UNESCO Associate School and Content-Based Instruction

As one of associated schools of UNESCO, S Senior High School is supposed to conduct pilot projects on four main themes such as: 1. World concerns and the role of the United Nations system; 2. Human rights, democracy and tolerance; 3. lntercultural learning; and 4. Environmental concern.
English classes can surely make a contribution to one or more of the four main themes. They can enhance students’ understanding what world concerns and environment concern we have in the world today. I believe that the method called Content-Based Instruction is the most effective way to make the contribution.
Other than the classes we have conducted, we can employ the following activities as a part of a certain English class, as a coordinated activity between various subjects, or as an extra curricular activity.

1 The Class based on the Model United Nations

2 Content-Based Instruction and the Related Teaching/Learning Areas
Content-Based Instruction has its subcategories such as Theme-Based Language Instruction and Adjunct Language Instruction.
Theme-Based Language Instruction “refers to a language course in which the syllabus is organized around themes or topics such as 'pollution' or 'women's rights.'”(Richard et al., p.216) As such, this sub-method can be naturally associated with cramming for entrance examinations. All we have to do is to choose right cramming materials such as “Eibun Dokkai Izen” (Furufuji Akira, Kenkyu-sha) and “Lingua-Metallica” (Nakazawa Yukio, Z-KAI).
In Adjunct Language Instruction, “students are enrolled in two linked courses, one a content course and one a language course, with both courses sharing the same content base and complementing each other in terms of mutually coordinated assignments. Such a program requires a large amount of coordination to ensure that the two curricula are interlocking and this may require modifications to both courses.” (Richard et al., p.216/217)
As Richard et al. suggests, we can coordinate all the subjects S Senior High School has so as to have the Adjunct-Language-Instruction-like effects. We might be able to start from making a Japanese-English academic term list.

3 Intercultral Learning through an Intercultural Joint Task
Intercultural learning can be achieved through working on a task across cultures as well as studying related subjects. One possible candidate for the task is to make up a song by exchanging MIDI files internationally.


Bibliography
Jack C. Richard and Theodore S. Rodgers, "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2nd ed.), 2001, Cambridge University Press, New York