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1. And what the objective means The purpose is not be telling you what language you should be teaching and it is not

to give you a set of activities to do in class. My rationale is that you are all qualified and capable teachers who know your students and how they learn best. However, a number of teachers have expressed concern about not really knowing what to teach. I have seen that many others just follow the textbook from start to finish.

I want to help you make decisions about content rather than relying on the textbook to decide on content. Remember that unlike other subjects, the English textbook is not compulsory.

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My italics. This raises some questions – next slide

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And maybe a more important question for us today – next slide

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There are no correct answers, but these are things that each school needs to be thinking about, as MEXT also says that each local Board of Education is supposed to refine the overall objective to fit their context. Each school is then supposed to refine the objective further, considering their own students.

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Here’s how one school did this. We can see that the objective is just a reordering/simplification of the MEXT objective. My favourite part is here (英語ノート crossed out and Hi, Friends hand written in). This school clearly plans to use the new textbook to teach the contents of the old one! Amusing as it may be, ask yourself if your school is any different. One vice-principal told me that he thought this was typical for virtually all schools ... He had no idea about his own school.

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And here’s what some teachers I work with have told me. 1. Fun is good, but is it helping the students to do something with English? It may

depend on the game, but without some kind of follow up, the answer is probably “no”.

2. OK, but have you thought about what you want the students to be able to do? Does the textbook achieve that? Does it help?

3. Great. You’ve realised we can’t follow the teachers’ book blindly. We need to think about our particular students. The same applies for the student textbook.

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1. As MEXT says that “in principle”, English should be chosen for foreign language activities.

If we accept these assumptions, it’s surely important to think carefully about what the objectives should be. Lets start by looking at some of the things we can teach.

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ELL stands for English language learners. You have an English and a Japanese version. Try to work quickly. You have 10 minutes. Now you have a list of language to work with, we need to consider how the students will use it. It may pay to look at how children use language – next slide

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Their personal world is “family, friends, belongings, feelings, and thoughts about others” (Garcia, 2006, p178).

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All of these sentences could be interactional, but some fit only into the interactional category. They are the ones you should place there.

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Did you get the same answers? Respond to any comments. *Most likely difference is f). Can I have one? is an utterance that tries to induce an action in the listener – giving something to the speaker. Asking for permission is included in this function.

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Assign one section per group. Do not assign Beginning Literacy as aspects of this will likely be covered in conjunction with all of the other sections. As an example, draw attention to lesson 3 in Hi Friends 2 (the textbook). It contains some useful language for self introductions and an activity “Lets Introduce ourselves” but the activity (strangely) does not involve self introductions. We would need to supplement the textbook here.

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Lets look at what these might be – next slide.

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Subject = students Performance is what they will be able to do (introduce themselves or follow directions). Conditions: If following directions is the performance, 3 step verbal might be the conditions. It tells us what kind of directions. This might also include what language could be used –using the vocabulary on p6-7 of Hi Friends 2 – or any other conditions.

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How the performance will be observed or tested. The main form of measurement I see is classroom observation, but as I’m sure you are aware, there are other methods available.

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MEXT warns against a focus on language skills as such. The criteria can easily be adapted to match MEXT guidelines by including these things and other behaviours that enhance communication (manners, for example). Of course specific language skills will help significantly in getting the message across.

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I will upload them to Keynet where they will be available for everyone.

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