Genres in Japanese High School English Teaching
Investigation of the Courses of Study, the Commentaries, and MEXT-Approved English Textbooks
2019 Volume 33 Pages 55-68
Details
2019 Volume 33 Pages 55-68
This paper argues that genre-based pedagogy, which has a long, established history in primary, secondary, tertiary, and professional education in Australia, should also be utilized and practiced in Japanese high school English teaching. The authors analyzed the two Courses of Study (the one notified in 2009 and the other in 2018), their Commentaries, and MEXT-approved English textbooks of two English subjects in order to investigate how the awareness of genre knowledge is manifested in these documents and what genres are present in the speaking and writing tasks in the textbooks. It has been found out that explicit reference to and instruction on genres and text types is scarce and insufficient and that a very narrow range of genres was required of students to produce. This article concludes that the importance of explicit generic instruction and learning should be more widely acknowledged in English education in Japan.
