre-first but don’t know if I should…
That and the silly formula:
I agree. I have two reasons.
First,
Second,
In conclusion, that is why I agree…
There are 4 graded categories: content, structure/organization, vocab, and grammar. 4 points per section, and a score of around 12 is passing. The essay should be 4 paragraphs and the students must use two of the four points given. In general, two grammar/vocab mistakes equals minus 1 point.
The first paragraph should be two sentences. A topic sentence that rephrases the test question and shows their opinion, and a sentence that introduces the two points they’ll be talking about. The rephrasing is very important. If they simply copy the question as it is, give them minus points. They need to show that they understand the question and are capable of rephrasing it.
The two body paragraphs are easy enough. The topic sentence is followed up 2-4 supporting sentences. If the logic is weak, dock content points. Look for a variety of sentence patterns here. Make sure students aren’t repeating the same vocabulary words again and again. We start marking off when students use a key word or phrase more than twice.
The conclusion should be 1-2 sentences. Once again it’s not good if they simply copy and paste the question word for word.
Discourse markers are great, but the content needs to be there. You can kind of BS your way through an EIKEN Grade 2 essay, but not Pre-1. If the content is there, it’s totally fine to use simple discourse markers like “First,” “Second,” etc.