The member of Education Ministry said that the current English education system has a problem, because the students have to start study “Reading”, “Writing”, “Speaking” and “Listening” all together at junior high school. Therefore, the students tend to fed up studying English. However, children can learn English from communication level and get used to it in the new program. In addition to this, the students should learn English like a music. As a result, the most important thing is to know how to communicate in English and it doesn’t matter whether they speak correctly in grammar or not. Furthermore, according to the scientific study, the early introduction of English education is effective because the children from early age have the language ability than others.
On the other hand, some people are against to introduce the new English education program. This is because children in elementary school should concentrate on studying Japanese first. Needing time to study Japanese writing or reading correctly, children don’t have enough spare time to study English at all. Secondly, even children learn English from an early age, it is not sure they can speak English fluently. It depends on how they study English and how much they make effort to acquire it. Moreover, if children don’t have any interest in studying English, it does not much help at all and just frustrate them.
I reckon these attempts need further improvements in terms of the lesson content. Thus, in my opinion, how to teach English and getting children interested in English is much more important rather than introducing new education program from an early age.
I think it is important to try new thing instead stay at the same place and be satisfied with the situation so far. The decision Japanese government at this time is quite surely right, however, it needs a long vision to find out whether it is right as a whole or not.
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