抄録
Foreign Language Activities have been conducted in almost all elementary schools, and compulsory Foreign Language Activities will have begun for all 5th and 6th grade students in all elementary schools by 2011. By the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), the contents of them were announced in the new course of study for elementary schools in 2008, and Eigo Note was published in 2009 as supplementary material to assist these activities. Eigo Note is the first example of MEXT approved materials which elementary school teachers should teach in Foreign Language Activities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the communication activities which are dealt with in Eigo Note in elementary schools in Japan. This paper has also clarified three problems with Eigv Note; (1) Eigo Note has included more than 150 activities, which are predominately speaking based. By having too many games, there might be risk that students could lose interest in them. (2) Some speaking activities in Eigo Note are far more difficult than those in junior high school textbooks. (3) In Eigo Note, there is an insufficient number of writing activities, which are needed in terms of cooperation between the elementary and junior high school curriculum.
