My 9-year-old is hell-bent on taking the EIKEN every year for some reason. She’s born and raised in Japan, so pretty much until this year, the only English contact she’s had is me (it looks like they’ve started studying English a little more in school, but not enough to make a real difference). She got lucky the past two years based on natural conversational ability, and I’m worried that the writing part will be where she trips up this time because she hasn’t tried to study spelling at home. I’ve told her for the better part of a year that we need to practice writing and reading, but she didn’t get serious until the middle of last month. Miraculously, her passage reading improved from getting zero correct to getting 80% or more correct in a few weeks by getting her to skim for the answers. But unfortunately, writing won’t be so easy.
We are trying to BS the system by memorizing patterns to just plug in words for the writing part. The problem is she can’t spell those words! If it were me, I’d fail her, because she couldn’t spell the most important parts of her essay. But, how about the EIKEN graders? I couldn’t find anything on the EIKEN website about how spelling affects the score.
TLDR: My daughter is terrible at spelling but wants to take the EIKEN 3 test this month. What percentage(?) of words in her essay is she allowed to misspell?
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Thank you for your passionate responses. I was worried that this thread might get derailed and unfortunately, it’s gotten off-topic.
I’m not really interested in debating about my daughter’s passion for studying vs playing around or whether EIKEN is worth it HERE (we can go someplace else and debate those if you like).
I’m just interested RIGHT NOW in not wasting money on having her take EIKEN 3 twice, and I’d preferably like her to pass it before the changes make it more difficult this year.