With all the talk recently of reforming or changing the elementary school “English” curriculum, I figured I’d better check up to make sure that there have been no changes to the Course of Study of this year.

The Course of Study or “Shidou youryou” ( 小学校学習指導要 ) is the official word on what we have to teach in elementary schools. Your schools will have a copy in the Head Teachers’ room, although most teachers won’t have actually read it! It’s worthwhile showing your teachers though, it really puts people at ease when they see it. You can also buy it from bookstores, ISBN4-487-28682-4 for 100 yen. Note that it’s not the blue “Handbook” but a small green book with the more formal description of the course all in Japanese. You want page 69 ( it’s only one page for “Kokusai Rikai”).

So anyway, I had a quick look and luckily nothing has changed. I just updated the version I have on the site to have the new page number, but the content is all the same. i.e. it isn’t to be seen as preparation for Junior High / don’t teach Junior High material in Elementary school, keep it aural/oral based, start of with “learning by doing” with “suitable songs, games, skits ” etc. then move on to exchanges of culture, crafts etc. with kids in other countries.

Which is very good as far as I’m concerned. Although it means the bad schools will continue as they are, it also means the good schools can keep going with the great progress they’ve been making over the last few years, and it’s another year without the fear of being forced to teach Junior High style boring grammar based lessons!