Entrance exams test three years of material, not only ninth grade
A Handa City cram school director says some ninth graders stall because earlier lessons have faded. He suggests two simple re-solving checkpoints to prevent it.
By
Dana Whitcombe
In brief
- A cram school director in Aichi Prefecture says some students hit walls in 9th grade.
- Entrance exams draw on three years of material, not only the latest lessons.
- His routine: re-solve missed problems after one week, then again after a month.
Doing well on school tests in 7th and 8th grade does not guarantee a smooth start to exam preparation later. The director of a cram school in Handa City, Aichi Prefecture, writes in a note on note.com that, in his experience teaching junior high students, some of them run into unexpected walls once they reach 9th grade. This is his view from the classroom, not the result of a study.
Where the wall comes from
One cause he names is forgetting what was learned in 7th and 8th grade. The pattern is familiar: a student studies hard right before a test and then stops reviewing once it is over. Terms and formulas that were fresh before the test can be hard to recall a few months later.
The cost shows up when exam preparation begins. Students who repeat this habit have to go back to basic concepts first, which, according to the author, can leave them facing the entrance exam without enough preparation. His school, Futaba Shingaku Kyoshitsu, says it sometimes struggles to guide such students. He also describes cases where time spent on basics shrinks the time left before the exam, and the student has to change the original target school.
His examples are concrete. In math, students have not fully grasped the calculations and equations from earlier years. In science, they have lost basic concepts from 7th and 8th grade.
Why entrance exams are not regular tests
A regular school test can be handled mostly by studying the range covered recently. High school entrance exams, he says, cover 9th-grade content and also what was learned in 7th and 8th grade, so they demand the ability to use three years of material. In his words, studying for points on regular tests and studying for entrance exams are not necessarily the same thing.
Students who have firmly mastered first- and second-year content, he says, can move into exam preparation relatively smoothly while checking the basics. The gap becomes more noticeable as the exam approaches.
Topics that cause trouble later
| Year | Topics named |
|---|---|
| First year (7th grade) | Positive and negative numbers, equations |
| Second year (8th grade) | Systems of equations, linear functions |
If these are not understood, the author says, third-year study and entrance exam questions become a struggle, and the material has to be relearned.
Habits he suggests
The director lists three habits; the first two are summarized here.
- Keep reviewing after regular exams. One week after a test, re-solve the problems you got wrong. A month later, solve problems from the same unit again. This helps reveal forgotten content or shaky understanding, and the end of a test should not be treated as the end of studying.
- Do not leave things you do not understand. Math builds on earlier units, so misunderstanding 7th-grade equations may cause trouble with 8th-grade simultaneous equations.
He adds that mastering the basics now widens the choice of schools for students who have not yet decided where they want to go.
Photo: MART PRODUCTION / Pexels
