For the experienced and “in the know” teachers –
Back in Fall 2021, MEXT made some announcements for their educational unification process and this did include changing English Education somewhat. There were some changes for ALTs, JTEs, and NE-TE.
Some noted here. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2O\_0kckSYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2O_0kckSYo)
In my job, nothing changed for April 2022 except some JTEs had new textbooks. Not better books, just “new” and “in accordance with new curriculum.”
For Native Teachers of English, in Senior High, the main changes seemed to be that there would be “English Expressions and Logic” for all 3 years of secondary, not just the first AND that English should indeed be taught in English. (Side note: A core idea was also that classes should not focus on the minutiae of making Japanese speakers of English **sound** like “Native” speakers of English, but to support the students in being able to express themselves more fully – so being able to LIVE potentially in an English-speaking environ is more the focus rather than precise accent stress.
Anyway, after all that, what are some of the additional changes or updates or implementations of English education for the 2023-2024 year?
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The school I am at is going to start the “English Expressions and Logic” course for the 2nd year high school students this coming April. First year doing it. Shockingly, here it is March, and they have no course plan or curriculum made for it, yet it starts April 10.
My guess is that for 2024-2025, they will start the course for 3rd year students.
We have not been given any other info from the department leader.
What is an NTE?
English Expressions and Logic is just rebranded English Expressions from the previous curriculum, which was where they took the one course that actually seemed about speaking English, Oral Communication from the curriculum before that, and added a bunch of grammar to it.
The MEXT talk is all lip service, looking at the textbooks, Expressions and Logic all have a heavy grammar focus that needs to be studied, otherwise student’s are going to be even worse off when they get into the 2nd grade level which has even more difficult grammar structures. Looking at all the textbooks labeled English Communication and they are basically all just collections of long form writing, with next to no actual communication in them. TLDR: The current high school curriculums are terrible for actually fostering communication in English because it’s just a bit of lip service on the same thing they’ve been doing for decades.
Cambridge actually got a textbook approved for the new course of study. If anyone has actually seen this textbook being used, I would love to know how it went.
It looks really good.
[https://cambridge-university-press.jp/cambridge_club/cambridge-experience-1/](https://cambridge-university-press.jp/cambridge_club/cambridge-experience-1/)
Even the Japanese publishers of more traditional gramma translation textbooks do know their time is coming to a close. The Japanese national entrance exam for state universities is now based around CEFR B2 descriptors; however, the JTEs are still teaching grammar translation. It used to be that the JTEs could say they teach that way for the University entrance exams, but as time moves on the real reason is making tests for grammar translation questions requires next to no skill.