Student Centered Learning in Japanese Elementary Schools

You have decided to teach the target sentence “I like apples” to a class of fifth and sixth grade elementary school students. Which of these teaching approaches are you most likely to take? Think carefully about how you teach your lessons. Be truthful.

a) Write “I like apples” on the board and tell students that it means ringo ga suki desu. Tell students to repeat the sentence four or five times in a choral drill giving feedback on the pronunciation. Tell two or three students to say “I like apples” and help them to pronounce it properly. Ask one student at the back to say what “I like apples” means. Tell students to talk to five of their friends and say “I like apples”. Ask four or five students to come to the front of the class and say, “I like apples”. Praise students for doing a good job.

b) Ask the students what “ringo ga suki desu” means? Praise the student for giving the correct answer and write it on the board. Have the class repeat the model sentence. Put up more pictures; bananas, oranges, kiwis, and pears and have students repeat the sentences exchanging the words. Ask the students to tell the person sitting next to them what they like. Tell the students to talk to ten people to find out what they like. Ask students to report their findings to the class. Praise students for doing a good job.

c) Put a picture of an apple on the board and ask the students what it is. Tell students to listen to a skit and report to you what they hear. Write their answers on the board. Repeat the skit until students come up with the target sentence. Listen and repeat the target sentence. Put more pictures on the board and get students to practice making sentences in their pairs. Give students a worksheet, which they must complete by asking their friends questions using the words on the board. Finish up by asking students to make their own original sentences about sports, animals, subjects… anything they want and report their sentences to their friends. Finish up by asking students what information they found out about their friends.

d) Put students in pairs and give them one minute to think of a list of ten fruits. Tell them to write them down. Monitor the students and help them with words they don’t know in English. Put students in lunch groups and share their answers with other group members. Encourage students to write down the fruit they don’t have. Next, tell the class what fruit you like and ask the students to talk in their groups to find out what fruit they like. Ask the students for useful language and write the sentences on the board. Tell them to find out the top three fruits in their group, using the useful language you have elicited, plus any language you think they might need. Ask each team to report their findings to the class. Praise the use of the target language. Ask students to make their own presentation about any topic they wish. Tell them for extra marks they can make their short presentations at the beginning of the next week’s classes if they wish. They can decide when they are ready.

So how did you do?

If you chose a, b, or c, your lessons are teacher centered. What does this mean? It means that the teacher decides the curriculum. She decides what to teach based on the needs of the school, administrators, or examination boards. The teacher is the active voice in the classroom, the bearer of knowledge. The students are in a passive receptacle role, the receivers of knowledge. This is the kind of teaching commonly found in Japanese schools. It is a necessary approach for teachers who have to cover certain topics on a curriculum so that all students to get a fair chance of passing examinations. However, what is covered in teacher centered courses is often irrelevant to students’ lives and can lead to a lack of motivation in the learner.

If you chose d your lessons have an entirely different focus. Example d is what is commonly referred to as student centered learning. What does this mean? Basically it means that the learning process is driven not by the needs of the teacher, the administrators or exam boards. On the contrary, this approach focuses on the needs abilities, interests, and learning styles of the students. The students take an active role, responsible role in their own learning. The teacher’s role turns to facilitator of learning. With the student’s voice being central to the classroom there can be a distinct rise in the level of learner motivation.

I would like to suggest that while approaches a, b, and c are necessary in Japanese junior high schools in order to satisfy administrators and examination boards, they are not necessary in elementary schools. Elementary school gaikoku katsudo lessons are not driven by external pressures to meet the requirements of examination boards. The only evaluation teachers are obliged to give is a positive comment on the students’ communicative competence.

Therefore, since the focus is on communicative competence (and not on second language acquisition—which indeed it can’t be because elementary school teachers are not language specialists) I would like to suggest that in order for students to communicate in a more meaningful and relevant way to them we ought to move away from activities that more often than not bear no relevance to their lives and move towards the kind task based child centered lesson I have delineated in example d.



What can I do to make a move in this direction?



Admittedly, it might be difficult for teachers to take the leap of faith and plunge into child centered classrooms immediately. For the students too, they need to learn how to participate in this kind of lesson. So, with this in mind I have outlined a list of ten specific things you can do in your classroom to begin to make the move in this direction. Try them for yourself and see how the motivation levels begin to increase. Don’t forget to let me know how it goes.

10 activities that work for me to make my classroom more student-centered.

1. Introduce a points system--a stamp card is a good idea--with a clear and achievable goal. Offer an incentive for the students who reach that goal.

2. Allow a couple of students to be in charge of giving the stamps each lesson. Tell them that they will decide how many points the other students will receive and during what activities stamps will be given. Remind them that this is a team effort and their classmates will be doing it for them in the future.

3. Encourage boys and girls to work together at all stages of the lesson. Offer incentives for good cooperation and teamwork.

4. Tell the students they are in control of their own learning. Ask for a different student to volunteer to do the daily greetings each lesson. Allow them the chance to be creative.

5. Set easily achievable tasks, such as a 30 second presentation on their favorite things, and tell the students that they will give a presentation during the coming week. Tell them they must decide when to give their presentation. Allow a few minutes at the beginning of each class for a number of students to complete their task.

6. When introducing new language give a short presentation and tell the students to listen and make notes. Then allow them discussion time in pairs and groups to review what was said.

7. If you are using songs in the classroom with gestures, (this is particularly in elementary school), have students volunteer to lead the song/gestures. If 5th and 6th grade elementary students are reluctant, tell them it is their class and if they want to have music they ought to take responsibility.

8. Give each group of students a different task to complete so they can show their findings to their classmates. For example have students learn numbers from different countries and then have them prepare and present the numbers and a game to the class. Let them be the teachers!

9. When doing group centered games/activities give students a very basic idea and have them develop it themselves, for example let them decide their own rules to the game, or even what game they are going to play to practice a language point.

10. Have students decide what the next topic will be.