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This research aims to find out two things. The first are the effective ways for my Japanese high school students to acquire English speaking skills in the classroom managed by a teacher of English. The other is whether favourable cultural information about the English-speaking countries affects Japanese students attitudes positively to the Target Language (TL) group and their cultures and if so, whether their positive attitudes help them get motivated in learning English. From the questionnaires conducted in my English classes with 120 students in 2013, task-based activities helped students have more opportunities to use English. A reasoning-gap activity was the most popular, where 70.6 % of the students answered they had more opportunities to use English. As for culture learning, 52.6 % of the students answered they acquired positive attitudes toward the TL countries and the peoples after they learned some favourable cultural information. Also, 71.6 % of the students answered they got motivated in learning English after they learned favourable cultural information regarding English-speaking countries. These findings suggest that task-based activities and teaching cultural forms can be effective to enhance the quality of teaching practices and meet the demands of students to some degree.

調査・実践報告