Sunday, November 12, 2006

Interview Test

I've halted to update my blog in a week what with concentrating on preparation for an interview test sponsored by Society for Test of English Proficiency, or Eiken in Japanese. I took a paper test including a listeng test for the 1st grade last June. To be fortunate I passed it, but failed the 2nd step, interview test in July. In a case you fail the interview test, you will be granted a pivilege to take two more inteview tests with a first step test exempted.

In a 1st grade interview test, after a brief conversation with two examiners of a native speaker and Japanese, you are supposed to choose a topic from five topics printed in the paper and organize a speech based on the topic. You are required to do all these processes within a minute. And then, you make a two-minute presentation and have some questions on your speech from examiners in four minutes. That's all.

This was one of the toughest test that I've ever taken. When I took this exam in July for the first time, I could not arrange my speech well and it ended up falling apart. Then, seraching more information on that, I found there were wide range of sociable questions in the past interview tests, like this:

・Are we doing enough to protect the environment?
・Would you be willing to pay higher taxes for better government sevices?
・Should certain books, movies, or music be censored?
・The pros and cons of self-employment
・"Love conquers all" - do you agree?

Therefore, I prepared 20 topics which I predict which is likely on the speech list. In addition that, my English teacher gave me some practice exercises and evaluated my speech in an every lesson. Thanks to these efforts, I believe I could relatively organize my speech and answered the questions from examiners, despite the questions delivered were all unfamiliar. I hope I can make it this time. Incidentally, the topic I chose was:

Should parents be responsible for their childrens' behavior?

My answere is of course, YES.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Tetsuya!

Do you remember me? I am looking at your blog after such a long time—and it's wonderful to see how articulate are, and how creatively you write on your blog!

I see that you took the Eiken Speech test. Are you preparing for another attempt? In the past few months, i-osmosis has launched a few more courses, one of them being a specialized course for the EIken Speech examination. You can read about the details here:http://i-osmosis.jp/itest/eikan_speech_course.html

How is Manami? I still have her cute picture, her bubbly expression filling her face!

Do feel free to write to me!

Until then, take care!

Regards,
Saee

Tetsuya Abe said...

Dear Saee-sensei,

Thank you very much for your warm comment!

>> Do you remember me? <<

Sure, I do.

As for Eiken test, I fortunately passed the writing test but failed the interview test, twice.
I've already known you launched a new course specialized for Interview test and want to take it, but I for now am extremely limited to take time learning English. When I can afford to take time a few months later, I may apply for the course. Thank you for your invitation.

>> How is Manami? <<

I am pretty pleased to see you remember about my daughter. She is now two-year-and- five-month-old, cheerful and energetic girl who runs around my house and park every day. I want to update her photos before very long on this blog.

Sincerely yours
Tetsuya Abe

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!