During the class, we have experienced the activity that is kind of information gap (we have card on the each back). In that activity, we could enjoy the game and also reviewed what we had learned in the reading assignments. I reconfirmed that studying must be enjoyable in order to make students concentrate on the task and keep their motivation. Speaking of motivation, in our group’s multi-genre research paper, we decided to focus on motivation in second language learning. It was extremely difficult for me to find out which reference is appropriate for our research. I thought that it is needed for us to sophisticate the references.
We have also discussed that what kinds of bilingualism we go through. According to the book of L & S, we can classify bilinguals into two. First is simultaneous bilinguals, who learn more than one language from earliest childhood. Second is sequential bilinguals, who learn another language later. In my case, as ordinary Japanese, I experienced sequential bilingual process because foreign language education starts from junior high school (from13 years old) in Japan. Nowadays, the ministry of education of Japan tries to introduce English in elementary school in order to create bilinguals. This is the highly controversial new plan. In my opinion, I strongly disagree with the new plan because there is no professional teacher who can teach English in elementary school in Japan. If the ministry of education would like to introduce teaching English, it is necessary to train the teachers who are professional of teaching English in elementary school.
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2 comments:
You're right - teachers will have to be trained to teach English in elementary school if you want to offer English at the elementary school level.
I'll agree with both you and Esther because I don't think a teacher can correctly teach Japanese children English if they've never even taught at least some English to native-speaking children.
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