JHS hours to increase to 4 a week!

[AVN]

So I was looking through the new JHS textbooks to prepapre for next school year. I started this last summer and noticed that there was a lot crammed in there.
When I went through it today it was confirmed there are many extra lessons and they cover some lessons that were previously in the book for the grade above.
So I asked my JTE to confirm my suspicion and yep as of this April JHS English hours will go up to 4 hours a week. Adding an extra 40ish hours a year!
How is this going to affect you? Are you preparing/prepared?
You might want to ask as your hours of work may also be going up.

I know it's kind of good for the students though I don't think cramming more in will really help... I think if they kept a similar amount and increased the hours it would be great but just jamming more in... that will just overburden them.

[Amy_NagasakiPA]

Ahhhh I knew the numbers of hours per week was increasing but I guess I thought it just meant more time to do the same amount of work, or better, extra oral communication time. If the amount of textbook work to be covered has simply increased proportionally, that's not so good.
I haven't seen the new textbooks. Aside from the increased volume of work, what do you think of them? Any interesting topics? I use New Crown and Eigo Note but even if you don't, I'd like to hear.

[AVN]

Ahhhh I knew the numbers of hours per week was increasing but I guess I thought it just meant more time to do the same amount of work, or better, extra oral communication time. If the amount of textbook work to be covered has simply increased proportionally, that's not so good.
I haven't seen the new textbooks. Aside from the increased volume of work, what do you think of them? Any interesting topics? I use New Crown and Eigo Note but even if you don't, I'd like to hear.

I use Sunshine and Eigo Note(kind of).
Eigo Note has a new book coming out but it's not an upgrade of Eigo Note it's a brand new book Hi, Friends! I've only looked through the course outline for it the book is not available yet.

Sunshine has some adjustments that I approve of, certain targets are taught in a more logical order but then others I don't get why they changed things, it wasn't broken. Or they drag a simple target (like Does and Doesn't) out over two lessons (book lessons not class periods). In the old book does and doesn't were taught in the same lesson now they're somehow supposed to be taught separately. Then they've increased the number of Units (programs as they call them) by 2 or 3 in each book. I feel this defeats the purpose. They aren't even really new targets. They took some targets from Sunshine 2 and tagged them onto Sunshine 1 and so forth. they changed the readings but I wouldn't really say they're all improvements as many are still not very day to day useful in terms of vocab. Though that's not entirely the fault of the books as they have to cover what's going to be on the test so if environmental words may appear on the test they have to cover them even if it's useless and perhaps discourages the students.

[5pool]

So I was looking through the new JHS textbooks to prepapre for next school year. I started this last summer and noticed that there was a lot crammed in there.
When I went through it today it was confirmed there are many extra lessons and they cover some lessons that were previously in the book for the grade above.
So I asked my JTE to confirm my suspicion and yep as of this April JHS English hours will go up to 4 hours a week. Adding an extra 40ish hours a year!
How is this going to affect you? Are you preparing/prepared?
You might want to ask as your hours of work may also be going up.

I know it's kind of good for the students though I don't think cramming more in will really help... I think if they kept a similar amount and increased the hours it would be great but just jamming more in... that will just overburden them.

i think this is excellent. i'm assuming an hour of other classes will be cut though to accommodate for more english?

as for ALTs, most that i know still don't do 1/2 the amount of work japanese teachers do. we should be doing more.

[Amy_NagasakiPA]

From what I can tell, in my schools, the time given to 総合 (sougou, the integrated study period) is being reduced. Maybe other things are being cut too.
Of course I think more English is good, but more time for non-textbook activities putting English to use would be even better. Hmmm.

I don't think I'll have any more hours than I do, because I go around many different schools, so I already have English with each class each time I am at a school. Their extra hour would be on a day when I'm not there, unless they decide on double-periods of English.

[Namisuke]

Do you think the addition of hours is due to the changes to the Course of Study? The number of words they have to know increased like crazy!

Taken from the revisions (http://www.mext.go.jp/english/elsec/__i ... 55_001.pdf):

Enhancement of foreign language education

○ To introduce foreign language activities into primary schools, with teaching centered on listening & speaking （Primary grades 5&6）.
○ Well balanced teaching of 4 skills (listening / speaking / reading / writing) in middle school.
○ To increase words to be taught by 300 words from 900 to 1200.
○ English classes should be conducted principally in English in high school.
○ To increase words to be taught by 500 words from 1300 to 1800.

I am curious what classes will look like when they are taught principally in English! I am also curious if they will only pull out the English when it comes to their review days. I am also curious to see how teachers will allow students to speak for 1/4 of the class time. I am hoping English lecture-style lessons will finally subside due to these changes Maybe they double-up on some lesson topics to give time for more speaking...?

[AVN]

Do you think the addition of hours is due to the changes to the Course of Study? The number of words they have to know increased like crazy!

Taken from the revisions (http://www.mext.go.jp/english/elsec/__i ... 55_001.pdf):

Enhancement of foreign language education

○ To introduce foreign language activities into primary schools, with teaching centered on listening & speaking （Primary grades 5&6）.
○ Well balanced teaching of 4 skills (listening / speaking / reading / writing) in middle school.
○ To increase words to be taught by 300 words from 900 to 1200.
○ English classes should be conducted principally in English in high school.
○ To increase words to be taught by 500 words from 1300 to 1800.

I am curious what classes will look like when they are taught principally in English! I am also curious if they will only pull out the English when it comes to their review days. I am also curious to see how teachers will allow students to speak for 1/4 of the class time. I am hoping English lecture-style lessons will finally subside due to these changes Maybe they double-up on some lesson topics to give time for more speaking...?

Yeah but saying teachers are supposed to do these new things and enforcing it are two different things.
I doubt we'll be seeing much of a change in the way JTEs teach unless they were already trying to do things like this...

[Mordoc]

I was looking for something exactly like that from MEXT a month or so ago, thanks for finding it! Anyway I think not much really is going to change. Unless the teachers are going to have someone looking over them constantly, I think they are going to just keep doing what they are doing. I actually found an interesting article about textbook writing, it's from 5 years ago, but it offeres interesting insight.
http://jalt.org/pansig/2007/HTML/Hardy.htm
The authors admit that communicative language teaching is more effective, but most Japanese teachers know absolutely nothing about it, so they aren't going to do it. To put things into perspective, MEXT was saying the same things in 2005 about improving English education as they are saying now, and I haven't really seen any difference in 6 years.
Also, 1200 words spread out over 3 years is not really very much at all for learning a language. If you average it out, it becomes about 8-10 words per week, not really all that much, that's only 1-2 words per day. The problem (at least at my school) is that lessons are so boring that the kids just don't care, so they don't put any effort into it.

[AVN]

I was looking for something exactly like that from MEXT a month or so ago, thanks for finding it! Anyway I think not much really is going to change. Unless the teachers are going to have someone looking over them constantly, I think they are going to just keep doing what they are doing. I actually found an interesting article about textbook writing, it's from 5 years ago, but it offeres interesting insight.
http://jalt.org/pansig/2007/HTML/Hardy.htm
The authors admit that communicative language teaching is more effective, but most Japanese teachers know absolutely nothing about it, so they aren't going to do it. To put things into perspective, MEXT was saying the same things in 2005 about improving English education as they are saying now, and I haven't really seen any difference in 6 years.
Also, 1200 words spread out over 3 years is not really very much at all for learning a language. If you average it out, it becomes about 8-10 words per week, not really all that much, that's only 1-2 words per day. The problem (at least at my school) is that lessons are so boring that the kids just don't care, so they don't put any effort into it.

I think the other problem with the vocabulary is which 1200 words they're learning. It's the same problem I sometimes have with the JLPT. They include words that aren't useful on a daily basis.
I know many of my JHS students who are learning words like pollution, solar power, engine cells, etc etc and they still can't have a basic conversation.

[Mordoc]

I think the other problem with the vocabulary is which 1200 words they're learning. It's the same problem I sometimes have with the JLPT. They include words that aren't useful on a daily basis.
I know many of my JHS students who are learning words like pollution, solar power, engine cells, etc etc and they still can't have a basic conversation.

I agree completely. They're definitely not drawing on the most common words in English. I think we should take more of a Cat in the Hat approach, and make stories out of words they should be learning instead of teaching them random vocabulary to fit in with the story. Then again, it's not our call, we're just assistant teachers.

[OdysseyOfNoises]

as for ALTs, most that i know still don't do 1/2 the amount of work japanese teachers do. we should be doing more.

This is a really useless comparison to make, regardless of how many hours ALTs work.

[Siyris]

I'm just excited that my JTE is on board.... she said that even though there is more material in the new books (honestly it's not that much more... the lessons are laid out about the same, each lesson just has a bit more vocab words in it), she's going to give me a class a month (maybe twice a month) to use as an "ALTs Class" in which I can come up with an activity centered around actual communication instead of simply copying the sample sentences from the book and changing the nouns and verbs. I'm really excited to have four classes per week starting in April.... it'll also mean less time twiddling my thumbs at my desk.

[AVN]

as for ALTs, most that i know still don't do 1/2 the amount of work japanese teachers do. we should be doing more.

This is a really useless comparison to make, regardless of how many hours ALTs work.

I also know some of the work Japanese teachers do has nothing to do with their actual classes, like preparing meetings, club activities, festivals etc.
On top of that many ALTs aren't given the opportunity to do much more than they already do. I agree some could do more but I don't think that's relevant to this at the moment.
I do hope though that like Siyris said it will allow some of us to have more time or make more of a difference.

[Siyris]

I also know some of the work Japanese teachers do has nothing to do with their actual classes, like preparing meetings, club activities, festivals etc.
On top of that many ALTs aren't given the opportunity to do much more than they already do. I agree some could do more but I don't think that's relevant to this at the moment.
I do hope though that like Siyris said it will allow some of us to have more time or make more of a difference.

If you want to have more time or make more of a difference in your placements, I would suggest talking to your JTEs now rather than wait until April... once things are planned out, they're pretty set... so if you can catch it in the planning stages (like I did) you might have a better chance of getting a 'yes' as an answer. Also, go into a discussion about bringing the ALT into the picture a bit more with a solid idea for a few lessons. I talked to my JTE with four full hour-long lessons plans that were each different but still focused in on communication and using English in a spontaneous way. I think if I hadn't had those lesson plans, the answer would have been no.

[AVN]

I also know some of the work Japanese teachers do has nothing to do with their actual classes, like preparing meetings, club activities, festivals etc.
On top of that many ALTs aren't given the opportunity to do much more than they already do. I agree some could do more but I don't think that's relevant to this at the moment.
I do hope though that like Siyris said it will allow some of us to have more time or make more of a difference.

If you want to have more time or make more of a difference in your placements, I would suggest talking to your JTEs now rather than wait until April... once things are planned out, they're pretty set... so if you can catch it in the planning stages (like I did) you might have a better chance of getting a 'yes' as an answer. Also, go into a discussion about bringing the ALT into the picture a bit more with a solid idea for a few lessons. I talked to my JTE with four full hour-long lessons plans that were each different but still focused in on communication and using English in a spontaneous way. I think if I hadn't had those lesson plans, the answer would have been no.

Good advice, though I'm fine in my situation I get almost half the class everytime and we discuss lessons together all the time. I'm good