西垣 知佳子

The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology c 2002 initiative to begin English education in primary schools provides educators with an important opportunity to create a curriculum of sequential learning outcomes. Previous studies comparing vocabulary featured in top selling textbooks indicate a lack of coordination in the vocabulary selected for junior and senior high school texts (Ozasa and Erikawa, 2004; Hasegawa and Chujo, 2004,), and a preliminary analysis of primary level texts (Higuchi et al., 2003) reflects this same trend. In this study, the authors examine vocabulary currently taught at each level and, based on an analysis of the vocabulary in widely published textbooks, have created a list of 514 basic but essential primary level words, 552 words for junior high school, and 1,089 terms for high school. From this list of 2,155 words, an estimated 40% are presented two or more times in textbooks taught at derent levels; therefore, without repetition, the core presented two or more times in textbooks taught at derent levels; therefore, without repetition, the core list contains 1,288 words. By constructing a sequential vocabulary curriculum, learners can continue to build on EFL learning as they proceed through each level. Although an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 words are said to be necessary for practical English competence, the vocabulary compiled in this study represents a positive step in coordinating learning outcomes for Japanese EFL learners.

日本人英語学習の弱点として,日常生活語彙の不足が指摘される。その対応として,小学校英語活動における日常生活語彙の指導に期待が寄せられている。本研究では,基礎研究として,小学生に学ばせたい日常生活語彙500語を客観的に選定し,それらに基づいて,英語カルタ教材を開発するものである。本教材は伝統的なカルタ教材の利点に加え,次のような特性を持つ。言語習得のプロセスにしたがってリスニングを重視し,無意識のうちに英語をたくさん「聞く」状況を作り出す,子どもたちの発達段階に合わせて学年を問わず繰り返し使える,他教科と連携させて使える,英語指導の経験のない学級担任が使える等の点である。本稿では,日常生活語彙の選定手順,カルタを利用した語彙指導の方法,具体的なカルタ教材作成の手法について述べる。English textbooks used in Japanese junior and senior high schools lack sufficient daily life vocabulary words such as microwave, vacuum cleaner, and faucet, etc. English teaching at Japanese elementary schools, which began in 2002, provides an opportunity to teach additional everyday vocabulary. In this study we adapted 'karuta', a traditional Japanese card game, to teach daily life vocabulary to Japanese elementary school students. Children can benefit from an enjoyable activity that provides an opportunity for exposure to English while lowering their affective filter. The target words for our daily life vocabulary karuta cards were systematically selected based on corpus linguistics techniques. The karuta cards created in this study are unique. The 'reading cards' (yomi-fuda) include information or hints about the target word such as its shape, color, size, usage, environment, habitat, etc. Students listen to these hints spoken one after another by an instructor and quickly choose the corresponding 'picture card' (e-fuda) from an array of cards in front of them. Due to the large number and extensive variety of hints listed on the reading cards, the card game can be used with students of different English levels and different cognitive abilities.

As tantalizing as the potential for corpus application is in second language acquisition, we educators seem to stumble over how to make concordancing lines understandable for learners. This study explores various criteria for evaluating text samples by difficulty level in order to provide a collection of rated parallel English-Japanese corpus texts which educators can use in ELT classrooms, and provides the rating tools and methodology so that educators can evaluate their own classroom material. Data was collected from two English-Japanese parallel corpora, and seven indices (readability scores, average word length, Japanese school textbook vocabulary coverage, BNC text coverage, Japanese vocabulary ratio, sentence length, and kanji character ratios) were applied to measure the linguistic difficulty of both English and Japanese text samples. It was noted that most Of the texts in the collection were advanced level, and that there is a shortage of copyright available e-text data at the beginner level. Nevertheless, this study identifies several applicable indices, provides a rated collection of titles at varying levels of difficulty, and takes corpus usage one step closer to its ideal application.

English has increasingly become a global language of communication, trade and research. For ESL and EFL students, the need for English for academic purposes (EAP) skills—understanding academic textbooks and journal articles and attending or giving presentations—is also growing. Academic vocabulary development is essential in order to achieve a certain proficiency in EAP. Chujo and Utiyama (2004) and Utiyama et al. (2004) have established an easy-to-use tool using nine statistical measures to identify level-specific, domain-specific words (such as EAP) from a corpus. In this study, these measures were applied to a 1.63-million-word spoken educational/informative component of the British National Corpus composed of materials such as lectures, news commentaries and classroom interaction to produce nine word lists. We examined the top 500 most outstanding words of each list and confirmed that specific statistical measures produced level-specific lists of academic words. The selected spoken EAP words are grouped into three proficiency level sub-lists, which allow users to develop spoken EAP vocabulary lists on their own contexts.

According to a recent government survey, 92.1% of elementary schools in Japan have introduced English classes by 2004. One major controversy over English education in elementary schools is how effective it is in Japan's EFL context, as distinct from an ESL context such as that in Singapore. This study addresses a lack of objective data by providing actual empirical evidence on the effectiveness of English language instruction at the elementary school level. In the school years of 2003 and 2004, 1,466 elementary school students from two different schools (School 'A' and School 'B') were given English proficiency tests. School 'A' provides English instruction at school and School 'B' does not The test scores show that students in School 'A' outperformed those at School 'B'. hi addition, all students were divided into four groups: (1) students who had English instruction both at school and outside of school; (2) students who had English instruction only at school; (3) students who had instruction only outside of school; and (4) students who did not have any English instruction. Test scores among these groups were compared and the statistical data show that students in Group (1) outperformed students in the other three groups, and students in Groups (2) and (3) outperformed students in Group (4). Furthermore, the results outlined how the English ability of students for each of the four groups improves year by year. The authors believe that the data obtained from this study will provide the basis for a fruitful discussion on English education in elementary schools in Japan.

本研究はコミュニケーション能力の養成を目的として千葉大学教育学部附属中学校で行われた指導実践の報告である。指導実践には2年生81名,3年生76名が参加し,「3ラウンド制の指導理論」に基づいた聞き取り学習を半年以上継続して行った。指導効果の検証のためのテストとして2年生にはクローズテストを,3年生には内容理解テストおよびクローズテストを指導の前後に実施した。指導効果の検証のために「指導した教材の指導効果」「指導した教材の2カ月後の定着度」「応用力の向上」「得点分布の変化」「レベル別の指導効果」などが観察された。また,学習者の情意面を観察するために指導終了後には質問紙による調査も行われた。指導の結果,2年生ではクローズテストで48点の得点上昇が確認され,3年生では内容理解テストで55点,クローズテストで53点の得点上昇があった。また,2カ月後に予告なしで行ったテストでは得点下降量は統計的に無視できるものであった。さらに3年生に行った応用力テストでは内容理解テストで20点の上昇,クローズテストで8点の上昇がそれぞれ観察された。情意面の調査では指導が好意的に受け入れられ,学習者から学習を続けたいという要望も多く寄せられた。

The objective of this study was to determine the success of a course of listening instruction administered at junior high school level. A specific feature of this listening course was the mixture of graded tasks and the varied learning resources that the students used while they were being presented with natural spoken English. Four independent groups of students, two third year classes (76 students in all) and two second year classes (81 students in all), took part, in classes for approximately six months. To measure the efficiency of the course, a listening comprehension test and a cloze test were given to the third year students, and a cloze test to the second year students before and after the instruction. The average improvement obtained by the third year students was 55 points in the comprehension test and 53 points in the cloze test, and by the second year students, 48 points in the cloze test. The effect of learning was retained even after 60 days after the instruction. The students also showed improvement in a test of listening to new material by 20 points in a comprehension test and 8 points in a cloze, test Learners' self-evaluation questionnaires also revealed the efficiency of the instruction and the students expressed positive impressions of the instruction in the classes.