尾道市立日比崎小学校における外国語活動の実践報告

Hibizaki Municipal Elementary School in Onomichi City had been experimentally involved in foreign language activities for six years between 2005 and 2010. The involvement was reported and examined in my paper included in the 2011 edition of this bulletin. This year (2012) I aim to report and examine the activities conducted in Hibizaki in 2011, the year when foreign language activities were formally introduced in every elementary school in Japan. In 2011 I visited Hibizaki six times in total and, as an advisor, attended foreign language activities-related classes. This paper focuses on the class I attended on 18 November 2011. The class was for the 6th grade (36 pupils), and taught by the HRT and an ALT from Australia. Here are 7 characteristic features of the activities conducted in the class: (1) The activities are, by being related to the other activities and subjects, are firmly integrated into the whole school curriculum; (2) Through items to be taught, the activities are connected with English taught as a subject at junior high school; (3) The goal of the whole unit, that of each class, and evaluation criteria are organically related to each other and explicitly shown in the class; (4) In listening activities the pupils naturally pay attention to what is being spoken. Tasks for listening are easy enough for them to handle; (5) Questions asked by the teachers are not answered by the teachers themselves. Instead, the pupils are encouraged to think hard to answer them; (6) The pupils have their intellectual curiosity stimulated; (7) In speaking activities, the pupils basically use expressions they have already become familiar with in the listening activities.