“Doesn’t know the word” and “score isn’t improving” are not the same problem
A child can ace a vocabulary quiz and still lose the meaning of that same word once it appears in a passage. That gap is common: knowing a word in isolation and judging its meaning inside a sentence are genuinely different skills.
So when a score stalls, reaching straight for more vocabulary lists skips the diagnosis step, and can end up being the long way round.
What else commonly costs points
In actual lessons, several causes show up more often than a plain vocabulary gap.
- Shaky grammar, which throws off the meaning of the sentence structure itself
- Reading each sentence fine, but losing track of the passage as a whole: who did what
- Reading too slowly to finish within the time limit
- Hearing the sounds fine in listening, but taking too long to convert them into meaning
- Knowing what a word means, but stalling when trying to use it in writing
- Getting stuck at the stage of forming an opinion or a reason, before English even enters the picture
- Not being familiar enough with the question format to know exactly what is being asked
A simple way to tell the difference at home
When reviewing a wrong answer, going a little further than “she didn’t know the word” tends to reveal the actual cause.
- Did she not know the word at all, or did she know it but still miss the meaning of the sentence?
- Did she run out of time, or would she have missed it even with time to spare?
- Is the same type of mistake repeating, or is each mistake caused by something different?
A repeating pattern of the same mistake more often points to grammar or a reading habit than to vocabulary.
Even when vocabulary is the cause, the method may need adjusting
Even if vocabulary genuinely is the bottleneck, how it is being learned matters. Memorising only the Japanese translation builds up quiz performance but does not always transfer to using the word inside a sentence.
Learning a word together with a short example sentence, or hearing it before memorising it, can be enough to change how usable it becomes in context.
What Petra Tutors checks before starting EIKEN preparation
At Petra Tutors, before starting EIKEN preparation we first map out where points are actually being lost (vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening or writing) and set priorities from there.
Sometimes more vocabulary genuinely is what is needed. When it is not moving the score on its own, we look instead at how a student reads and applies grammar.
