The Latest News in ELT

October 2002

Aiming High in Okinawa
Okinawa's Prefectural Board of Education has decreed that from 2003, all English teachers at its junior and senior high schools have five years to pass the "pre-first" level (jun-ikkyu) of the Eiken English test. The board plans to run preparatory courses to hep teachers achieve this aim. Jun-ikkyu is considered the level achieved by a university English major half-way through a BA course. Ikkyu indicates the ability to discuss social issues fluently. As of July 2000, out of a total of 460 high school teachers, 160 had passed the jun-ikkyu and only eight had passed the first level (ikkyu). (October 31, 2002 )

Support a Good Cause
On Sunday, 17th November, there will be a benefit concert for Amnesty International in Ebisu, Tokyo. Tokyo's premier R & B group, The Howling Loochie Brothers, supported by the Tim Leffman, will play music for dancing from eight until late (doors open at 7 pm). Entrance is by ticket, or donation at the door (2,000 yen). All welcome. The venue is What the Dickens, three minutes' walk from Ebisu station (JR and subway). Famous English-style beers and a range of delicious food (in BIG portions) will be available. Tel: (03) 3780-2099. (October 30, 2002 )

Noise Pollution Harms Learning Development
A recent decision in a major noise pollution case could have educational ramifications. Nearly 5,000 people living near Atsugi air base were awarded 2.7 billion yen in damages as compensation for various forms of physical suffering. New Scientist magazine reports that, according to a recent study carried out in Germany, one result of such noise pollution is increased levels of stress hormones in children. Together with the noise itself, this can interfere with their speech perception, reading ability and long-term memory. There have been similar studies but this research, which focused on one group of children living next to a newly opened airport and others next to one which was closed down, is the first to show that the drop in memory and reading skills is reversible. One result of the Atsugi case has been a reduction in the tolerable noise level in Japan. (October 29, 2002 )

School Violence to be Halved in Five Years
Following a meeting on "basic problems", the Central Education Council of the education ministry has announced a plan to reduce bullying and violence in schools "by half" and "significantly reduce truancy" over the next five years. The ministry said that figures were included in the plan so as make the goal of "improving schools and education easily understood". However schools have already expressed reservations about setting such arbitrary target figures. (October 28, 2002 )

Kyushu Students Talk Their Way to the Top
A pair of female students from Kitakyushu University beat 29 other teams from 21 universities to win the fifth University Debating Competition 2002 in Tokyo last week. Runners-up were a team from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The topic for the final was the necessity of weapons of mass destruction. The event was organized by the English-Speaking Union of Japan and TV Tokyo (channel 12). Guest lecturers from the UK, including from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, took part in the event. (October 25, 2002 )

World's Largest Simultaneous Lesson
Teachers and students worldwide are preparing to set a new world record for the World's Largest Simultaneous Lesson. Organized by English-to-go, the global English lesson on the issue of landmines is expected to break the Guinness World Record, set last year by more than 2,000 teachers and almost 80,000 students. The event will take place on Tuesday, November 12th, and is free and open to anyone. For more information and to download the lesson, visit http://www.english-to-go.com/largest. (October 24, 2002 )

JALT2002 Four Corners Tour
Every year, in the week immediately preceding JALT's national conference, a few of the featured speakers visit several of the local chapters to give them a small taste of what is to come. This year's tour is supported by the British Council and Educational Testing Services. It is scheduled to begin on Saturday, November 16, with featured speakers Jane Willis from Aston University, Birmingham and William Grabe, of Northern Arizona University. They will be visiting chapters throughout the Kanto, Kansai and Kyushu regions. More details are available on the Four Corners Tour page. (October 23, 2002 )

Tokyo English Language Book Fair
The Tokyo English Language (TEL) Book Fair will be held on October 26th and 27th in Ikebukuro,Tokyo. The TEL Book Fair is an annual two-day exhibition organized by a group of leading American and British ELT publishers. It is an opportunity for teachers of English to view an extensive range of new and recent ELT materials. The Fair features a schedule of over 60 presentations by teachers and publishers. Presenters include ELT News contributors Marc Helgesen (Saturday) and Chuck Sandy (Sunday). For more information see this site, or contact Macmillan Language House: 03-5833-1017 or Oxford University Press: 03-3459-6481. (October 22, 2002 )

Some Regions to Abolish School Districts
Five regional authorities are to abolish the school district system, which prohibits students from applying to high schools outside their own or neighboring districts. Tokyo and Wakayama Prefecture are to introduce the changes in the next academic year, Fukui Prefecture the following year, and Mie and Gunma Prefectures in the future. Until the law was abolished in the Diet last year, regional education boards had to create school districts in order to manage so-called "exam hell" and the number of students who continue to third-level education. After the law was dropped, changes announced by local governments around the country take two main forms: abolishing or expanding districts, and accepting more students from outside. The changes will allow more freedom of choice to students but increase competition between high schools. (October 21, 2002 )

Saitama, Gunma Universities to Merge
In what will be the first unification of national universities across prefectural boundaries, Saitama and Gunma Universities plan to merge in two years. The plan calls for the education departments of both colleges to be combined in Saitama, and the literature and science schools to be fused into a new department in Gunma, in October 2004. The presidents of both universities have been discussing the plan since January. The merged institution will have the second largest faculty in the country, after Tokyo University. (October 18, 2002 )

Nobel Winner Struggles With English
Koichi Tanaka (43), one of the two Japanese scientists to be awarded a Nobel Prize last week, may have a brilliant mind, but English is not his strong point. "I got a phone call in English and I could make out 'Nobel something' and 'congratulations,' but I really didn't understand," he is reported as saying. Maybe he will spend some of the 10 million yen he will be awarded for his efforts on eikaiwa lessons. Tanaka won the prize in Chemistry for his work on identifying proteins using mass spectrometry. (October 17, 2002 )

Bilingual Activism to Save the Earth
A recent issue of the Nikkei Weekly reported on a new bilingual web site that promotes Japan's often unseen environmental efforts. Through her work as a simultaneous interpreter working mainly in the field of environmental issues, Junko Edahiro saw that news of the majority of initiatives in her home country were not being relayed to the rest of the world. Lack of English skills and Japanese modesty were seen as the main barriers. To address the issue, she started the Japan for Sustainability NGO in August. The NGO's 100 or so volunteers include translators and native checkers who help reports from some 1,000 companies reach the outside world. The web site is at www.japanfs.org. (October 16, 2002 )

Average Grades Up in Tokyo
The Tokyo metropolitan government has announced test figures based on the recently introduced absolute grading system. The system grades all students based on a national standard rather than the previous system which used class averages. Under the old system, grades from 1-5 were assigned with a fixed percentage of students receiving each grade. Following the change, the number of students receiving the higher grades (5 and 4) has increased, with a fall in the number of those getting a 2 or a 1. There are variations of course, with seven schools having over 50% of grade 5's and two still allocating grades by the old percentages.

Old system						New system
5	4	3	2	1		5	4	3	2	1
7%	24%	38%	24%	7%		9.7%	25.2	41.8%	17.5%	5.8%

(October 15, 2002 )

University Applications Up
A recent education ministry report shows that the number of applications for university places this spring was up for the second year running, by 5.2% to over 3.65 million. This is in spite of the decline in the number of 18-year olds and reflects the fact that more high-school graduates are making multiple applications. The applications-to-places ratio increased by 0.3 points to 6.7. (October 14, 2002 )

Bilingual vs Immersion Debate in US
The issue of how best to educate the 4.4 million non-native English speaking children in public schools in the US has raised its head again. 30 states have implemented regulations to cater to these children, of which 28 use the bilingual system. Students study most subjects in their first language, often Spanish, and learn English gradually. But following the lead of California in 1998 and Arizona in 2000, two more states are proposing switching to an immersion program. Students in Massachusetts and Colorado would go through an ESL program for a year before joining regular lessons. California, a quarter of whose students are non-native English speakers, has seen a doubling in the number of 1st-3rd grade students scoring above the 50% level since 1998. Read the full article. (October 11, 2002 )

University Enrollment Woes
One of the main reasons that competition is growing between the nation's universities is the falling birthrate. The figures show that the number of 18-year olds has dropped from 2.04 million ten years ago to 1.51 million in 2001. It is predicted that by 2009, the number of high-school graduates applying to universities will match enrollment capacity for the first time. Already, in the current academic year, some 28% of the country's 512 national universities failed to achieve full enrollment. As about 70% of their revenue is generated by tuition fees, this is a serious problem. (October 10, 2002 )

New Addition to Longman Family
Jonah Glick at Longman recently became the father of a beautiful baby girl. Hanah was born at the end of last month. Congratulations from everyone at ELT News to Jonah and his wife Harumi. A quick note to those of you wishing to send a message of congratulations in Japanese: please note the difference in kanji between "shussan" and "shuppan"! (October 09, 2002 )

UK A-level Fiasco
In the UK, tens of thousands of students are to have their A-level exams re-examined due to a row over alleged grade fixing. The case blew up when the government was forced to deny claims that they had pressured exam boards to downgrade the results of tests which were judged by some to have become too easy. Following an inquiry, the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA exam boards agreed to review the tests of over 90,000 students in 18 subjects, including English literature. No grades will be reduced as a result of the review, but there may be considerable confusion for students who have already started at universities that were not their first choice. (October 08, 2002 )

Improbable Research is Rewarded
If you need to explain the word "ignoble" to your students, you could try using the annual "Ig Nobel Prize" honors as an example. The awards are handed out each year at Harvard University by the distinctly un-stuffy US science magazine "Annals of Improbable Research" to those engaged in scientific studies that "cannot or should not be reproduced." This year's winners included the Japanese researchers who invented a computerised dog-to-human translation device, which they named "Bow-lingual". Other scientists received awards for reports on such subjects as the "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants" and "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture." (October 07, 2002 )

Heinle to Host Web Cast on Reading
Heinle Publishers, the specialized language part of The Thomson Corporation, will host its second international web cast for teachers of ESL/EFL on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 at 3:30 pm EDT. Reading specialist Dr. Neil J. Anderson will present “Improving Fluency in Second Language Reading” and will answer questions during this live, interactive video conference via the Web. Participants will learn best practices for teaching beginning to advanced students and will come away with practical ideas and materials to use in their classrooms. For more info, see the Heinle web site. (October 04, 2002 )

eigoTown.com Publishes Free Magazine for English Learners
eigoTown.com announced this week the publication of eigoWorld, the first free magazine for Japanese learners of English. The first issue of the magazine, designed for the general adult reader interested in English, contains articles on telephone English, choosing between Britain and America as a destination to study, Irish and English pubs, British and American English and more, including an interview with Japan-based photographer to the stars, Curtis Knapp. Universities and schools can have sets of 100 copies delivered postage-free for distribution to their students. Contact: sales@eltnews.com with your name, position, delivery address and the number of copies you need. (October 03, 2002 )

Elementary Schoolkids More Diligent Than University Students
In an example of the upside down system of Japanese education, a recent Home Affairs Ministry report has shown that elementary school children study more on average than their undergraduate or postgraduate counterparts. The study patterns of 200,000 students aged 10 or older revealed that the average elementary school pupil crams in 4 hours, 41 minutes of study a day. In comparison, the average for third-level students was only 2 hours, 59 minutes per day. (October 02, 2002 )

English Teacher Mauled by Bear
An English teacher was attacked by a bear while hiking on a nature trail in the mountain resort area of Karuizawa at the weekend. The 41-year old woman from the UK was reported to have been mauled and received injuries requiring 10 days' treatment. The bear, which is believed to have been protecting two cubs, drew itself to its full height and attacked the woman as she approached. Police said they were searching for the animals in the surrounding mountains. (October 01, 2002 )

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