Teacher launches survey of ELT in Japan to present to the Ministry of Education

March 13, 2010

Douglas Meyer, a veteran teacher based in Osaka, is organising a nationwide survey of English language teaching in Japan and plans to submit a report to the Ministry of Education. There are actually two separate surveys. Click here if you teach at elementary, middle or high school. Click here if you teach at college or university. Those who teach at both can fill in both surveys

Douglas says: 'This data will be used as part of a report I plan to present to the Ministry of Education in order to improve the quality of language education in Japan, and improve mutual understanding between employers and employees. Please take just 5-10 minutes to complete this survey and add your voice to hundreds of other EFL teachers!'

Exposure to Letters A or F before tests affects performance

March 12, 2010

Seeing the letter A before an exam can improve a student's exam result while exposure to the letter F may make a student more likely to fail. This finding is published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology in March 2010.

The study, carried out by Dr Keith Ciani and Dr Ken Sheldon at the University of Missouri, USA, investigated whether exposing students to the letters A or F before a test affected how they performed, and a significant correlation was found. Dr Keith Ciani said: "These findings suggest that exposure to letters A and F, even without any explicit reference to success or failure, significantly affected the students' performance on the tests .... We believe that the meanings inherent in the evaluative letters were enough to influence their performance through the motivational state that they produced. Exposure to the letter A made the students non-consciously approach the task with the aim to succeed, while exposure to letter F made the students non-consciously want to avoid failure. Research suggests that when people approach tasks with the desire to succeed they perform better than when striving to avoid failure.'

Click here for the research paper.

Will international school students be subsidized?

March 11, 2010

The government aims to make public high schools free and give a subsidy of ¥120,000 per student to families with children at private high schools. It is still not clear whether this will include students at international schools. The government has talked about providing subsidies as long as the school curriculum is equivalent to the curriculum at public high schools, but it is not clear how similar the curriculums need to be.

Some of those who are opposed to subsidizing students at North Korean high schools have pointed out that textbooks at these schools do not mention the abduction of Japanese citizens to North Korea. If so, does that mean that international schools would also need to follow government textbook guidelines? Prime Minister Hatoyama has said that the decision on which students to subsidize should be based on fair and objective guidelines, but what those guidelines are is not clear. There is likely to be a heated debate on this issue over the next few months.

The Japan Times reports that subsidies will not make much difference to families with children attending international schools where lessons are taught in English because the fees are so high and ¥120,000 a year will not reduce them by a significant percentage, but the subsidy will make a significant difference to families with children attending international schools where lessons are taught in other languages.