At what grade level are Kumon Japanese I teaching materials?
Kumon Japanese I is the equivalent of the third year of junior high school.
Until around 2010, when students completed the I materials, they could enter the "I League", which was one of the goals of Kumon learners. Nowadays, there is a separate category called "J Friends", and the Kumon I materials are a part of the Kumon I League, which is recognised to a certain extent by different generations.
If you have completed this material in grade 6, you can 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. Let's first check the contents of I I.
You will read long sentences of around 1,500 characters and develop your ability to grasp the main idea and the details that flesh it out, as well as the ability to change your point of view and grasp the content of the text from multiple perspectives.You will encounter 50 Grade I Suisen books and works in a variety of genres, including ancient and Chinese literature, to broaden your reading and vocabulary. Study the common kanji from the perspective of abstract words to expand vocabulary.
This course is a summary of the junior high school material and includes many different elements.
Let's continue to check the contents of the III material.
You will learn the skills of organising and contracting the topics and issues in a text. Students learn to contract parts of sentences on their own, develop their ability to interpret the meaning of sentences and further improve their ability to answer questions in writing. Expand your vocabulary through the study of regular Kanji characters. Grammar study and reading comprehension at the level of high school entrance examinations are also conducted based on the reading comprehension skills developed in the course.
The level of difficulty of the contractions is greatly increased, and the original sentences are changed from paragraph units to longer sentences. It is an appropriate material for summarising the middle school material.
What are the key points of the I materials strategy?
The most impactful points of the I materials are 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 teaching materials we have studied so far.
However, the recommended books in the I materials are not just some of the recommended books; all 50 recommended books are used in the Kumon teaching materials.
In fact, from the G materials onwards, all 50 recommended books appear in the teaching materials. However, in the G and H materials, the selected materials include a kind of manual or readability. For example, the H materials include books such as Running Meros, Colourful and Our Seven-Day War, which are clearly aimed at junior high school students. I have the impression that even primary schools students who like books can read these books.
However, if you go on to Study Material I, you will find that quite high-level books have been selected. War and peace. Crime and punishment. Human Disqualification and Rashomon. Organisation of thought between living and inanimate things. If the texts do not presuppose specialist knowledge, the material is at about the top of the class. I think the line-up is such that even if adults say they can't read them because they are too difficult, to a certain extent they can't help it.
From the J materials, we're no longer dealing with ancient and Chinese texts.
Kumon has many grades beyond the I materials. Nevertheless, why is it that there is a line-up of recommended books that could be called a compilation?
The reason is that the material from the J materials onwards no longer deals with modern texts but with ancient and Chinese texts.
The I material is a summary of the middle school material as a whole and is a passing point, but in terms of learning modern literature, it is a breakthrough. Therefore, it can be said that, as far as modern literature is concerned, there is a range of books that Kumon really recommends that have not been tampered with.
And as in any field, the difference between first and second or lower is bigger than just one rank difference. Think of the person who was first in your school tests or the ace of your club. Or even your favourite 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) is often statistically outstanding.
The same can be said for the recommended books for I-learning materials. They are the most difficult group of recommended books, so they are distinct from the previous materials.
Praise and a sense of achievement are not enough to overcome the I Materials.
The key to overcoming this difficulty will be whether you are aware of the value of reading in the material so far.
The more difficult the content of the text, the higher the cost of reading the text, of course. If you have the basic skills, you may be able to pay the higher cost, but if all you have is a feeling that reading is hard, somewhere along the line you will lose the will to face the text.
Teachers' and parents' recognition and progression to further material are certainly rewards. But these rewards diminish as the writing becomes more challenging and progress through the material slows. What motivation do you have to engage with the material when you no longer get praise or a sense of achievement? This is an inevitable problem caused by the fact that Kumon allows students to progress through the material at their own pace.
This is not a challenge unique to the I materials. Most children will have encountered and overcome this obstacle at some point in the process of getting to this point.
However, it is definitely a barrier that they are likely to encounter again in the I materials. And the I material barrier is almost always quite tough to overcome through external factors such as praise or a sense of achievement. So how can we overcome this difficulty?
Valuing the positive attitude to difficulty that comes from intellectual curiosity.
I think intellectual curiosity is the answer. Instead of seeing difficulty as just a barrier, the key will be an interest in what the difficult text says. No, interest may not be enough. The intuition that there is something essential in a text that is difficult to understand is the key to facing the difficulty.
There is a saying in the world that if you are really smart, you can explain difficult things in a way that anyone can understand. This may be one fact. It takes a certain kind of smartness to be able to crunch difficult things and explain them in a way that is easy to understand. It is like an interpreter. Not just language, but the ability to have the expertise to understand about a specialised field and the ability to explain it in a way that is easy to understand and interesting for everyone, requires a certain special kind of 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, many people probably think that Akira Ikegami and Denjiro Yonemura are great.
On the other hand, an interpreter is only an interpreter. An English interpreter will certainly know more English than the average native English speaker, but there is also no one who would say that interpreters are the most knowledgeable interpreters of English in the world. It is not the journalists, Akira Ikegami, but politicians and bureaucrats who know the most about the realities of politics and are fighting on the front lines. The people who are at the forefront of science are probably not Denjiro Yonemura, who conveys the fun of science through experiments, but people from research institutions and large corporations.
And those who are really at the forefront of the fight do not explain things in a way that is easy for anyone to understand. This is because if you do something so costly, you will lose in a top-class battle.
But this does not mean that ordinary people do not have access to the front line. They, too, sometimes publish something to show their achievements in the top class. This can be an article, a political document or a text that is difficult to read at first glance.
These texts are often not intended for the general public, but for specialists, and are not flattering to read. However, this does not mean that they are of low value; in fact, the most valuable information is to be found in these texts. That is why the interpreter, who understands this and can communicate it to the public, is also of high value.
It is in difficult texts that valuable information lies. Understanding this changes your attitude when you encounter difficult texts. What used to be a simple dislike of difficulty becomes an inquisitive desire to overcome the difficulty and gain valuable information. When this understanding is reached, difficulty becomes rather a motivation to move learning forward.
Positive attitude towards difficulty. This is the key to overcoming I material. And children who make it to I have more or less developed an attitude towards difficulty. Parents will be expected to watch over their children without squelching the inner curiosity that may be developing in them.