From 2013, the current national curriculum guideline for special needs school began to apply to deaf schools’ high school departments and lasted three years. In that new guideline, the subjects of English were changed thoroughly. In 2016, the Central Council for Education in Japan officially announced the policy report for the next national curriculum guideline starting from 2022. In this report, and in accordance with globalization, an idea for new English subjects in high-school education is provided.
However, in the education for the deaf, many tasks were indicated in the instruction process of teaching English as a foreign language because students have difficulty in listening and speaking. Moreover, in reading and writing activities, it is also necessary for the teachers to consider the procedure for students to acquire basic Japanese skills, with particular attention given in accordance with the variety of deaf student’s levels.
In this paper, the authors summarize the results of the survey of the Japanese deaf schools given in the first year of the current national curriculum guideline. The authors also proposed some tasks and discussed possible ways for deaf students to acquire English competency with a view toward the contents of the next new national curriculum.