Unko Drill series wants to help English learners in Japan get ready for their college entrance exams.

For the last several years, one of the highest-profile educators in Japan has been a piece of crap. That’s not a knock on his morals or conduct, though — the star of the Unko Drill series of educational books is an anthropomorphized coil of poop.


At some point, Japanese publisher Bunkyosha realized that the word “drill” can be used to describe both questions in a textbook and the shape in which poo is most commonly drawn in Japan. Thus was born the Unko Drill series (unko being the Japanese word for poop). Like America’s For Dummies books, there are now Unko Drill textbooks on a variety of topics, with the twist that the examples and explanations always feature the word unko in them.

The newest member of the Unko Drill lineup, which just released this month, is 1,000 College Entrance Exam Unko English Jukugo. Jukugo is a Japanese word that can translate as either “idiom” or “compound expression,” and just as the book’s title implies, the entries were selected following a thorough review of actual college entrance exams so that they cover material that’s appeared on past tests.

Each entry is accompanied by Japanese translations and descriptions of how the phrase is used, plus an example sentence, such as:

● apply to ～
The principle I discovered should apply to all the unko in the world
● look for ～
You should look for someone who can understand the value of your unko.
● go on ～
Time went on as we all gazed at the unko on the desk.
● see to it that ～
See to it that you don’t mistakenly take someone else’s unko home.
● turn out to be ～
The object left on the morning assembly platform turned out to be the principal’s unko.

Oddly enough, though Bunkyosha acknowledges in its press release that unko is “poop” in English, it’s left untranslated in the text. Still, there’s a bit of a method to the madness. Vocabulary, especially compound phrases, are easier to remember when there’s some context around them. By keeping unko in its original Japanese, it creates an immediate, and memorable, mental image, which will hopefully make the new target vocabulary easier to remember.

1,000 College Entrance Exam Unko English Jukugo also works as a companion to Bunkyosha’s previously released 2,000 College Entrance Exam Unko English Vocabulary Words (pictured below), which paints poo pictures using single-word target vocabulary. Entries include:

● affect: His unko may affect the other students in a negative way.
● occur: Something I hadn’t expected occurred when I let the unko loose in the living room.
● recognize: It’s a very distinctive unko, so you’ll recognize it the minute you see it.

1,000 College Entrance Exam Unko English Jukugo is priced at 1,595 yen (US$11.80) but can also be purchased as part of a bundle with 2,000 College Entrance Exam Unko English Vocabulary Words for 3,190 yen through Rakuten here. While it’s not currently part of any official school curriculum that we know of, if you’re an English teacher in Japan tired of teaching the same old crap, this could be the new crap you’re looking for.

Source: PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Rakuten
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