<Notes>A Case of English Education Reform in a New Private Elementary School

YUKAWA Emiko

doi:10.14989/jerra_8_99

This is an interim report on English education reform in a newly-established private elementary school. Private elementary schools provide considerably more instructional time than public schools; thus, improvements to English education must cover not only teaching methods but also the school's own curriculum and materials. I approached this reform project in four steps: (1) initial class observation and need analysis; (2) checking teaching plans for all grades and providing feedback; (3) second class observation, reflection, and discussion for improvement of problematic activities found; and (4) lecturing on assessment and presenting example term tests. I identified six significant problems and pointed them out to the teachers: (a)lack of time spent on meaning-focused (as opposed to form-focused) activities;(b)mismatch between pupils' high cognitive abilities and cognitively unchallenging learning content; (c)lack of systematic instruction on how to read English across grades; (d)lack of variety in activity types in one lesson; (e)time wasted on activities for already-learned knowledge and/or activities inappropriate for spending class time (e.g., penmanship). Although this report only covers April through October, some improvement has already been seen in (a), (d), and (e). There are some subtle signs of improvement in (b) and (c). We will see how improvement will continue to be realized in the future.

<Notes>A Case of English Education Reform in a New Private Elementary School

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