Overview
A continuation from last time.
What I Tried Up to This Month
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Deru-Jun Pass Tan EIKEN® Grade 1, 4th Edition + Anki.app
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I held an event called “Which Ones Haven’t I Memorized?” and found out that I have completed about 92% of this vocabulary book, with 8% still not done.
- (2026-01-02) Holding the “Which Ones Haven’t I Memorized?” Tournament for Deru-Jun Pass Tan Grade 1, 4th Edition
- Well, I don’t really need to make it 100%, so I think it’s fair to say that Deru-Jun Pass Tan is basically done.
- NHK News de Manabu “Gendai Eigo” (https://www.nhk.jp/p/rs/77RQWQX1L6/list/)
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I do dictation → shadowing.
- It’s mainly for listening practice, but I like writing letters on paper, and I also quite like the content of this program.
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Shortest Pass! EIKEN Grade 1 Essay Questions Complete Mastery (The Japan Times) (https://bookclub.japantimes.co.jp/book/b309521.html)
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Using the practical section problems, I polish my personal template while using my favorite ChatGPT together.
- I honestly don’t know how appropriate my template really is. I don’t fully understand the scoring criteria! Same as back in the Pre-1st Grade days!
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Past exam questions
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Vocabulary gap-filling: A healing time. It’s frustrating, but the effect of Deru-Jun Pass Tan is real.
- Long reading passages: I carefully read the parts where I get stuck, so that there are no sections that I “can’t understand even if I take my time.” Once it becomes something I “can understand if I take my time,” the next step is to move toward “reading smoothly.” This method is probably not very wrong, and I can feel that it works.
- Writing: Subject–verb agreement mistakes are finally disappearing, but collocation mistakes are still stubborn.
- Listening: This might be my main issue. Just like with long reading, where I go from “eliminating parts I can’t understand even with time” → “understanding if I take my time” → “understanding smoothly,” I want to do the same with listening: “eliminate parts I don’t understand no matter how many times I listen” → “understand after listening a few times” → “understand smoothly.” I want to do this kind of close listening. That said, unlike reading, where I can quickly start studying just by taking out the booklet, listening requires setting up the environment a bit, right? Like needing a quiet place. That’s kind of a bottleneck, so it hasn’t progressed much.
Thoughts
Last time, I wrote something like this:
For now, I’ve probably cleared the “quantity” part.
Maybe it’s time to think about quality, and start preparing not as “study for fun,” but as “exam study.”
This month, it feels like the shift from “quantity” to “quality” is gradually moving forward.
