Abstract
The present paper is a complete guide to the English textbooks currently used at junior high schools in Japan, introducing the contents of all the 18 books, 6 different sets issued by six publishing companies: the so-called Big Three (NEW HORIZON, SUNSHINE, NEW CROWN), ONE WORLD, TOTAL ENGLISH, and a newcomer, Mitsumura Tosho's COLUMBUS 21, all of which were authorized by the Japanese Ministry of Education in 2011. In comparison with high school textbooks, they are much more interesting, full of encouragement to read, write, listen to, and speak English. Although the textbooks for the third year students tend to become more serious and moralistic like typical high school textbooks, they still retain humorous and touching elements, strangely enough, which are lacking almost completely in the high school counterparts. It is obvious that junior high English textbooks are well-made for beginners with ingenious methods: above all, each publishing company has created anime/manga-like characters just the same age of the students and made the three-year textbooks in the form of a novel. This paper shows how charming these characters are and what good effects they have on the students as well as the story itself. Despite the fact that the 80 to 90 percent market share has been exclusively secured by the three major publishers, it can be said that TOTAL ENGLISH is excellent in character designs and COLUMBUS 21 the best as a teenage novel.
