SELHi in action / Practice perfects English presentations
This is the 22nd installment in a series on the government-designated Super English Language High School (SELHi) pilot project.
UEDA, Nagano--One day in February, six third-year students were ready to make their presentations to their classmates and to the first and second-year students of the Intercultural Understanding Course at Nagano Prefectural Ueda Someyaoka High School.
Although they had already given the presentations in their own class, this was their big moment--a chance to present their graduation theses to their juniors.
Their themes were varied, including "A Sense of World Time," "Water: The Starting Point of Your Beauty Life," and "The Japanese Jury System."
As these six students were representatives of the 42 third-year students in the course, each presentation was impressive in terms of content and pronunciation, though some of them relied too heavily on simply reading out a prepared text.
By putting a lot of questions to the audience, Moemi Katahira was one who succeeded in keeping the listeners' attention. First, she asked the audience, "Do you know what percent of our body is water?" Then she explained the differences between hard water, soft water and alkali-ion water, before moving on to the function of water in our body. She took care to focus her talk on matters to which students can relate, such as water's role in keeping skin beautiful and preventing constipation. And since her delivery was loud and clear, the audience had no trouble concentrating on her speech.
Katahira, who used PowerPoint in her presentation, said she had practiced a lot at home. "I like to speak in front of people and get their attention," she said.
Minori Takahashi, whose mother comes from Okinawa, made a presentation about the island, looking at its history, tradition, culture, dialect and music. By using various props such as music tapes and an Okinawa shamisen, she succeeded in conveying her message--that living a colorful, beautiful life like the people of Okinawa requires being in touch with one's tradition and culture.
Takahashi said that she chose Okinawa as the subject of her graduation thesis when she became a third-year student. "I thought that Okinawa was a good theme as it was familiar to me. I had fun writing the thesis," she said.
Hitomi Fukazawa took a difficult theme for high school students and yet captured the audience's attention. She started her presentation by asking her audience two questions, in Japanese and then English "Do you know about the Japanese jury system?" and "If you were chosen as a jury member, would you want to take part?"
By explaining the history of the jury system, the current Japanese system, and the main issues concerning the use of juries in this country, Fukazawa was able to give a clear and understandable presentation without consulting a prepared text. "I like English, and it's fun to study the language," Fukazawa said after the presentation.
Writing a graduation thesis of about 3,000 words is a requirement for all students on the Intercultural Understanding Course. Starting with English compositions of about 200 words in their first year, students are subsequently required to write a 1,500-word report in their second year, when they are trained in academic writing techniques.
The school's goal as a SELHi is to foster students who can express their opinions logically in English.
"Students choose a graduation thesis topic that interests them based on what they have studied over the preceding years," said Mitsunori Takeuchi, an English-language teacher who is in charge of the third-year class.
"But I don't think students can write an English thesis unless they can write in Japanese first," Takeuchi said. "To cultivate students' thinking ability, I think it's necessary for them to read a lot of books and gain a broad knowledge of the world."
Talks by people from various fields are used to help broaden the knowledge of students, who also take part in English debate and essay contests.
Two teams from the school participated in the 1st All Japan High School English Debate Tournament, held in Gifu Prefecture last December, with one of the school's teams coming in third out of the 52 entries.
"English debates are more popular than Japanese debates in Nagano Prefecture. Since our school was designated as a SELHi, English debating has been adopted as part of the general course, also," said Principal Kazuo Kobayashi.
The principal added that they thought their SELHi projects would benefit from the experience they had accumulated since the Intercultural Understanding Course was established in 2001.
English-language teacher Fumio Koyama, who is in charge of the debating classes, said he always told students to be ready to answer questions about why they were making a particular point. "I think it's very important for them to think about English logic and reasoning," he said.
In the English ｅxpression class of the Intercultural Understanding Course, students are required to make presentations in front of classmates from their first year, according to Sachie Nagashima, an English teacher in charge of the SELHi project.
"They can pick any theme, but students have to meet certain requirements concerning speaking time, the use visual aids and making eye contact. So all students get used to making presentations as they each have to do it at least five or six times a year," she said.
At the beginning of their second year, students first learn how to construct a logical thesis in Japanese. Then they gradually shift to English writing.
The problem is how and when to make students aware of the importance of grammar. "At first, we let them write rather freely, to avoid giving them the idea that it's tough to write in English," Takeuchi said. "However, while it's important for them to convey what they think in their thesis, at the same time the thesis should be grammatically correct."
The school's SELHi project targets not only the Intercultural Understanding Course but the general course also. "We have set third-year students on the general course the goal of acquiring the ability to express themselves through logical English essays, so we require these students to give presentations, too," Nagashima said.
As the school has two resident assistant language teachers, team-teaching is the norm in general English lessons.
When The Daily Yomiuri observed an English II class for second-year students on the general course, team-teaching was being conducted by Koyama and ALT Andrew Morgan. In rapid reading practice, Morgan asked students to answer "true" or "false" to questions about a text they had just read. Then he divided the class into eight groups at random and summarized the text in his own words at normal speed. His explanation was clear and easy to understand, and a representative of each group was required to answer Morgan's questions. Koyama said this kind of team-teaching was common practice.
The Intercultural Understanding class is one subject in the Intercultural Understanding Course.
On the day of my visit, six foreign students (two from China, one from South Korea and three from Indonesia) who are studying Japanese at a Japanese-language school in Ueda were invited to the first-year students' class.
Students were divided into six groups with a foreign guest joining each group. The students were asked to conduct a group interview, and given suggested questions such as "What is the purpose of your learning Japanese?," "How do you study Japanese?," "Do you know any good ways to study foreign languages?" and "What kind of impression did you have of Japan before you came here?"
After the interview session, a student from each group came up to the front of the class and announced the guest's answers in turn. Class teacher Nagashima sometimes posed additional questions to deepen their understanding.
"Before starting interviews, I told the students to ask their guest which language he or she wants to speak," Nagashima said. All the guests wanted to speak Japanese and surprised the students with their fluent command of the language, which many of them had been studying for less than two years.
"I think today's class was a good lesson for our students thanks to the foreign visitors," Nagashima said.