EIKEN Grade 1 study guide
EIKEN Grade 1 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
EIKEN Grade 1 (実用英語技能検定 1級) is described by the Eiken Foundation of Japan as the final goal for EIKEN examinees. Candidates are expected to understand and use the English needed to participate effectively in a wide range of social, professional, and educational situations, and the foundation maps the grade to CEFR C1, an EIKEN CSE Score of 2630, a TEAP score of 396, and TOEFL PBT 600 / iBT 100. The EIKEN Grade 1 study guide has 4 sections and about 1,838 words.
01Reading: vocabulary precision and long-passage logic
The Grade 1 Reading section shares a 100-minute paper with the writing task and assumes you can already read English comfortably. What it measures is a receptive vocabulary of roughly 10,000–15,000 words, control of formal collocation and idiom, and the stamina to follow dense expository prose on economics, science, law and social policy.
502 words, about 3 min02Writing: a 200–240-word opinion essay that argues
The Grade 1 writing task asks for a 200–240-word opinion essay on a given statement, written in roughly 25 minutes inside the 100-minute Reading-and-Writing paper. It is scored on task response, organization, vocabulary range and grammatical accuracy.
418 words, about 2 min03Listening: note-taking under single-play conditions
Listening runs about 35 minutes and the audio is played once - there is no replay. Grade 1 audio sits close to natural speed: lectures, news reports, workplace negotiations and interviews, complete with redundancy, self-correction and hedged opinion.
483 words, about 2 min04Speaking: the eight-minute interview, from reading aloud to speech
The Grade 1 interview lasts about eight minutes and follows a fixed sequence: reading a short passage aloud, answering questions on it, preparing a two-minute speech on a topic card, and answering follow-up questions about that speech. Marks come from reading aloud, responsiveness to questions, and the speech's content, structure, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
435 words, about 2 min