New
Challenges in English Education in Japan (Script)
1
introduction of myself
2 There
are two reasons why I’m writing about this topic. One is I’m interested in how
people usually learn English and the way is effective or not. The other reason
is I want to develop my English learning by getting information about good
points and bad points of English education in Japan.
3 It is
echoed that English is important. Why? There are many foreigners coming to
Japan as workers, tourists and so on and many of them can’t speak Japanese. We,
Japanese people need to speak English to communicate with them. It is sooner to
get latest information in English than in Japanese
4 In
English education in Japan, we usually study English for 6 years at least from
1st year in junior high school to 3rd year in high school. The length of
English learning tends to lengthen by starting at earlier age, for example,
from 3rd year in elementary school.
5
Japanese people have one difficulty that is we are not good at output skills.
We don’t speak well and write well either. It means we have difficulty
communicating with other people in English.
6 In
English education in Japan, grammar is recognized one of the important things
to improve our English. Because much time is spent on grammar learning, we have
few opportunities to learn speaking and writing.
7
Intensive reading and extensive reading are ways that capture attention as ways
to improve language skills efficiently. Intensive reading is reading a book
trying to understand contents completely with a dictionary and grammar book and
extensive reading is to read a lot of books without any dictionary or grammar
book.
8
English is used as a tool not only to get information but also to communicate
with people. As one of the solutions to improve our output skills, a new
examination is being developed and the number of oral class is increasing.
9
Yukichi Fukuzawa is one of the famous people in Japanese history. His picture
is printed on 10000 yen note. He is a pioneer of English learning in Japan. He
learned English to get information from Europe.
10 There
are factors that make English learning of Japanese people slow. There are
mainly two factors. One is we are shy. The other is being afraid of making mistakes.
11 TOEIC
is one of the most popular English examinations both in Japan and Korea. That
is used to show English ability especially when people want to get a job.
English ability is scaled from 5 to 990 points.
12
Average scores of TOEIC in Japan is lower than Korea. Now, Korean companies are
developing their businesses by making full use of English in global community.
With the advent of the test, Korean people’s motivation increased. This factor caused
the gap of average scores between Japan and Korea.
13 There
is an action recently taken in English education in elementary school. A
Japanese-native teacher teach English students with ALT. This system has
already existed for a long time. However, recently teachers try to make the
class more enjoyable by giving students opportunities to speak English with
friends and an ALT.
14
Junior high school students are taught more advanced English than English
taught in elementary school. English grammar is recognized as one of the most
important things students improve and much time are given to study English
grammar.
15In
high school, students still learn English grammar to prepare for ‘center
examination’ which is used as part of entrance examinations in Japan. The test
mainly treats grammar knowledge.
16Too
hard too much is an expression to show the current system of English education
in Japan. Even though many students have difficulty understanding words that
English native children use, they are forced to learn more difficult words.
17
Learning difficult words and phrases instead of learning basic words and
phrases, people will be faced with a serious problem when they talk to other
people in English.
18Tickle
is one of the words that English native speakers learn at an early age. Through
my experience, even though I’m a third year college student and have been learning
English for 9 years, I had few opportunities to make contact with the word in
English education, On the contrary, there is a word that high school students
should know to pass difficult entrance examination of an university. The word
is euthanasia that many native speakers may not see very often
19There
is a list of English vocabulary. The list of graph shows how important it is
important to remember English words on the list.
