The government’s new curriculum guidelines for English-language lessons at junior high schools have been criticized as so difficult that students are growing to detest the subject.

At public schools, the gap between children doing well in the lessons and those who are struggling is widening, educators said. And students from wealthier families have a tremendous advantage.

In Japan, English is a mandatory subject that children generally begin learning in earnest after entering junior high school.

Under the new guidelines, which took effect in fiscal 2021, students should master between 1,600 and 1,800 English words during their three years in junior high school, up from around 1,200 under the previous setup.

Students are taught 600 to 700 English words in elementary school but in a rather casual manner. That means they may have to learn up to 2,500 words in junior high, an enormous challenge for novice learners.

English was introduced to elementary schools in fiscal 2020 as a foreign language each school can choose to teach. The main objective is to give pupils exposure to the language through games and singing, not memorization work.

But when they move on to junior high school, many feel overwhelmed by the amount of material they must learn.

GAP WIDENS

The verb “can,” for example, had been taught at the end of the first year of junior high school. It is now studied about a month after the children start classes.

“Can you cook curry?” a first-year student asked in a practice conversation at the public-supported Sasazuka Junior High School in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward in May last year.

Students are now required to learn the subjunctive mood and the present perfect progressive, which were formerly taught at high school.

Rise Nagasawa, an English teacher at the junior high school, said the curriculum content has become “dense” and “more difficult.”

“We cannot cover the entire content with school lessons alone,” she said. “I want students also to work at home.”

An English teacher at another public junior high school in Tokyo said the discrepancy in comprehension between students widened after the new curriculum was adopted.

The gap makes it difficult for teachers to get all students engaged in the same lesson, said an English instructor at a different public junior high school in the capital.

“Some students take additional lessons at English language schools or cram schools to make up for what public schools cannot cover,” the instructor said. “But not all students cannot afford private education.”

Schoolteachers in many prefectures share the assessment that English courses are more difficult for junior high school students under the new guidelines.

A survey of 107 English teachers at junior high schools in Wakayama Prefecture showed that 70 percent of respondents felt the students were under a greater burden.

The survey was conducted between June and September in 2022 by Wakayama-ken Kokumin Kyoiku Kenkyujo, or the research institute of education in Wakayama Prefecture.

Sixty-four percent of respondents replied that the curriculum is overloaded with topics and that careful selection is needed, while 35 percent said it has become difficult conducting lessons.

Only 7 percent of the teachers said lessons are easier to arrange, and none felt that the content has become simpler for the students.

As for the vocabulary that junior high school students are required to learn, 69 percent said there were “too many” words, compared with 17 percent who said the number was “adequate.”

Fifty-four percent said there were too many topics and materials to cover, while 32 percent replied the number was “adequate.”

NEW EXAM STRATEGY

Instructors at cram schools echoed similar sentiments.

In a nationwide poll of its instructors by Eikoh Seminar, a leading chain of cram schools, and Educational Network Inc., an affiliated company, 75.2 percent of the 440 respondents said they feel the first English test for first-year students under the new curriculum was more difficult than before.

Some instructors said the number of students who scored 40 percent or lower on the test spiked, and many students now dislike studying English.

An instructor who runs a cram school for public junior high school students in Kanagawa Prefecture said the current system is burdensome for children.

He noted that in the English exam taken by first-year students in September 2023, questions related to 515 English words were asked, about 200 more words than before.

“Many children enter junior high school without mastering all alphabet letters,” the instructor, who is in his 40s, said. “Once in junior high school, children need to memorize too many words. Acquiring English skills only through classroom lessons without private schooling is difficult.”

He also said entrance exams to high schools have become significantly more difficult, and students struggling with English cannot expect to score high.

“Some cram schools may advise their students to drop English and focus their efforts on other subjects to raise their overall exam scores and improve their chances to gain entry to their preferred high school,” he said. “That may be seen as a viable exam strategy.”

A third-year public junior high school student attending this cram school said he does not like studying English, and that his average score in the subject is around 20 points lower than those of other subjects.

“When I was attending elementary school, the only word I knew was ‘apple,’” he said. “There is too much to learn in junior high school English.”

He also said English lessons at his junior high school are designed to accommodate students with better understanding, and those who cannot follow end up dozing off.

MINISTRY DEFENDS CHANGE

An education ministry official in charge of setting the curriculum guidelines, which are updated about every 10 years, defended the new system, saying that junior high and high school students’ English proficiency has improved.

A ministry survey, based on teachers’ assessments, shows that 49.2 percent of these students would likely pass Grade 3 in the Eiken Test in Practical English Proficiency, or its equivalent, in fiscal 2022, up 2.2 percentage points from fiscal 2021.

Grade 3 is the third level from the bottom of the seven-level Eiken test. Graduates of junior high school are supposed to have a Grade 3 level command of English.

But some education experts question the reliability of the survey’s results, noting they are based on teachers’ subjective assessments.

As for criticism about the English vocabulary taught at junior high school, the ministry official said students are expected to become familiar with those words but are not expected to be able to use all of them in writing and speaking.

The ministry’s fiscal 2023 scholastic aptitude test evaluating the English language skills of third-year junior high school students showed a sharp decline in the average of correctly answered questions from fiscal 2019.

For listening comprehension, the average dropped to 58.9 percent from 68.3 percent, while the figure for reading fell to 51.7 percent from 56.2 percent.

For writing, the average plunged to 24.1 percent from 46.4 percent, and for speaking, it declined to 12.4 percent from 30.8 percent.

The ministry said the steep drop was due to the many tough questions included in the fiscal 2023 test.

In a ministry questionnaire conducted alongside the test, 52.3 percent of the third-year students said they like or somewhat like studying English, down by 4 points from the fiscal 2019 survey.

Haruo Erikawa, professor emeritus of English language education at Wakayama University, called the new guidelines a “big failure.”

“Compulsory education (from elementary school to junior high school) is meant to improve all students’ academic performances, regardless of their economic backgrounds,” he said. “But better-off children can afford to get private lessons and have an advantage under the new system. Many struggling students tend to shun English.”

Erikawa said the curriculum should be returned to one that allows students to enjoy learning English and gives teachers more flexibility.

(This article was written by Yoshika Uematsu, Aya Shioiri and Yukihito Takahama.)