At what grade level is Kumon Japanese I?
Kumon Japanese I is equivalent to the third grade of junior high school.
Until around 2010, when students completed the I material, they could enter the "I League," which was one of the goals of Kumon students. Nowadays, there is a separate category called "J Friends," and Kumon's I materials may be a part of the Kumon experience that has divided perceptions among generations to some extent.
If you have completed this material in the 6th grade, you will receive a trophy as a "highly advanced learner.
What kind of material is Kumon Japanese I?
Kumon Japanese I is divided into I I and I II. First, let's check the contents of I I.
You will read long sentences of about 1500 characters to develop your ability to grasp the main idea and the details that flesh it out, as well as your ability to change your point of view and grasp the content of the text from multiple perspectives. 50 grade I Suisen books and works in a variety of genres, including ancient and Chinese literature, will be encountered to broaden your reading and vocabulary. Students will study the common Kanji characters from the perspective of abstract words to expand their vocabulary.
This course is a summary of the junior high school material, so it contains many elements.
Let's continue to check the contents of the III material.
You will learn the skills to organize and condense the topics and issues in a text. Students will learn how to contract a part of a sentence by themselves, develop their ability to interpret the meaning of the sentence, and further improve their ability to answer questions in writing. Expand your vocabulary through the study of kanji characters for regular use. In addition, grammar study and reading comprehension at the level of high school entrance examinations will be conducted based on the reading comprehension skills developed in the course.
The level of difficulty of the contractions will be increased dramatically, and the original sentences will be changed from paragraphs to longer sentences. It is a suitable material to summarize the middle school materials.
What are the key points of the I materials?
The most impactful point of the I materials is the recommended books that appear in the materials.
Kumon has selected 50 recommended books for each of the 13 grades from 5A to I. Some of the recommended books have appeared in the materials we have studied so far.
However, the recommended books in the I materials are not just a part of the Kumon Recommended Books; all 50 books are used in the Kumon materials.
In fact, from the G materials onward, all 50 recommended books appear in the materials. However, in the G and H materials, the selected materials include some kind of elaboration or readability. For example, the H materials include books such as Running Meros, Colorful, and Our Seven-Day War, which are clearly aimed at junior high school students. I have the impression that even elementary school students who like books can read these books.
However, if you proceed to the I materials, you will find that the books have been selected at a very high level. War and peace. Crime and Punishment. Human Disqualification and Rashomon. Organizational Science of Thought between Living and Inanimate Things. If the texts are not based on specialized knowledge, they are among the best in the field. I think the lineup is such that even if an adult says, "It's too difficult to read," to a certain extent it can't be helped.
From the J materials, we'll no longer be dealing with ancient and Chinese texts.
Kumon has many grades beyond the I materials. Nevertheless, why is it that there is a lineup of recommended books that could be called a compilation?
The reason is that the material after the J materials is no longer contemporary literature, but ancient and Chinese literature.
Although the I material is a summary of the middle school material as a whole and is a passing point, it is a breakthrough in terms of learning modern literature. Therefore, it can be said that Kumon has a collection of books that we truly recommend for modern literature, without adding any special touches.
And as in any field, the difference between first place and second place or lower is bigger than just one rank difference. Think of the person who was first in your school test or the ace of your club. Or even your favorite sport or entertainment. It may be that there is one top person, or that they are the top group, but the difference between the top and the second best is clearly different from the difference between the second and the third best, or the third and the fourth best. It can be said that the top (or worst) group is often statistically outstanding.
The same can be said of the recommended books for I materials. The I Materials are the most difficult group of recommended books, so they are distinctly different from the previous materials.
Praise and a sense of accomplishment are not enough to overcome the I Materials.
What is important to overcome this difficulty is whether or not you are aware of the value of reading in the material up to this point.
The more difficult the content of the text, the higher the cost of reading the text, of course. If you have the basic ability, you may be able to pay the higher cost, but if all you have is a feeling that reading is hard, you will lose the will to face the text at some point.
Teacher and parental recognition and advancement to the next level of material can certainly be rewarding. But these rewards diminish as the writing becomes more difficult and the material progresses slower. What motivation do you have to work on the material when you no longer get praise or a sense of accomplishment? This is an inevitable problem that arises from the fact that Kumon allows students to progress through the materials at their own pace.
This is not a problem unique to the I materials. Almost all children will have encountered and overcome this obstacle at some point in the process of getting to this point.
However, there is no doubt that it is a wall that they are likely to encounter again in the I materials. And the I-resource barrier is almost always a tough one to overcome with external factors such as praise or a sense of accomplishment. So how do we overcome this difficulty?
I value the positive attitude toward difficulty that comes from intellectual curiosity.
I think intellectual curiosity is the answer. Instead of seeing the difficulty as just a barrier, the key will be interest in what is written in the difficult text. No, interest may not be enough. The intuition that something essential is contained in a difficult-to-understand text is the key to facing the difficulty.
There is a saying in the world, "If you are really smart, you can explain difficult things in a way that anyone can understand. This may be true. It takes a certain kind of intelligence to be able to explain difficult things in a way that is easy to understand. It is like an interpreter. Not only language, but the ability to have the expertise to understand a specialized field and the ability to break it down and explain it in a way that anyone can understand and be interested in requires a certain kind of special ability. It is understandable that the person being explained to would think that the interpreter is the one who is doing the interpreting. In fact, there are probably many people who think Akira Ikegami and Denjiro Yonemura are great.
On the other hand, an interpreter is just that, an interpreter. An English interpreter will certainly know more English than the average native English speaker, but there is no one who would say that interpreters are the most knowledgeable interpreters in the world. It is not Akira Ikegami, the journalist, who knows the most about the realities of politics and fights on the front lines, but politicians and bureaucrats. The people on the cutting edge in the field of science are probably not Denjiro Yonemura, who conveys the fun of science through experiments, but people at research institutes and large corporations.
And those who are really fighting on the front lines do not explain things in a way that is easy for anyone to understand. This is because they would lose in a top-class battle if they had to do something so costly.
However, it does not mean that ordinary people do not have opportunities to be exposed to the front lines. They sometimes publish something to show their achievements in the top class. These are papers, political documents, and other texts that are difficult to read at first glance.
These texts are often not for the general public, but for professionals, and they are not flattering to read. However, they are not necessarily of low value, and in fact, the most valuable information is found in such texts. This is why the interpreter, the person who understands and can convey this information to the public, is of such high value.
It is in difficult texts that valuable information lies. Understanding this will change your attitude when you encounter difficult texts. What used to be a simple dislike of difficulty will change to an inquisitive mind that seeks to overcome the difficulty and gain valuable information. When this awareness is reached, difficulty becomes a motivator to move learning forward.
A positive attitude toward difficulty. This is the key to overcoming the I materials. And children who make it to I have more or less acquired the attitude to face the difficulty. Parents are expected to watch over their children's inner curiosity and not to squelch it.