SELHi in action / School revives recitation
Tadashi Yamauchi Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
This is the 23rd installment in a series on the government-designated Super English Language High School (SELHi) pilot project.
Having students recite English passages from their textbooks over and over until they can write them down without having to refer to the books--this may seem like an old-fashioned approach, but Hakodate Chubu High School believes that it has been helping its students make greater improvements in their English skills.
At the prefectural government-run school in Hakodate, southern Hokkaido, often seen in English classes are scenes like this: Teachers call on a series of students, who lift their eyes from their textbooks to recite a paragraph that they have been practicing. Then, the whole class writes down the paragraphs over and over so that they can memorize the sentences.
While the students are reading the assigned sentences aloud, or reciting them without looking at the textbooks, the teachers encourage them to be careful about their pronunciation, while also being aware of the sentences' structures and contexts.
First designated as a SELHi in the 2003 school year, the public school has been examining various teaching approaches and using them on a trial basis. As a major experiment during the first three years as a SELHi, it developed a new format of conducting Oral Communication I classes for first-year students.
Under the new format, named the "Three-Station System," a class of 40 students is divided into three groups, with each making the rounds of three rooms, or "stations," every 15 minutes for different activities. At the "Input Station," students focus on listening to get ready to use target ｅxpression!s or vocabulary; at the "Communication Station," they mainly have conversations in pairs; and at the "Output Station," the students make some presentations.
The new format, established in consideration of the fact that dramas on television are interrupted by commercials every 15 minutes, aims at assigning different kinds of tasks to students for a period of time in which they can concentrate on one thing.
This format continues to be implemented, with some improvements made along the way.
Additionally, the school holds speech contests and also has assistant language teachers correct students' written English.
"Of course, they improved their listening comprehension and writing skills in particular," Yasuhito Imai, an English teacher at Hakodate Chubu High School, recalled of the school's first three years as a SELHi. "However, when it came to their comprehensive English skills, it seemed to us that there was something missing."
Based on this view, the high school started a new experiment from the start of the 2006 school year, when it was again designated as a SELHi, extending its pilot school status by an additional three years.
The new technique was the practice of reading model English sentences aloud and writing them down without referring to their source. Mainly using textbooks, students start with such practice on paragraphs and are encouraged to aim at eventually being able to absorb all of the sentences in a whole lesson.
In each 50-minute class, 15-20 minutes were allocated to this practice. Teachers often announced that they would set short tests on writing by memorization in upcoming classes, and these tests were a good motivation for students to study English at home, Imai said.
In addition, Imai and other teachers have come up with the practice of distributing printouts that show just the first word of each respective paragraph for recitation practice, hoping this cue would trigger the students' memories and help them remember what they learned.
Test results showed that the students taught in this way showed greater improvements than the previous year's classes.
"Under the conventional approach of translating English into Japanese, what is left in their students' minds after class is often just the translated Japanese, but reading aloud and writing by memorization make it easier for English phrases to stay with them, " Imai said. "By using the phrases they memorized, our students can express their own ideas in English. At the same time, this approach helps them improve listening comprehension and learn the phonological system in English."
When the school conducted a survey of about 240 first-year students toward the end of the last school year ending March 31, two thirds of them said they could put their reciting and writing by memorization practice to practical use.
Based on such results, the school is using the practice as the foundation of its English classes for this 2007 school year.
Currently, there is a vogue for the simple approach of "learning through the body." Books that encourage reading classics aloud or tracing over printed sentences from classics with a pencil are selling well. In the English education field, this classic yet new method of reciting and writing by memorization seems to be making a comeback, too.
(Apr. 26, 2007)