At what grade level are Kumon Japanese E materials studied?
There are two main guidelines regarding the progression of Kumon's teaching materials.
One is the approximate grade level for each material; since the E materials are at a level equivalent to grade 5, many of the students who study them are around grade 5.
The other guideline is whether or not it is "highly advanced. Kumon recognizes students who are at least three grades ahead in their studies with the "Highly Advanced Learner Award" in the "Highly Advanced Category". You can receive this award if you complete the E materials in grade 2, so if you are studying the E materials before grade 2, you can be sure that you are making fairly rapid progress.
What is the content of Kumon Japanese E?
Kumon Japanese is divided into E I and E II. Let's first check out EⅠ.
You will learn the types and functions of conjunctions and develop your reading comprehension skills with an awareness of conjunctive relationships. Learn the typical relationships between clusters in sentences and apply them to actual reading comprehension. Of the 185 Kanji characters in the 5th grade, 90 new Kanji characters will be studied to expand vocabulary. In addition, students will review the Kanji learned in E I using homonyms and synonyms as a starting point.
In the D material, students practiced understanding sentences in terms of cohesion; in the EⅠ material, students will develop their ability to understand the relationship between cohesion and cohesion. In addition to understanding events in the order in which they are written, the students will also be able to handle a variety of connections, such as paradoxes and examples.
Students will develop the ability to grasp the various relationships in the text by focusing on "characters' actions and feelings," "descriptions of facts, etc., thoughts and opinions," and "cause-and-effect relationships. Cultivate the ability to appropriately answer questions that require explanation of reasons. Of the 185 Kanji characters in the 5th grade, 96 (including 1 new Kanji character in the 6th grade) will be studied to expand vocabulary. In addition, students will review the Kanji learned in EⅡ using homonyms and synonyms as a starting point.
Students will read sentences based on the conjunctive relationship learned in EⅠ. The students will read sentences based on the conjunctive relationship learned in EⅡ. Give the reason why.
The first point to be pressed is the "conjunctive relation.
The first thing to focus on is the subjunctive relationship.
There are only a limited number of sentences that can be read without understanding the subjunctive relationship. If you cannot understand paradoxes such as "but" and the relationship between assertion and reason such as "because" and "therefore," you will only be able to grasp what is written in chronological order.
To get through the E material, you need to understand that there is a relationship between the paragraphs and that the whole is asserting a single message.
To understand this part, Kumon materials are effective as they are. They give you the minimum amount of information necessary to understand the conjunctive relationship in the form of questions and make you learn it through repetitive practice.
However, there is one more area that needs to be taken care of in order to clear Kumon's E-materials. That is the difficulty level of the recommended books.
The material is becoming a full-fledged novel.
Kumon publishes recommended books for each grade level, and the problem sentences in the Japanese language materials are basically taken from the recommended books. And gradually, the lineup of recommended books starts to look more and more like novels from around the E material.
Recommended books that had a hint of picture books by the time of the D material, such as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "The Phantom with Twenty Faces," "The Restaurant of Many Orders," and "The Story of Sempo Sugihara," are now clearly "novels" by the time of the E material.
If you are not in the habit of reading, even adults may start to feel that the hurdle is too high to read from this point on. From a certain point, there is a kind of threshold in novels that is different from that of vocabulary and grammar. More specifically, the author begins to prioritize making the story more interesting and realistic rather than easy to understand.
Generally speaking, it is said that in stories, things move the reader's emotions more when they are imagined than when they are explained. It is the same in real life. If you like someone to some extent, you can say, "I'm interested in you, and I'd like to hold your hand, is that OK?" If you like someone to some extent, it is more exciting to have them hold your hand silently than to have them ask you, "Can I hold your hand because I'm interested in you?
But of course, the lack of explanation makes it more difficult to understand. If someone holds your hand in a crowded place, it may be that he/she is just taking your hand because he/she is afraid you might get separated from him/her, or there may be no romantic nuance.
In real life, you might be able to ask, "What did he mean by that? But in a novel, you can't ask the characters. We can only indirectly find out the meaning of their actions from the episodes and dialogues written in other parts of the novel. This room for interpretation is the real appeal of novels, and it takes a certain amount of familiarity and training to feel the real appeal.
Let's get used to the "dare not speak" manner of storytelling through manga and anime.
It is quite difficult to get used to the unique culture of novels (stories) that dare not tell the truth. What is effective here is to watch anime and manga, which contain visual information.
Even in novels, there are many parts that "dare not speak". However, novels are a text-only medium. What is not said in the text is really not said anywhere, and requires a high level of reading comprehension to guess.
Anime and manga contain visual information in the form of illustrations in addition to dialogue. This makes it easy for children to understand that they can infer the meaning from the actions and facial expressions of the characters, even if the characters do not speak. If you have a favorite cartoon, think of the most famous scene. There may be no dialogue or it may be very brief. But along with the short words, you can infer the meaning from the facial expressions and the scene, including the various circumstances that have led up to it.
If you have read One Piece, think back to the Alabasta Arc. He showed Bibi that he was one of them by showing the O mark on his arm. That's it. This is where you can get used to the "don't dare to talk about it" manner of storytelling.
Dramas and movies are no different in that they contain visual information, but on the contrary, they contain too much visual information. The amount of information is much greater in live-action than in pictures. Then this time there is a risk that attention will be drawn to irrelevant parts. If you like it, it will not be a problem, but anime and manga are better for the purpose.
Kumon's recommended books include quite a lot of narrative text. If you focus too much on "studying" and limit entertainment, you may find that your Japanese language skills are not developing in unexpected ways. By daring to choose media that are easy to understand and have students read deeply, they will become familiar with the stories.