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EigoNoto.com

He said the hardest part for him, and for the students, has been knowing what the classes are all about. The list of questions included:

• Are the Eigo Noto classes preparation for Junior High School English classes? 
• Are the Eigo Noto classes English Conversation classes? 
• Are they about communication?
• Why is there so much focus on speaking English in the workbook? 
• How are Eigo Noto classes different from other subjects/classes?
• Eigo Noto classes don't have any tests...

These kinds of questions have been in my head for a year, and I have often heard other teachers voicing the same questions.

Whenever I go to a new school, I always ask the Koucho-sensei (school Principal), "What are your hopes or goals for my classes at your school?" And I always get the same answer, "Improving students' communication skills." There are other answers I get as well, but every Principal has put a priority on Communication.

So to address the HRT and his students' confusion about the goals of the Eigo Noto classes,
This would label an obvious goal for the classes for everyone to think about. There might be different class labels, such as 'World Culture', too. Just giving each class a clear name, and content or goal, would do a lot to help both students and teachers more successfully approach the learning task at hand. Throughout this year, I have heard a wide variety of class names/titles used by the toban (class leader) at the opening aisatsu of the Eigo Noto classes. How many have you heard?

Regarding confusion about teaching communication, in my 15 years of teaching in Japan, what I've seen some English teachers call Communication has really left me scratching my head sometimes. Clearly making Communication the name (or one of the names) of the classes would be an effective way of forcing everyone involved - students, teachers, administrators and textbook publishers - to have a serious discussion about what real communication is. Having an in-class, regional or national dialog about this could be very fruitful.

I have often had reason to ask why almost everyone in Japan studies English for years, but most adults are unable to have even the simplest English conversation. A common answer is "We're an island country!" Well, I lived in Indonesia for 2 years before I came to Japan, and it's an island country, too. And LOTS of people, with A LOT LESS education, speak a functional English. So I have a hard time accepting this reasoning. Perhaps an island nation that refused contact with the outside world for centuries would be a better explanation.
There are other reasons that are commonly put forth, and no doubt you have your own. But personally I have often wondered if, among other things, the socially-hierarchical nature of the Japanese language and society lend themselves to a handicap to true communication. It is often more important just say, 'Hai!', especially when talking (or rather, listening to) superiors, but does this really demonstrate comprehension?

And in the classrooms, a Japanese junior high school home stay student once observed,

'In America students raise hands to ask questions; but in Japan, students usually raise hands to answer questions.'

And my foreign friends agree on another point- 90%+ of Japanese people, when asked (in Japanese) 'Pardon?', go mute or stutter at best; seldom does a Japanese person repeat what they have just said to us. And asking a Japanese person to speak slowly, something I had to do as a learner of Spanish, Indonesian and Japanese, usually gets a positive response for only 1 or 2 sentences. And then speaking returns to 'normal' speed. These two points have been foremost in my learning 3 foreign languages; in Japan, these points have, and continue, to handicap communication with native speakers.

These are personal experiences I've had in Japan regarding why English is so difficult to learn for students here. No doubt you have other experiences or ideas. But regardless of why communication skills are lacking in young (or older) students, here or anywhere, let us next address Communication Skills.

There are 2 basic skills to Communication, Listening and Speaking.

To any adult, whether involved in education, business or personal relationships, the importance of listening skills should come as no surprise. And for the purposes of Communication (as well as Language Learning), we need to go one step further- Listening AND REPEATING.
Repeating what has been heard is often used as way to confirm what has been said. 'I have a dog.' 'A dog?' Or when someone tells us their telephone number on the phone, we usually repeat the number back to them again.
And for language learning, I think this is one of the most important skills, as well- Listening and Repeating. And I have been wondering if just the ability to do this repeatedly is one of the features of the language classroom that makes it different from learning language naturally.

Speaking well is something that takes practice. Again, the classroom setting allows students to say the same thing again and again. For students, or natural language learners, just saying something once seldom leads to speaking competence, let alone long-term memory.
As teachers, and especially those of young learners, we need to be creative in doing repetitive speaking activities just to avert boredom for the students. In Japan, this is often easily accomplished just by having students play Janken/Rock-Paper-Scissors first (it also conveniently serves to determine the order of speakers). See Janken Conversation Rounds and Janken 4's for a variety of ways to use this strategy.

Another aspect of speaking is simply having something to say. At a deeper level, this also requires self-knowledge. And the ability to give it a voice. Degrees of Introversion and Extroversion are different in all of us. There are probably also cultural tendencies that might make one stronger than the other in a given culture.

There are not-too-difficult classroom activities that prepare students for speaking, such as Brainstorming or Previewing, that I deal with on the ConverstionalFluency website. Another activity that I think would work well for elementary and junior high school students are the SOCC (Student's Own Conversation Cards) by Duane Kindt at this website. I will be working in the future to adapt his approach for elementary school.

We also need to be sensitive to what are known as Affective Factors, or simply said, students' feelings. Creating a speaking environment that reduces stress, and risk, for the speaker is very important. Compare

1. Standing and speaking once in front of the class, and 
2. Taking turns giving a speech with the other members of your small group. 
3. Students making pairs, each saying a speech, and then forming new pairs and speaking again. 

Given these three activities, in what order would you put them for maximum student success with the least amount of stress?

Clear training in Communication and Conversation Skills is not that hard, in my opinion, but is something that anyone, in any culture, would greatly benefit from. Heck, it might even reduce violence and war.
The ConFluency Card game, and many of the other activities on this website, are activities that teach and practice these basic communication skills.
My own opinion is that many of these communication activities, and others, could be used in the lower elementary school grades, and used as a basis for building competence for later higher-speed and higher-level communicative interaction. At the lower grades these would be done in the native langauge, not only making it easier to teach (and for students to comprhend), but also building a foundation of communicative competence in the native language that will later be transferred to use with a foreign langauge.

To repeat, all of the school Principals I have asked in Japan have said they put a priority on improving Communication Skills for their students. Communication is such an all-encompassing parameter, as I have tried to discuss in limited detail, that making Communication a main theme or name of the Eigo Noto classes would do a lot towards bringing it to the front of teachers' and students' awareness, and towards giving the Eigo Noto classes a broad foundation upon which to build a many-faceted curriculum.

Many of the EigoNoto.com activities are much more fun for the students if there is an easy way for them to mark points. This is especially true for the Maru-Batsu (O/X) Game. I have been suggesting an Australian Points Map, but have discovered a simpler way...

There are little marching teachers and children at the bottoms of the pages in the Eigo Noto. 

Using these as a way for students to keep points is very convenient- starting from the first page of each lesson, students circle one marching figure for each point earned in an activity. Then for each new lesson, students begin scoring points anew on the first page of the next lesson.
A reminder about giving points- give larger amounts of points for games of luck (those that are Janken/RPS-based, for example), and smaller amounts of points for activities that are skill-based. Giving points like this will help lower-level students to earn as many points as their higher-skilled peers.

EigoNoto.com copyright 2010 Elton Ersch

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There is not a lot of guidance published in English about the goals of the Eigo Noto curriculum.  Below are notes taken from Monkasho’s Practical Handbook for Elementary English Activities.

The goals of International Understanding:

• Understanding and respect for other cultures
• Building a strong sense of self as a Japanese as a basis for understanding others
• Developing basic foreign language skills.
• Structure of International Understanding
• Activities to include foreign language conversation, international exchange activities and student research projects, among other things.
  

English and Foreign Language Learning

• Ought to include experiential learning, including exposing children to foreign language and daily life in foreign countries.  Asian countries and cultures to be included as well.

Primary Aims

• English activities for the elementary students are meant to foster interest and desire, not only to teach a foreign language.  It is important that students don’t learn to dislike English.
• English used in everyday life is a goal, done while having fun, and physically active. 
• The focus is also on listening to and speaking English, not reading and writing.

Content

• “It can be said that teachers are required to devise both contents and activities.” (page 124). However, teaching to students’ interests and expectations is expected.  Creating learning activities where students are the main actors is paramount.

What English Should Be Taught?

• Spoken English
• Language of interest to students, and found in their daily lives
• Basic and useful expressions
• Familiar topics with new, cross-cultural perspectives.

Flexible Use of Time in a Lesson Unit-page 141

• Pilot School short activities were usually 45 minutes, but short activities of 5 and 20 or 25 minutes, and long activities of 90 minutes, half-day and full-day were also present.
• School broadcasts, video and/or audio, for 5-10 minutes, 3 or more days per week.
• Interactive programs, such as bingo games were done
• Videos were produced with teachers and community members.

Thinking back on the previously posted article Pro Says Eigo Noto Can Be Used Flexibly, there is one line that keeps ringing in my head-

‘"Ultimately, you should create a final activity that allows every student to feel a sense of achievement--that's the basic principle."’ 

As a simple one-line goal, do you agree that this would be the right one to keep in mind?

This is a great article from The Language Connection in the Daily Yomiuri. I've  put some highlights at the top of the post.  For the full article, click the Read More link at the bottom. I have added bold and color to some parts-

' "I'm afraid that you can't teach all 35 lessons just by following the lesson plans without any adjustments," Umemoto said. He believes it would be impossible to finish all the content in the workbooks as suggested in the manuals, and therefore says teachers should not become obsessed about doing so.'

'...be flexible depending on how their students are learning.'

"What you'll probably have to adjust the most is the last activity of the unit," he said. "You should adjust the final goal in accordance with [the needs of] your own students, based on which you can add games and expressions if necessary.

"Ultimately, you should create a final activity that allows every student to feel a sense of achievement--that's the basic principle."

The upcoming revision will make English compulsory but not a regular subject, which requires materials to go through the regular textbook authorization process. Therefore, the Eigo Noto workbooks are not official textbooks, and schools can decide not to use them.

'Umemoto regards the workbooks as a "minimum level" that presents "a basic idea on what primary school English is supposed to be like."

Therefore, "Teachers can arrange on their own to offer similar content," he said.'

'Abe-Ford called some of the workbooks' activities a little immature for fifth and sixth graders. Therefore, she urged teachers to provide them with something that can stimulate their intellectual curiosity.'

And a great activity idea:

'Abe-Ford's idea goes like this: After learning the target vocabulary as a group, students are asked to turn around with their hands behind their backs. A teacher then places the cards in their hands.

The game requires the children to guess what is drawn on the cards they have been given by showing them to their classmates and asking, for example, "Do I have a cap?" until they get a "yes."

In the second round, the teacher gives the children the same cards, this time giving them a color, so that they have to ask, "Do I have a yellow cap?" In the third round, the cards are given an additional color and the students then have to be careful about the sequence: They must place the added color first: "Do I have a blue and yellow cap?" '



Midori Matsuzawa / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

With an eye on the upcoming revision of the nation's teaching guidelines for primary schools, to be officially implemented in April 2011, the Education, Science and Technology Ministry released in April a trial version of its Eigo Noto (English Notebook) workbooks for use in compulsory English lessons for fifth and sixth graders.

While the workbooks have been distributed to several hundred schools nationwide for trial use, teachers and educators have increasingly become curious about how to use the materials. So when a presentation on the theme was held late last month in Tokyo, officials from many local boards of education flocked to the talk by Ryuta Umemoto, who has offered more than 5,000 English lessons since 1996 at two ministry-designated pilot schools in Kawachi-Nagano, Osaka Prefecture.

Umemoto first worked as a specialized teacher of English at Amano Primary School before being transferred to Tako Primary School in 2006.

Currently, the fifth and sixth graders at the two pilot schools take 50 lessons a year and have tried some units from the workbooks.

Each volume of the Eigo Noto workbooks consists of nine units to be learned over 35 lessons throughout a year--or once a week. They are accompanied by teachers' manuals, which include detailed plans for each lesson to help homeroom teachers offer such lessons together with assistant language teachers.

However, "I'm afraid that you can't teach all 35 lessons just by following the lesson plans without any adjustments," Umemoto said. He believes it would be impossible to finish all the content in the workbooks as suggested in the manuals, and therefore says teachers should not become obsessed about doing so.

To illustrate how one unit is organized in the Eigo Noto workbooks, Umemoto took as an example Lesson 5 from the fifth graders' workbook, which his students were just learning at the time of the presentation.

Focusing on the names of clothing and colors, Lesson 5 starts with a listening exercise that involves looking at a picture of people wearing several kinds of clothes, including some ethnic costumes. It is followed by a chanting exercise in which the children sing the target vocabulary, and an activity using picture cards on which children add their own favorite colors and designs.

These cards are then used in a shopping game, before the unit ends with a show-and-tell session covering what the children bought while shopping.

Umemoto pointed out that teachers may be able to follow the first few tasks given in each unit, but should be flexible depending on how their students are learning.

"What you'll probably have to adjust the most is the last activity of the unit," he said. "You should adjust the final goal in accordance with [the needs of] your own students, based on which you can add games and expressions if necessary.

"Ultimately, you should create a final activity that allows every student to feel a sense of achievement--that's the basic principle."

Umemoto's school modified the final show-and-tell session by holding a "fashion show," for which the students collected real clothes from their homes, while also learning more names of items they wanted to wear in addition to those given in Eigo Noto.

Tako's version of the shopping game also added the role of models, who dispatched their "shoppers" to get their favorite items. For this activity, expressions such as "May I help you?" and "How much?" were added, although the workbook does not require students to go through the motions of paying money.

The upcoming revision will make English compulsory but not a regular subject, which requires materials to go through the regular textbook authorization process. Therefore, the Eigo Noto workbooks are not official textbooks, and schools can decide not to use them.

Umemoto regards the workbooks as a "minimum level" that presents "a basic idea on what primary school English is supposed to be like."

Therefore, "Teachers can arrange on their own to offer similar content," he said.

Although the upcoming revision will officially take effect in three years, a transitional period will start in the new school year beginning April 2009, during which the ministry expects that most schools will get a head start in offering English lessons.

Therefore, the ministry plans to distribute the complete version of the Eigo Noto workbooks by the end of this school year after partially modifying the trial version.

Meanwhile, the ministry has also been producing a software version of the workbooks that combines the content of the books and their accompanying CDs. To be used with computers or e-boards (electric white boards), the teaching aid is expected to be distributed by the end of the current school year--like Eigo Noto itself.

Umemoto understands that most primary school teachers feel more and more anxious toward the start of the transitional period next year. However, he stressed that they should not feel too rushed, referring to the saying, "The shortest way round is the longest way home."

"The shortest way is usually full of dangers that allow only a limited number of people to go through it," he said. "We should take the correct route, and it's absolutely necessary to get all the teachers involved in this issue, because English has now been positioned as part of the school curriculum."

Though this may look like a "roundabout path," Umemoto called for teachers to gather necessary information and try various methods while discussing them with their colleagues--just as teachers do for their other subjects.

'Noto' shortcomings can be overcome, expert says

Eigo Noto (English Notebook) workbooks are designed to help children become interested in language and culture. Topics include saying hello in various languages and different writing systems, as well as foods and ethnic costumes from around the world.

As a trainer for teachers of English for children, Keiko Abe-Ford appreciates this aspect about the workbooks. Abe-Ford, who has been invited by a number of primary schools to teach English to students and train teachers, runs a teacher-training company in Tokyo that is currently holding workshops on how to use the materials.

However, the Eigo Noto workbooks may be too confusing or complicated for many teachers, as the books "don't always take a step-by-step approach," Abe-Ford said during a recent interview with The Daily Yomiuri.

For example, Lesson 4 in the fifth-grade workbook focuses on the pattern "Do you like...?" The problem is, she said, the unit presents items by mixing countable and uncountable nouns--like bananas, ice cream and swimming.

"When introducing such basics to kids, they should practice countable nouns first, and then uncountable ones," she said. "By doing this, teachers can feel confident about what they're doing."

Moreover, Abe-Ford called some of the workbooks' activities a little immature for fifth and sixth graders. Therefore, she urged teachers to provide them with something that can stimulate their intellectual curiosity.

Abe-Ford suggested one possible example using the contents of Lesson 5 from the fifth graders' workbook. The unit focuses on the names of colors and articles of clothing and is accompanied by cards bearing line drawings at the end of the book.

Abe-Ford's idea goes like this: After learning the target vocabulary as a group, students are asked to turn around with their hands behind their backs. A teacher then places the cards in their hands.

The game requires the children to guess what is drawn on the cards they have been given by showing them to their classmates and asking, for example, "Do I have a cap?" until they get a "yes."

In the second round, the teacher gives the children the same cards, this time giving them a color, so that they have to ask, "Do I have a yellow cap?" In the third round, the cards are given an additional color and the students then have to be careful about the sequence: They must place the added color first: "Do I have a blue and yellow cap?"

"To improve language, students only have to repeat the target expressions," Abe-Ford said. "They don't care how they have to repeat the phrase if they're given tasks that are challenging and stimulate their curiosity."

Abe-Ford stressed that primary school teachers should be allowed to attend workshops on how to take such a step-by-step approach to the workbooks. As long as they have ideas to work with, they are capable of designing English lessons on their own, she said.

(Nov. 13, 2008)

c-faculty.chuo-u.ac.jp/~mikenix1/we/ProsaysEigoNoto.pdf

In Japan, when I ask adults why English conversation is so difficult, the most common answer is, ‘When I start to speak English, my head fills up with so many grammar rules, and then I get confused and can’t speak.’
A very easy to understand answer from a man about why speaking English is not difficult for him was, ‘For me, it’s like playing the guitar. I don’t think about it when I do it, I just feel it.’
It is important in the Gaikoku Katsudou lessons to not make the lessons grammar-focused, and also to help the students get a feel for the language. The Eigo Noto activities are chosen especially for these purposes.

Do you think the songs on the Eigo Noto CDs are too fast?! Before playing the CD version, try

• writing the words to the songs/chants on the blackboard first
• practicing the words slowly, even repeating them word-by-word, before playing the CD
• singing the songs or reading the parts yourself!
  

This is also a great time to teach students to say, "Please speak more slowly!". This was one of the first things I learned to say when learning Spanish, Indonesian and Japanese- I think it will be useful for students, too.  You'll find this and other important English for Communication on the classroom poster here.
There are some alternative audio tracks here on EigoNoto.com- click Chants & Audio in the red navigation bar or here to see them.
Kairyudo, the publisher of Eigo Noto, has even produced a slow version of the CDs- but some of these tracks are still not easy for the students to hear.