Extensive Reading at School in Japan

Rob Waring

ER Seminar, Okayama, February 13, 2011

Today’s talk

Main focus English in schools in JapanMEXT’s recent pronouncementsWhat does MEXT mean?The process of getting kids to readMoving from words to storiesIndividualized readingPreparing for Junior High

Primary Schools Secondary Schools Colleges & Adult Education

Distribution of Educational Institutions Which Have Introduced ER

2003

Takase and Furukawa 2009

Primary Schools Secondary Schools Colleges & Adults

2008

Distribution of Educational Institutions Which Have Introduced ER

Takase and Furukawa 2009

Short history of English education in Japan

Focus on ‘Japaneseness’

Focus on ‘internationalization’

English as an ‘academic’ subject

English for ‘communication’

Where are we today?MEXT sets the central direction:

-English is a required course at Elementary school, -but it’s not an academic subject -no assessment -low pressure

Movement of central control to local controlFewer JETs; more city and prefecture hiring; more

innovative projects / trial programsUnclear aims and lack of specificsMEXT gives more freedom to see what works and what doesn’t , and to see how teachers and citizens react to the introduction of English at Elementary school

What is happening?

Over 90% of Elementary schools have English as part of ‘general subjects’Private companies pushing hard at Elementary levelGrowing differences within cities, prefectures when students reach JHSGrowing diversification of English instruction

MEXT’s directives

No ‘teaching’No writingFocus on understandingReceptive focusNo grammarNo assessmentBuild positive image of EnglishBuild motivation for English

EREL

The culture of the ‘one right answer’The culture of the ‘one right answer’ helps build knowledge but doesn’t help the process of learning because:

it tells kids to never be wrong and doesn’t allow them to be wrongit denies them to chance to fail and learn from failureit undervalues taking risks and resourcefulnessit creates cautious kids focused on memorizing details and who cannot ‘think on their feet’it denies opportunities for kids to learn thorough experimenting with ideasit it educates them OUT of their creativityit doesn’t foster co-operative learning and social integrationit does not prepare them for the future which will require flexibility, resourcefulness, risk taking, clear thinking and creativity

Extensive reading and young learnersRecent research shows :

Young learners learn much faster if they have massive text input (i.e. story reading)

There’s no advantage to starting English early if students don’t have massive text support

Learners starting ER early end up with higher natural English ability than students in intensive programs in High School

Early reading success leads to gains in self-efficacy / self confidence (belief that success is due to what I do)

Early reading failure builds a sense of ‘learned helplessness’ (feelings of lack of control and disconnection)

What do the kids need?

They need to:develop a sense of self-confidence and a ‘can do’ attitudebe able to manage risk-taking and not fear failuredevelop creativity and imaginationdevelop a sense of ‘other awareness’develop a sense of being in control of their

learning

What is Extensive Reading?

This is NOT EXTENSIVE READING

This is LANGUAGE STUDY READING

This is NOT EXTENSIVE READING

This is LANGUAGE STUDY READING

When reading extensively, students should READ

It is CRUCIAL that learners read at the RIGHT levelRead something quickly and

Enjoyably with

Adequate comprehension so they

Don’t need a dictionary

If they need a dictionary, it’s too hard and they will read slowly, get tired and stop

Their aim is fluency and speed, not learning new language

We add the reading to our existing program, we don’t replace it.

Types of ER

There are several legitimate forms of ER‘Pure ER’ – self-selected, own level, reading for

pleasure‘Class Reading’ – all students read the same book‘ER as literature’ – the class studies a book as a

piece of literature‘Integrated ER’ – ER supported by other activities

These don’t really apply at the beginning levels of reading

Before students can do ER ….

They need- to be able to recognize the letters and some letter

combinations (e.g. ch-, sp-, th-,)- to be able to recognize how sounds become

written words- to know a few hundred words- to know a little bit of grammar (e.g. verb

inflections)

Principles to follow for early reading instruction

Listening before readingSounds -> wordsSound out words - don’t spell themBuild a sight vocabulary‘Scaffold’ the learning (build on previous knowledge)

Stages to get to individualized reading

Start with word building exercises through pictures and sound (vocabulary building)Phonics exercises to match sounds to words Listening to stories to build a context for the vocabulary (auditory contextualizing)Reading easy materials (textual contextualizing) Teach the alphabet only when they need to know how to spell words

The typical Japanese child

Knows thousands of Japanese words and the Japanese alphabet by age 6-7May know a few dozen kanjiHas a rich understanding of ‘story’Already has heard hundreds of stories which can be built upon or retold in EnglishHas mastered many basic concepts

So how can we leverage this to get them reading?

Stage 1: Word / phrase learning

Concrete wordsapple, table, horse, cat, teacher, board, paper,

Concrete verbswrite, do, make, play, see, look, walk, have,

Fixed and semi-fixed phrases (no need to analyze them)good morning, happy birthday, how are you?

These can all be learnt through flash cards, or physical actions, games etc.

What does a Japanese learner bring to their first English class?

A few dozen loanwords:hello, bye, ball, no, milk, pen, bed, hair, hand, school, TV, radio, CD, white, night, black, dress, first, floor, game, video, garden, head, heart, love, home, my, morning, bus, boat, hotel, map, meter, shirt, pink, beach, chicken, cheese, chocolate, burger, juice, lamp, dollar, bike, belt, skirt, knife, fork, computer, orange, mouse, bat, beef, menu, restaurant, golf, salad, tennis, boyfriend, friend, girlfriend, banana, kilo, ham, lemon, steak, cola, pizza, pasta, pants, tiger, tomato, lettuce, mushroom, basketball, soccer, taxi, player, car, bag ….

What does a Japanese learner bring to their first English class?

… glass, gorilla, note, book, curtain, screen, water, air conditioner, headphones, photo, big, campaign, center, captain, course, cup, cut, drive, energy, extra, fight, get, go, green, half, hearing, hit, hot, idea, image, live, main, medium, miss, mile, next, move, okay, off, choice, part, play, race, rule, bargain, save, room, shop, shopping, star, stop, station, thanks, time, test, top, wear, bell, boss, bottle, cake, carpet, champion, clean, coat, coffee, copy, counter, diet, egg, dryer, dry, expert, front, back, up, level, down, handle, ice ….Plus dozens and dozens more

Stage 2: Moving to the written word - Receptive Phonics

Do this in a stepped and structured way e.g.-select words that sound like they look – cat dog

pen-sound out the words as they listen cat /k-æ-t/ table /teibl/ house / haus/-do NOT spell them out using the alphabet pig p-i-g

Receptive checking – which do you hear? pen pan pinThis should only be done with real words – words that will come in their first stories

Stage 3: Productive phonics

Students now sound out regularly spelled wordsFlash cardsSpeed identification and say

Introduce them in a logical sequence from transparent to opaque

-> phonically regular words at hot bed cup-> combinations spin chip this thing walked-> Long vowel words say baby tiny-> etc.

Stage 4: Phrase level Phonics

Move from words to short phrases and sentencesReceptive before productive (listening before saying)Regular spellings to more complex spellings

Stage 5: Choose the right stories

Start with highly visual very simple stories with almost no words e.g. Oxford Reading TreeHighly repetitive sentence patterns for consolidation

Things to watch for

Find books with dialogsWatch for difficult language

Stage 6: Visualizing stories - ListeningNow they need to hear the words in context through listening to stories with:Highly visual picture books (watch and listen)Use lots of loanwordsRe-tell the story for repetitive practice by varying it:

Change the story in subtle waysPurposefully add in mistakes they

have to listen for

Stage 7: Visualizing stories : Reading aloud

Students read along or repeat the story they are listening to (matching sounds with words)But only after their comprehension has been checked They read aloud so you can check they can match sounds to wordsLots of personal one-to-one reading is important here

(use teaching assistants, parents, volunteers)

Stage 8: Reading on their own in classSilent reading well within their ability level Build reading speedNo reading aloud (except the

occasional check)Aim is to internalize the readingSelect high contextual / visual books they can learn from without much intervention of the teacher

Stage 9: At home readingStudents take books home to readAsk the kids to read to their parents (parents fill in a form). If parents don’t understand, the child can explain.Seishin 2005 Book Sharing program:

Parents and children valued their reading

Huge increases in motivation for English in 6 months

Parent/school relations vastly increasedParent / child relationships benefited

Reading at the right level

Reading at the right level

Be careful with Native-level materials

Native books, magazines etc. above the very earliest levels are too hard to read fluently for MOST Japanese learnersChildren’s books for natives are full of difficult words, phrases and conceptsNative children already know 5000 words and almost all the grammar BEFORE they start to readJapanese children know very few English words and no grammar before they start English. Don’t confuse the final target (to read native texts) with the starting point and the way to get there.

Graded readers

Graded readers

Graded readers are GRADED

Phonics Easy vocab More difficult vocabEasy grammar More difficult grammar

Nativebooks

Easiest level

Very few wordsVery basic vocabularyRegular spellingsVery conversational20-80 words per book

Beginner level

Easy vocabularyBasic tenses onlyVery simple plotHigh visual support100-300 words per book

Late beginner level

• Easy vocabulary• Present tenses only• Very simple plot

Elementary

Little bit more difficult vocabulary

More difficult grammarMore complex plot

High beginner level

• Little bit more difficult vocabulary

• More difficult grammar• Harder plot

Upper Elementary level

Harder vocabularyHarder grammarLonger sentencesMore irregular languageMore complex plot1000-2000 words per book

Preparing kids for JHS

At present there’s almost no communication between ES and JHSGiven MEXT’s ‘do as you wish’ attitude this will lead to more imbalance, greater diversity in student abilities by the start of JHSNeed for a Grade 1-12 integrated curriculumMain aim should be to leave students with a positive attitude to English and reading in general

Typical learning from course books

Recycling rate in a typical 5 level course (225,000 total words)

Occurrences 50+ 30-49 20-29 10-19 5-9 1-4 Total

Different words

456 202 225 466 575 1315 3,239

15.31% 6.24% 6.95% 14.39% 17.75% 40.60% 100.00%

Data from Sequences by Heinle Cengage

1. 40 function words (in, of, the, by etc.) accounted for 41.2% of the total words in the series

2. If we set “acquisition” at 20 occurrences, then we can expect students to know:• (456+202+225=) 883 words by the end of three years receptively• 200 words productively (typically productive is 20-25% of the receptive)

3. This does not include the learning of collocations, colligations, idioms, phrases, multiple meanings, lexical chunks, sentence heads… etc.

Course book plus Extensive ReadingVocabulary gains by adding 1 graded reader per week

50+ 30-49 20-29 10-19 5-9 1-4

Total 1,023 283 250 539 570 1325 3,990

Total 25.64% 7.09% 6.27% 13.51% 14.29% 33.21% 100.00%

1. 76% improvement in ‘learnt’ vocabulary (880 --->1556 words)2. More of the words in their course book reach the ‘acquisition’ level

(27% ---> 40%)3. Smaller % of unknown words4. They will have a better sense of how the vocabulary and grammar

fit together5. They will have a better sense of collocation, and other deeper

aspects of vocabulary acquisition as well as picking up phrases and so forth.

www.robwaring.org/ERwww.robwaring.org/presentations/