College Exam in Japanese Is a First : Education: Admission test is expected to boost interest in the language.

The nervousness, the last-minute prepping and the sharpening of traditional No. 2 lead pencils will be just the same as with all tests sponsored by the College Board. But when 23 students at North High School in Torrance sit down Tuesday to take a test in Japanese language proficiency, they will be part of a landmark moment in education.

They are among the 1,600 students nationwide who will tackle the first college admissions achievement test in an Asian language. The result of much lobbying by Asian-American educators and difficult planning by scholars, the examination is expected to boost growing enrollments in Japanese language classes nationwide.

“I think it’s a big step forward. With this test, people have another reason to believe this is an important language,” said Christine Ito, who teaches Japanese at North High and spent the past few school days helping students review material that might be on the exam.

Ahmed Imraan, a junior in Ito’s most advanced class, said he hopes a good score will help him get into UCLA or another top school.

“I just want an opportunity to try it like you can in all those other foreign languages,” said the 16-year-old, who is of Pakistani and Japanese heritage. Like several students in Ito’s class, he also attends Japanese language classes in a private school on Saturdays.

Achievement tests in such disciplines as American history, chemistry and languages supplement the more basic Scholastic Aptitude Test. More competitive colleges require achievement scores to make tough admission decisions and sometimes to place students in the correct course level. The UC system mandates achievement tests in English, mathematics and an elective.

Until now, language exams were offered only in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Latin and modern Hebrew. Asian-American educators, particularly in California, complained that those offerings reflected a European and East Coast viewpoint. California’s Pacific Rim economy and its large number of Asian immigrants showed the need for Asian language tests, they said. They also argued that it was unfair that Latino students could demonstrate Spanish fluency for college admissions while no such tests were available for Asian-Americans.

At first the New York-based College Board resisted, saying the number of potential test takers was too small to merit the costly test development. But political pressure, along with a $395,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, helped to change minds, College Board officials and others say. A test in Mandarin Chinese is expected to debut next year, and there is talk of a Korean exam later.

“Japanese-American and Chinese-American students will finally have a place to show their strengths,” said Akiko Hirota, a Japanese language professor at Cal State Northridge who was on the national committee that helped design the test.

“In addition, it’s not just for Asian-American students. It’s recognition that it’s really about time that American schools should start teaching young people about different cultures and that Asian culture is an important part of American culture because of both trade and immigration.”

The study of Japanese has been increasing at a fast rate in American schools, although the numbers are tiny compared to Spanish, French and German. In California public schools, 2,788 students were enrolled in Japanese classes in 1990-91, showing a 500% rise in eight years, according to the state Department of Education. The number of U.S. high schools offering Japanese grew from about 200 to 800 in the same period, reports the National Foreign Language Center, an arm of Johns Hopkins University.

But the language intimidates many learners, particularly because of its complex writing systems. Japanese combines two phonetic syllabaries of writing and Chinese-style ideograms known as kanji . (A high school graduate in Japan is expected to know about 1,800 kanji .)

As a result, there is much disagreement about how to teach the language. To ease students into speaking Japanese, many teachers and texts first use transliterations into the Roman alphabet of English. Some introduce kanji and other writing systems right away.

Using the National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the College Board and the National Foreign Language Center convened panels of university scholars and high school teachers to hammer out compromise decisions on test contents. In addition, a new book of suggested teaching methods and topics was written for the fractious discipline.

“The object was to create the beginning of national standards, which is not the same thing as giving orders,” said J. Marshall Unger, a University of Maryland professor who was chairman of the committees. “It’s saying, let’s adopt a sensible point of view on how we can teach Japanese, which is a very difficult language for native speakers of English.”

Trial runs of the test were held at Torrance’s North High and other schools nationwide last year. Further tinkering produced a one-hour multiple-choice exam that will be offered Tuesday at 250 schools, including 48 in California. The fee is $12 per student.

The first section of the exam tests the ability to comprehend spoken Japanese from tapes, although the questions are posed in English. The next part is on grammar skills and offers test takers a choice of answers in Japanese and two styles of Roman alphabet transliterations. The third part tests reading Japanese texts but again the questions are in English.

Ito said that at North High in Torrance, which has a large population of Japanese-Americans, a recent sample persuaded her that the test “will be very easy for those children who went to Japanese schools on Saturday but is going to be challenging for those who have had only high school Japanese.”

At Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, all nine students preparing for the Japanese test are Latinos who were already bilingual--in English and Spanish--before taking on a third language.

“They are quite excited about taking it, particularly being the first test. Kids always like to be the first in anything,” said William Adams, who began teaching Japanese at the Boyle Heights campus 13 years ago.

Roosevelt senior Veronica Martinez plans to continue Japanese studies at Long Beach City College next year in the hope that being trilingual will help in a career as a dietitian.

“I’m a little nervous,” she said about Tuesday’s test. “But it’s a challenge, and I like challenges.”

Enrollment in Foreign Languages

Here are the major foreign languages taught in California elementary and secondary public schools and the number of students enrolled during the 1990-91 school year. Spanish: 437,205 French: 112,738 German: 24,823 Latin: 5,421 Japanese: 2,788 Chinese: 2,018 Italian: 1,998 Russian: 1,851 Portuguese: 588 Korean: 41 Source: state Department of Education