Elementary schooler aims to pass highest Eiken test level
September 27th, 2008 by James
Below is an excerpt from an NTV feature report about an elementary schooler aiming to be the youngest Japanese person to pass grade 1 of the Eiken Test in Practical English Proficiency:
As you can see, the poor kid spends every single moment of his free time studying. He attends and elite private school where English language education is stressed, and when he gets home from school he engages in non-stop English cramming. Even meal times are spent watching English language movies with English subtitles as reading/listening practice. The video clip also shows him studying for a French proficiency test. His mother buys him toy cars are rewards for successfully answering study questions.
Grade 1 of the Eiken exam tests university level English proficiency, and it’s unreasonable to expect an elementary school kid to pass it. However, his mother drives him on and he takes the test. He ends up failing it, but he is determined to take it again until he passes. He’ll also continue to study French after having passed a beginner level French proficiency test.
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If he wants to learn both English AND French, just send him to Canada, where both of them are national languages.
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Poor kid. It’s obvious from the video that his mom forced him into learning these languages. I was rolling my eyes when the mom looked away from the laptop screen & when her hands shook while holding the French test results. Give the kid the childhood that he deserves!
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This kid will probably grow up resenting foreign languages.
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Or at the very least resenting his mother.
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Or resenting both.
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He wouldn’t even have learned the Japanese terms for the English vocabulary on the Eiken 1 at his age.
Education is wasted on youth – Kids are supposed to be out experiencing their adolescence. What good is life if you don’t enjoy it?
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His mom has John McCain syndrome. Drill! Drill! Drill!
I gotta agree with Alex. A native speaker of English couldn’t even pass 2-kyu at that age.
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We’ll be seeing these two in the news again in 10 years:
SON BRUTALLY MUTILATES HIS ENTIRE FAMILY AND BRINGS THE HEADS TO POLICE IN A BAG
Parents who push their kids that extra bit too hard always seem to end up paying for it in the long run in Japan. In other words: oWnage
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Indeed. The parents are probably more fucked up than the kid they put through hell.
Can’t help but feel sorry for those children. It really is no surprise when they snap and kill everyone around them.
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Indeed. The parents are probably more loose in the head than the kid they put through hell themselves. It really is no surprise when these kids snap and kill everyone around them.
For the parents: Karma’s a bitch ain’t it?
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It is great to learn a language but if that is all you do, then you are bloody boring.
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Eiken is useless anyway.. he should instead learn English conversations, that’s a lot more useful.
Recently I read a book called “If you had controlling parents” and I know she’s exactly the kind of mom the book was talking about.
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Yes, I used to teach eiken. It’s complete bollocks. Even when people aren’t simply learning vocabulary the grammatical structures learnt are either completely unnatural or just plain wrong.
Note that the only English sentence we hear the kid speak is when he is reading from a book. Was it a story about the young man’s future perhaps?
“A baby chick grew and grew and became a little 変”
I personally think that English should be an elective from high school anyway. It is really not necessary to know English in Japan and after six years English education most Japanese can’t speak it anyway. Make it for kids who really want to learn it, test it as a language not a science and bring up a core group of students in Japan who can actually speak it. – And why aren’t other languages taught in Japanese schools?
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The mother is just mental isnt she ?
Its not usefull for a child to know french grammar, or english’s one .
He should try to speak english instead of just learning things useless >.<
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I’m guessing the kid knows how to say “bitch” in all those languages.
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poor kid. his mom trying to relive her life through him. what a sicko.
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Last night I ended up watching some weepy special on singers’ sad stories. One of them Ruriko Koyanagi (or something) had a mother who wanted to be on stage but had a gammy leg, so she from the age of whatever was drilled to be a top singer/dancer/etc. Same as above; ballet, Japanese dance, piano lessons, etc rather than a childhood, mother who lovingly made all her dresses and lovingly abused her (verbally and physically) when she wasn’t quite up to scratch. She ended up getting into Takarazuka Music School, top of her class, but quit before she trod the boards, and went on to a singing career.
Mother got blood cancer (I think), paid all her own treatment, then she got a phone call from the hospital just before she was to do a dinner show to say mother was about to expire, but she couldn’t let her fans or manager down, so just sung mother a song as she died, then presumably did the dinner show.
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god he has to learn french to? its a complete waste of time, I know because I went to french school until college
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She’s a bit like my mom, but my mom tried to get me into all kind of hobbies, and now I hate all kind of organized hobbies. Thank you mom!
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Geez … just move to America for a few years. That’ll do it much better than studying for some test.
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Seriously, the kid is so young and impressionable. If she wants her kid to know English that bad, she should try to move to an overseas (likely American) branch/portion of her company and enroll her child in school there a few years. Public school or private. But either way, if he goes at that age, he can pretty much grow up to be a native English speaker.
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Overseas isn’t necessary…just enter him into an international school.
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All of that makes sense (international schools, moving abroad, etc) would make perfect sense, if this lady’s goal was to have her kid learn the English language.. but obviously it isn’t. She just wants him to be the youngest person to ever pass level one of the Eiken.. think of the prestige *rolls eyes*
In defense of the situation though, the kid isn’t exactly rolling on the floor crying about having to do all this studying.. he seems more determined to pass the test than his mom is. And she didn’t say anything horrible to him after he failed the eiken so… I dunno. She probably shouldn’t be doing it, but it doesn’t really seem like she’s ruining his life.
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Isn’t he just taking Pre-1 (準1級)? That’s not the highest. Pretty high though!
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I think it was 英検一級. But I can understand where is coming from. It is a different culture and competition is fierce. He seems to have confidence in the languages though and self confidence.
People are saying well maybe he should go to an international school. That would partially solve it, but his Japanese ability would probably suffer. Also his mother might not have the means to send him 14 years to a int’l school. Also he has to be able to understand Japanese. The kinds that sometimes go to int’l schools sometimes have a hard time conveying information in their mother toungue properly due to both of the languages mixing together in the child’s programming.
While yes, this is definately a kyouiku mom, you can tell a part of him is self motivated. He is sad for a little while but his reply is もう一回受ける. And that was not scripted so you got to wonder which part is motherly motivation and which part is self motivation. He definately has confidence his himself to succeed. The education system and work system in Japan is fierce. He has to be able to pass entrance exams and employment screening tests. People tend to forget that Japan is a different culture with different rules. And all the psychological pramatism and theory, along with educational and linguistical theory is just that in the real world. People think this is an odd phenomenon in Japan but it is more common than people think.
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interesting to see what will become of this kid 1, 2 decades later. Most likely a maladjusted adult.
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