<研究ノート>私立H高校の英語教育改革実践2年目 --「英表文法」クラスから「英語表現」へ--

Abstract

This paper reports the practice of the second year of in-service teacher education that the author has been involved during the academic year (AY) of 2019 at H Private Senior High School (H HS). In this year the training focused on English Expression (EE), one of the main subjects in high school English education. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) set an ambitious goal for this subject, in the New Course of Study Guidelines (2018), including convincing and appropriate writing not only on daily matters but also on social issues. However, a large number of schools rarely spare time for developing students' speaking/writing abilities; they solely spend time on grammar and preparation for university entrance exams in their EE classes. In order to change the subject EE to a real "expression" course, the AY 2019 in-service teacher education sessions tackled the following issues: [Session 1] Understanding the aim of EE through actually experiencing the writing and speaking tasks to be conducted in it, and designing worksheets for possible tasks that each teacher would need in teaching their EE class; [Session 2] Discussing the types of post-writing feedback and making their choice; [Session 3] Expanding the repertoire of useful drills to use for English output; and [Session 4] Discussing what are appropriate and desirable output tasks for students to be engaged in after a unit of reading in the subject of Communication English (not EE). All EE classes at H HS started to include some English essay writing tasks in AY 2019, but the teaching practice is still in the trial and error stage. EE involves students' English production, not the teachers', which forces EE reform to take a longer time than that of Communication English.