By Yoko Mizui Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
MATSUYAMA--Relating English to specialized technical subjects and the issue of cultivating a communicative ability in English have been the main challenges faced by Ehime Prefectural Matsuyama Technical High School since its designation as a SELHi in 2004.
Of 101 SELHi schools throughout the country, Matsuyama is the only technical high school.
"As there is no previous school to provide an example or offer us advice, it has been very difficult for us to create a curriculum that can address these issues," said Kiwame Kono, 52, chief of the school's multimedia education department and head of its SELHi project. Of the school's nine courses, the students who are now in the second year of its Information Technology course were chosen as a SELHi class in 2004, partly because English is typically needed for circulating information as widely as possible on the Internet.
They chose environmental issues as a key subject for combining their English and IT studies and set a goal of collecting information on the local water environment and posting it on the Web in English in collaboration with a high school in the United States.
The students researched water quality and the presence of aquatic creatures in the nearby Ishitegawa river last year and input their data into a Geographic Information System (GIS) computer mapping application. In conducting the research, students worked with a local nonprofit organization concerned with water-related environmental preservation.
The students in the SELHi class have been in regular e-mail and videoconference contact with students from McKinley High School in Canton, Ohio, so that their data can be compiled along with data from the U.S. school into a joint report.
Matsuyama's connection with McKinley is a result of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund's Master Teacher Program. Participating in the program are a total of 25 primary, middle and high schools in Japan and an equal number of counterpart schools in the United States. Each school pairs up with a partner school in the other country and the paired schools develop and run two projects jointly for a period of 10 months.
Matsuyama and McKinley have been researching bugs, soil, water quality and aquatic insects. The two schools have been holding monthly videoconferences and exchanging data since September. In the new school year, Matsuyama is scheduled to pair up with Shoreline High School in Tomales, Calif.
"As our students are majoring in information technology, they need to be able to convey information overseas. I think this Master Teacher Program offers students a great opportunity to do just that and exchange information with students overseas," Kono said.
Besides the overseas connection and the unusual subject matter, the format of the English lessons in the SELHi-designated class are also quite different from regular classes. Not only does the SELHi class have three hours of English per week instead of two, the 40 students in the class are divided into five groups and each one has an assigned teacher. Although the groups basically cover the same material, they study at different levels and in a way that best corresponds with their level. From time to time, the groups meet in a classroom and review together what they have learned.
The Daily Yomiuri observed one of these classes with all groups present in February. The 40 students met in an audiovisual classroom on the second floor of the school library. The class was attended by five Japanese English-language teachers and Vania Wai Yan Ling, an assistant language teacher (ALT) from Canada.
"Last week, each group studied one different aspect relating to bullfrogs. Today, we'll review last week's lesson together," said Koji Toyama, an English-language teacher.
"Today, we'll play Who Wants to Be a SELHi Millionaire?, hosted by me," Ling said. In Ling's game, modeled after the popular TV quiz show, students were required to choose a correct answer from multiple choices starting from a 100 dollars easy question--"What does hikigaeru mean in English"--to the 1 million dollars question-- "How can we stop bullfrogs from increasing their numbers?"
All the questions were related to what they had learned in previous lessons.
After the quiz, students were told to discuss the last question in their respective groups. The five teachers spread out to assist them. The students discussed the issue for about 10 minutes and representatives of each group offered their conclusions to the rest of the class.
"I think it's important to study grammar, but I also think this kind of lesson, which cannot be done in a regular class, can also be very useful. Teachers say that we should study practical English," said Yuto Kubo, a second-year student.
A classmate, Tomoya Kawamoto, described the class as interesting.
Yasuhisa Kajiwara, principal of the high school, said Japanese teachers of English were working hard to figure out what they could achieve with a limited number of English lessons.
"I hear that at some SELHi schools, they teach English six hours a week. But as our school isn't aiming at college entrance, we cannot devote so many hours just to English. So the English taught in our school is not for use in passing college entrance exams but as a tool of communication," he said. He also mentioned that thanks to the SELHi designation, the school can have an ALT stationed at the school every day.
Matsuyama is the first school at which Ling has ever taught English.
"I was surprised to come to this school as I'm not only teaching English, I'm also helping to teach biology. Most schools teach with a regular English textbook. However, we are teaching using information that the students have gathered. We don't have a textbook that was provided by the board of education," she said.
Instead of using stipulated textbooks, Matsuyama uses original materials for its SELHi class. Until last October, students used texts relating to aquatic wildlife that Kono found on the Internet, and prepared presentations to be made in their monthly videoconferences held in September and November.
For the more detailed November videoconference, each group made a presentation in English about different invasive alien species. Since then, each group has used the presentation content created by the other groups--subject to some editing by the teachers--as its own study material.
"We were lucky as Vania majored in biology at a university," Kono said.
"Multiteam teaching is very challenging, but I think it's a good opportunity to combine many different ideas and to try to think of the best way to teach students about English and about science," Ling said.
Kono thinks Ling's presence at the school helps a lot to motivate students to study English.
"I think her friendly personality and her curiosity in all kinds of things have a great influence on students and teachers," he said.
Kono moved to this school four years ago after teaching at a number of high schools with good records of sending students to prestigious universities. He believes English should be taught so that students can utilize it for life rather than just as a tool to pass university entrance examinations.
"It's not just a case of teaching English. I also want to have students learn about their local environment in cooperation with other organizations. By focusing on the environment around them, I hope students' interest in the environment will grow from a local to a global scale," he said.
(Mar. 7, 2006)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/language/20060307TDY16001.htm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment