How far could we apply Content-Based Instruction?

I. Sumiyoshi High School: natural Content-Based Instructionists
AS I have argued in “How do we read?”, “Super Science High School English Classes and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)”, and “Computer-Assisted Language Learning Class and its Content-Based 'Textbook'”, some types of English classes in Sumiyoshi High School have naturally been based on the language teaching/learning method, Content-Based Instruction.


II. Further Intentional Application of Content-Based Instruction
1. Content-Based Writing
We have presentation-oriented English classes already: Writing, English Expression, and the like. The question is whether they are content-based. To have content-based presentation-oriented English classes, we are to conjugate these 2 learning processes.
Sumiyoshi High School' International Course has Paragraph Writing classes in the first grade and English Expression classes in the second grade. They are basically writing classes.
Many writing classes in high schools have been based on either grammar or functions, and have aimed at sentence writing. For example, in Polestar, a writing textbook for Science Course students, Part I (from Lesson1 to 8) is based partly on functions and partly on grammar, and Part II (from Lesson 9 to 15) is based on situations, and only Part III (from Lesson 16 to 20) aims to introduce how to write a paragraph.
PW and EE in Sumiyoshi High School are essentially based on contents. The textbook in PW class, Ready to Write, states in its Introduction: “By providing them with a wide variety of stimulating writing topics and exercises that go beyond sentence manipulation drills, students are encouraged to bring their own ideas and talent to the writing process.” (p. iv)
The textbook is used even in the first quarter of EE class. In the latter 3 quarters of the class, we use another textbook, Discover Debate. Its “To the Teacher:” says: “It is about how we think about, how we talk about, and what we want to do about global issues, human rights, or the environment.” Although the textbook is basically focused on the debate skills, learning to debate itself is a content-based learning process.
The development of PW and EE as Content-based writing classes depends both on deliberate choice of contents, and on contemplated arrangement of them.

2. Content-Based Instruction and Cramming
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).

3. Content-Based Instruction and Study Tour Abroad
Sumiyoshi High School is organizing three types of study tours abroad: Study Tour Abroad to Taiwan (STA Taiwan), Study Tour Abroad to Korea) (STA Korea), and Study Tour Abroad to Australia (SAT Australia). The first is obligatory, and the other two are voluntary.

4. Cooperation with other Studying Subjects
In Adjunct Language Instruction, one of the contemporary models of Content-Based 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 Sumiyoshi 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.


III. The Application of Content-Based Instruction and the Cooperation with R&D Institutions
1. Demanding Students & Their Demanding Parents
Teachers are to perform various types of educational tasks as well as a teaching task in their own subject. The tasks are carried out with appropriate techniques, which can be derived from the competency the laborers have.
This quarter a century has witnessed the progress of the commodification of education, and the desires and requires (D&R) by students and their parents have toned up. Today's school systems including high schools are not meeting their individualized and toned up D&R. The frustration from the unmet D&R makes some parents even so called “monster parents.”
In the field of English education, needs to the practical English language usage have witnessed significant rise even among high school students and their parents in this quarter a century. Their needs to the English ability for college entrance examinations have been deep-rooted, and now are making its major comeback. School systems are supposed to provide diversified and sophisticated educational services to meet the D&R.
The market principle, meanwhile, has been introduced into school systems. Because of the educational reform in recent years, the education has come to be regarded as a service. An inter-school competition has been promoted. As the result, the influence of the individualization has overwhelmed school cultures. That has effected the way of the labor process and the development process of an individual teacher as well as the way of cooperation and the division of labor in school systems.
The sophistication and diversification of educational services needs the further development of teaching techniques. “The reform” has externalized the cost of their development significantly, and so, under the market principle, teachers are supposed to develop their teaching techniques on their own.

2. The Influence on the Life Course of School Laborers
The desires and requires (D&R) of students and their parents have been individualized and leveled up, and that has caused the educational services provided at school to come to be diversified and sophisticated. That, of course, has forced an individual teacher to develop her/his own workforce to meet the diversification and sophistication. On the other hand, the suppliance of such diversified and sophisticated educational services needs systematic organization of educational labor process. Either the development of individual teacher or the diversification and sophistication of the suppliance of educational services at school are not automatically achieved by thoroughly pursuing one of the two. A solution to one problem would not automatically lead to a solution to the other. A teacher must meet both kinds of the needs at the same time. It is not easy to achieve these two goals at the same time.
The current educational reform seems to have an idea that if teachers are given a proper motivation they will try to improve their teaching techniques in competition with others. The idea surely belongs to the main stream of the society. Isn't it, however, too naive to believe that the diversification and sophistication of teaching techniques can be accomplished only by the competition?
If the considerable amount of working hour were invested, it might be possible for each teacher to voluntarily develop their teaching competencies, from which new teaching techniques might be derived. All the teachers have received the higher education, and, in that sense, they developed certain research ability in a certain academic area. They might be able to do some research on educational problems and develop some teaching techniques. In other words, they might do some education-related research and development on their own. However, the individualization and level-up of the D&R of students and their parents has made teachers ever busier. In addition, the students and their parents monitor more severely and intensely how school laborers carry out their jobs and how their working hour is spent. That makes the teachers hard to allocate their working hour to the development of their teaching competency. Their working hour is thought to be spent directly to supply educational services. The tendency, along with the longer working hour caused by the individualized and leveled up D&R, makes it next to impossible for teachers to develop their educational competency by themselves during their work day fully enough to meet the D&R. How can we solve the contradiction?

3. The Resolution: Cooperation with Research and Development Institutions
An individual teacher should diversify and sophisticate their teaching techniques with their research and development (R&D) competencies. The R&D competencies should be developed and maintained in the long term.
A teacher, having studied in a higher education system, can develop their R&D competencies independently only by productively consuming spin-offs from research and development institutions, such as universities and research laboratories. Consuming the spin-offs can reduce the cost of their OJT radically. If they were to consume training services which are end products, the cost could be sky high or sky rocketing. Their ability to conduct basic R&D enables them to absorb the spin-offs in the form of a semi-finished product. Such production-consumption relation in educational OJT can decrease the relating expenditure, no matter it is provided either publicly or privately.
Teachers productively consume concerned spin-offs from universities and research laboratories, and they can maintain and develop their own competency. They, in turn, trickle-down what they have developed through their productive consumption of spin-offs to wider teachers at school. This kind of “trickle-down” networks would enable school systems to provide diversified and sophisticated educational services.

Refferences
Asano Kyozo, 'Content-Based Instruction no shiten kara kangaeru borantia katsudo mokuteki no tanki kaigai eigo kenshu', “Nanzan Junior College Bulletin” No. 34, p109-122, 2008, http://www.nanzan-tandai.ac.jp/kiyou/No.34/07-Asano-Keizo.pdf
Jack c. Richard and Theodore s. Rodgers, "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2nd ed.), 2001, Cambridge University Press, New York

Computer-Assisted Language Learning Class and its Content-Based “Textbook”

---From Pronunciation to Verbal Expression---
Sumiyoshi High School has Computer-Assisted Language Learning Class for the first graders. Students study phonics, recitation, and debate in the class. Phonics enables the students to pronounce English words better, and gives them the literacy to guess the pronunciation of words from their spellings. Phonics also gives them a good base to understand phonemes, which can lead to the understanding of phonological signs. The understanding of phonemes is the subject of phonemics. Phonemics is in turn, in one sense, a field of phonetics, which includes the pronunciation of sentences as well as words and phrases.
In practical phonetics, students are to learn sentence stress, pause, tone, and stress-timed rhythm, often in unmarked or neutral sentences. Those grammatical rules of phonetics, for the unmarked or neutral sentences, are often overruled by attitudinal factors. The attitudinal factors are generated by the contents of a text. Recitation of famous speeches gives the students a good chance to master the attitudinally effected pronunciation of texts, that is, verbal expression.
Sumiyoshi High School has a history of teaching phonics, in CALL Class. In the class, paper-based teaching materials have been handed out in each period. Having all the teaching materials combined and published in a form of a textbook will make the first step toward the more sophisticated procedure of teaching English pronunciation.
The first step surely would lead us to the next, the research and development of pronunciation teaching techniques which will lead to verbal expression with contents.

A Poet at Sumiyoshi

Dr. Satoh visited our high school to recruit candidate students for their university, Kinki University. He gave us a common appeal of his university, and then, abruptly enough, started talking about Itoh, a poet. According to him, the poet used to be a teacher of Sumiyoshi Secondary School, the before-World-War-II predecessor of Sumiyoshi Senior High School. His story moved on to his major, Mishima Yukio, one of the most famous novelists after the war, who is also known as a chauvinist. The novelist respected the poet very much, imitated his poems, and even once visited Sumiyoshi SS to see him.
A math teacher here knew that we have a stone monument for Itoh along the small alley which leads from an old gate, which used to be a front main gate of the school, to school buildings. Dr. Saitoh was excited with the information, and left the office in rather indecent but lovely haste.
Walking from the old gate, approaching to the school gym, you can find a deep-green stone monument on your left, between the alley and the ground, surrounded by a small bush, Sumiyoshi no Mori. A poem is carved in white. Koh’ya no Uta, the poem is titled.

Koh'ya no uta
(The Song of an Empty Field)
Itoh Shizuo
waga shisemu utsukushiki hi no tame ni
(For a beautiful day when I may have died)
renrei no musoh yo! na ga shirayuki o
(Mountains of dreams! Have not your white snow)
kesazu are
(melted away)
ikigurushii kihaku no kore no koh'ya ni
(In this air-thin empty field)
hitoshirenu izumi o sugi
(Past an unknown fountain)
tokijiku no ki no mi ururu
(Past a hidden place)
kakure taru basho o sugi
(with ever-fragrant citrus ripening)
ware no maku hana no shirushi
(On the day when my seeds come to show,)
chikazuku hi waga nakigara o hikan uma o
(these signs would lead home)
kono shime wa izanai kaesamu
(a horse that pulls my coffin.)
aa kakute waga towa no kikyoh o
(Alas! Thus my eternal homecoming is)
kohki naru na ga shiroki hikari miokuri
(seen off by your white beacons)
ki no mi teri izumi wa warai---
(by the shining berries, and by a rippling fountain.)
waga itaki yume yo kono toki zo tsuini
(My aching dreams will rest forever)
yasurawamu mono!
(on this moment at last!)

Who should bribe whom? Or who should inspect whom?

On the recent bribery scandal involving the Oita Prefectural Board of Education, Kansai University Prof. Yo Takeuchi is reported to have said,"... the education ministry also should exmine the situation and, if it finds problems, provide solutions." (The Daily Yomiuri, 2008/07/12, p.3)
On the same day, another article in the newspaper reports, "The Education, Science and Technology Ministry has dismissed three senior officials who frequently received gifts from and were entertained by a construction company executive who is on trial for bribing a former ministry department head." (ibid., p.1)
Who should ecamine the situation, and provide solutions next? UNESCO?

A Teacher's Life Course and their Core Competency & Peripheral Literacy

School laborers are to perform various types of educational tasks. The tasks are carried out with appropriate techniques. Some techniques can be derived from the competency the laborers have; while other techniques can be copied from those of other laborers as literacies.

1 Demanding Students
This quarter a century has witnessed the progress of the commodification of education, and the desires and requires by students and their parents have toned up. Today's school systems including high schools are not meeting their individualized and toned up desires and requires. The frustration from the unmet desires and requires makes some parents even so called “monster parents.”
Even in the field of English education, needs to the practical English language usage have witnessed significant rise even among high school students and their parents in this quarter a century. Their needs to the English ability for college entrance examinations have been deep-rooted and still are making its major comeback.
School systems are supposed to provide diversified and sophisticated educational services to meet the desires and requires. Meanwhile, the market principle has been introduced into school systems. Because of the educational reform in recent years, the education has come to be regarded as a service. An inter-school competition has been promoted. The influence of the individualization has overwhelmed school cultures. That, as a result, has effected the way of the labor process and the development process of an individual school laborer as well as the way of cooperation and the division of labor in school systems.
The sophistication and diversification of educational services needs the development of teaching techniques. “The reform” has externalized the cost of their development significantly, and so, under the market principle, teachers are supposed to develop their teaching techniques on their own.

2 The Influence on the Life Course of School Laborers
The desires and requires of students and their parents have been individualized and leveled up, and that has caused the educational services provided at school to come to be diversified and sophisticated. That, of course, has forced an individual school laborer to develop her/his own workforce to meet the diversification and sophistication. On the other hand, the suppliance of such diversified and sophisticated educational services needs systematic organization of educational labor process. Either the development of individual school laborer or the diversification and sophistication of the suppliance of educational services at school are not automatically achieved by thoroughly pursuing one of the two. A solution to one problem would not automatically lead to a solution to the other. An school laborer must meet both kinds of the needs at the same time. It is not easy to achieve these two goals at the same time.
The current educational reform seems to have an idea that if teachers are given a proper motivation they will try to improve their teaching techniques in competition with others. The idea surely belongs to the main stream of the society. Isn't it, however, too naive to believe that the diversification and sophistication of teaching techniques can be accomplished only by the competition?
If the considerable amount of working hour were invested, it might be possible for each school laborer to voluntarily develop their teaching competencies, from which new teaching techniques might be derived. Any school laborer have received the higher education, and, in that sense, they developed certain research ability in a certain academic area. They might be able to do some research on educational problems and develop some teaching techniques. In other words, they might do some education-related research and development on their own. However, the individualization and level-up of the desires and requires of students and their parents has made school laborers ever busier. In addition, the students and their parents monitor more severely and intensely how school laborers carry out their jobs and how their working hour is spent. That makes the workers hard to allocate their working hour to the development of their teaching competency. Their working hour is thought to be spent directly to supply educational services. The tendency, along with the longer working hour caused by the individualized and leveled up desires and requires, makes it almost impossible for school laborers to develop their educational competency during their work day fully enough to meet the desires and requires themselves. How can we solve the contradiction? Can we solve it with competitive measure only?

3 The Resolution of the Contradiction and the School Laborers' Life Courses
An individual school laborer should overcome this contradiction to meet the desires and requires which students and their parents have by promoting the diversification and sophistication of their teaching techniques. It seems that it is necessary to break down their teaching techniques into core ones and other peripheral ones. The former should and can be upgraded independently from their research and development competencies, and the latter should be upgraded passively, acquired as teaching literacies. The former can be called the core educational competencies, and the latter can be called the peripheral educational literacies. An school laborer in the future should develop their core educational competencies as a brand labor commodity in an educational labor market, while they need their peripheral literacies to carry out their everyday routine effectively in an educational school system, as a member of the organization. In other words, they need a strategy to walk on their life course along school education.
The strategy includes how to develop and maintain the core educational competencies in the longer term and how to pick up (and abandon) the peripheral literacies.
An school laborer, having studied in a higher education system, can develop their core educational competencies independently only by productively consuming spin-offs from universities and research laboratories. Consuming the spin-offs can reduce the cost of their OJT radically. If they were to consume training services which are end products, the cost could be sky high or sky rocketing. Their ability to conduct basic research and development enables them to absorb the spin-offs in the form of a semi-finished product. Such production-consumption relation in educational OJT can decrease the relating expenditure, no matter it is provided either publicly or privately.
Can school laborers upgrade all the teaching competencies by productively consuming the spin-offs in a form of raw study results? It is difficult to acquire and maintain the research and development abilities in so many fields as to meet all the desires and requires. Provided the restriction and limit of the work day which can be allocated to OJT, the school laborers could develop only a handful of competencies in the manner. The number of teaching techniques the competencies can turn out is, therefore, limited. The techniques which can not derived independently from the teachers' research and development ability should be learned from others as literacies.
Then, what method could be employed to enhance the development of the peripheral literacies? Of course, we can obtain the literacies by purchasing services which will be provided by the concerned universities and organizations for certain amount of fees, but that causes a great rise of the cost; no matter the cost is met either personally or socially.
Forming OJT networks of school laborers in schools might reduce the costs. The OJT network in one field will have an school laborer with related core competency at the nod of it and school laborers who need the concerned peripheral literacy around the nod. In other words, the “core” laborer and “peripheral” ones form a network. The school laborer with the concerned core competency productively consumes the concerned spin-offs from the universities and research laboratories, so that they can maintain and develop their own core competency. They, in turn, trickle-down what they have developed through their productive consumption of spin-offs to wider school laborers in the network.
A network with a “core” laborer and “peripheral” ones could meet only a certain require and desire of students and their parents. Another network, then, should be formed to meet another require and desire. We need numbers of such networks to meet the individualized and toned up desires and requires. Such networks, in a kind of a form of a hyper network, would be able to provide diversified and sophisticated educational services.

4 Effective Management
Obviously, one school needs certain numbers of networks to meet the desires and requires of the students and their parents of the school. To form a certain number of networks, the school needs exactly the number of school laborers with corresponding core competencies. A school might happen to have several school laborers who could make a nod with their competency, but that is a fluke, which the management should not depend on.
Some incentives are necessary to realize the best allocation of school laborers with the corresponding core competency.
A market principle incentive looks a trendy incentive at the time. However, an excessive competition over acquisition and exposition of the core competencies could make the networks unstable. An economy for one may lead to external diseconomy on the other hand. The balance between competing incentive and non-competing ones, market oriented measure and network friendly one, is what is requested now.

From Phonics to Phonetics

Phonics has gained certain popularity in kids English Education, while phonetics is an academic subject in a college as a part of linguistics. We, high school English teachers, are to bridge Phonics and Phonetics.
"Was gross ist am Menschen, das ist, dass er eine Brücke und kein Zweck ist:" (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8zara10.txt) ["What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end:"(Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann trans., "Thus Spoke Zarathustra --- A Book for None and All", 1954, New York, USA, p.15)]
It is an honor of us, high school teachers, to be a bridge.
Just teaching phonetics after the classes of phonics might not bridge the two. We need a special technique or two.
S High School has a history of teaching phonics, in LR Listening Class. In the class, paper-based teaching materials have been handed out in each period. Having all the teaching materials combined and published in a form of a booklet might make the first step toward the more sophisticated procedure of teaching English pronunciation.
The first step surely would lead us to the next, the research and development of pronunciation teaching techniques as a bridge from phonics to phonetics.

Super Science High School English Classes and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

S High School has a subject named “Super Science High School English” in its Science Course for the first graders. Here I would like to argue that its significance of existence and its direction of development should be understood and contemplated under the idea of Content and Language Integrate Learning (CLIL).
CLIL is a branch of Content-Based Instruction. The method is designed to have students learn not only language skills but also the contents which is explained in the language. The question is how to avoid falling between two stools.

How do we read?

“An essential part of active reading is responding to what you are reading....”　(http://www.open.ac.uk/skillsforstudy/reading-critically.php) Good readers read stories and/or essays critically. In other words, they constantly ask questions while they read.
One aspect of English reading classes is to raise good readers. Good readers would be able to ask questions by themselves. The question is how to help intermediate students develop their ability to read critically, to read asking good questions.
As English language teachers ask appropriate questions to students, the students develop their ability to ask good questions themselves. The teachers must ask students good questions such as those good readers ask themselves. Then, what are good questions?
Good questions are those to connect the bottom-up reading and the top-down reading. The bottom-up reading itself does not necessarily lead to the understanding of the contents a text has, and it just gives us grammatical information. The top-down reading does not necessarily lead to the understanding of the contents either, but it only gives us back-ground information. We need to read critically to understand the contents; to link the bottom-up reading and the top-down reading. Thus we can link the grammatical information and the background information to the understanding of contents. In classes, English teachers should ask appropriate questions, and that will lead students to generate their own good questions later.
We need appropriate questions which link all the information to the understanding of contents. English teaching in Japan has had a significant accumulation of bottom-up reading, that is, the long history of the grammar-translation method. The amount of background information English teachers can provide has increased significantly, thanks to the proliferation of the Internet. These days, many English textbooks have a certain amount of comprehension questions. Provided the questions are appropriate, what we still need is to have an appropriate schedule and procedure to introduce the appropriate questions.