The Bulletin of Japanese Curriculum Research and Development
Online ISSN : 2424-1784
Print ISSN : 0288-0334
ISSN-L : 0288-0334
Volume 12, Issue 1
Displaying 1-6 of 6 articles from this issue
  • Naomi KOIKE, Harunobu SUGIYAMA
    Article type: Article
    1987 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 1-9
    Published: June 30, 1987
    Released on J-STAGE: May 08, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    We are now in the age of the so-called international community, and the learning of 'practical English', which is suitable for a variety of world-wide activities, is eagerly expected by both students and teachers. We, the present writers Koike and Sugiyama, taking into consideration the present-day social needs, tried to investigate what practical English teaching should be at universities. As a result of our repeated discussion, we have come to suggest that, in the general culture course at universities, the students should be trained in business writing (especially, business letters writing) and newspaper reading for the purpose of acquiring a practical knowledge of English. In this respect, we think that business English and newspaper English are excellent teaching materials for developing and improving students' writing and reading abilities, respectively. Business English is the language used in the international trade or business transactions. Now that Japan plays a very important role in the world economy, so a number of students go into international business after graduation. We think such students, who are to be internationally-minded persons, should cultivate their business ability early enough by learning business English. It is the business letters writing' that is the most weighty field in bisiness English. In recent days, there is a great variety of business letters, so the students are urgently required to master English business writing to the full extent. On the other hand, newspaper English is the language read through the English news- papers. The articles in English newspapers range over a wide variety of subjects like politics, economics, society, education, sports, entertainments and so on. The content of the articles is up-to-date and lively, and the language used there is actual and living English. This is why we think that English newspapers are excellent teaching materials for learning English reading. By the way, business English and newspaper English, as teaching materials, have some similar characteristics. For example, both of them give us not only knowledge of English as a language but also that of various activities in the human community. Besides, they are both able to satisfy the students' interests in practical English. In this sense, they are closely concerned with each other. Therefore, we are sure that positive learning effects will be boosted through a combination or integration of business English and newspaper English.
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  • Ryozo ITO, Hirokazu KIMURA, Kenji TANAHASHI
    Article type: Article
    1987 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 11-16
    Published: June 30, 1987
    Released on J-STAGE: May 08, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this article is to make an analysis of present tests in history from the viewpoint of "the structure of understanding history,"which has two aspects. One is "the rhetoric of explanation of history," and the other is "the structure of knowledge of history." According to our findings, most of the present tests in history do not evaluate "the structure of understanding history."
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  • Teruko INOUE
    Article type: Article
    1987 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 17-24
    Published: June 30, 1987
    Released on J-STAGE: May 08, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The guidance given the students in making a teaching plan is not sufficient in the college because of the time limitation. The opinion of the most students was that making a teaching plan was difficult. Therefore, in preparing the students before practice teaching, I tried to instruct them as follows: (1) making a teaching plan, (2) trial teaching and evaluation, (3) the amendment and improvement of the teaching plan. As a result, the students understood the teaching plan better than before and acquired more skill in solving problems. Furthermore they had a stronger desire to do practice teaching.
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  • Hisa TAKAMORI
    Article type: Article
    1987 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 25-34
    Published: June 30, 1987
    Released on J-STAGE: May 08, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Home economics aims to develop abilities to carry on daily life through experimentation and practice. Therefore, teachers of home economics should have and be able to show these abilities in her or his classes. It has been indicated, however, that because of the changing ways of life and examination-oriented life from childhood to adolescence, university students of today have not acquired living skills well. We have investigated the actual condition of clothing management by using the female and male students of Kumamoto University as sample. The results showed a noticeable difference between female and male students; the female students carry on more careful and appropriate clothing management than the male. It would be ascribed to their different learnings and experiences at school and home, and this survey gives a useful information for education of the students of the educational faculty.
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  • Kazuko MATSUMOTO
    Article type: Article
    1987 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 35-41
    Published: June 30, 1987
    Released on J-STAGE: May 08, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Sentence-combining exercises range from sentence-level syntactic practice which makes up individual sentences to discourse-level practice concerned with the construction of paragraphs or essays. The levels of difficulty and control of the exercises are determined by the number of sentences to be combined, the number of possible correct responses, and the nature of the directions for combining the sentences ("signalled" or "open" exercises). The practice ranges from highly mechanical to relatively communicative, from highly controlled to relatively free, from combining two sentences to combining groups of three to six or more into sentences which make up a whole discourse. A large number of research reports on the effects of sentence-combining practice on students' writing ability have led to the publication of text materials designed to teach writing through sentence-combining (e.g. Daiker et al. 1982, Bander 1982, and Stull 1983). Presently ESL writing texts are showing a strong tendency to employ this practice as part of controlled exercises. The major advantages of sentence-combining practice include the following. (1) It forces ESL students to use mature syntactic structures which they might otherwise avoid in their writing. (2) It lessens students' psychological pressure as well as anxiety by providing them with the content of writing, thus helping them to gain self-confidence. (3) It increases ESL students' motivation by serving as an enjoyable grammatical puzzle or problem-solving activity In applying the sentence-combining approach to the teaching of ESL writing in Japan, it is most important to use exercises suited to the students' ability to manipulate syntactic structures. It is strongly suggested that discourse-level sentence-combining exercises, which provide the students with the opportunity to explore a wide range of syntactic options, be actively used especially in college-level ESL composition classes in Japan. Also, sentence combining practice, which deals with only one aspect of writing, i.e., syntax, is expected to be used as one type of effective controlled writing exercises, not as practice taking into account the enormous complexity of the composition process.
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  • Shinji MARUYAMA
    Article type: Article
    1987 Volume 12 Issue 1 Pages 43-50
    Published: June 30, 1987
    Released on J-STAGE: May 08, 2018
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    "Teachers Inquiry" which is called "HATSUMON" in Japanese is not simple question, but inquiry which arouses intellectual activities of children. It is the aim of the present paper to discuss how teachers inquiry in physical education should be constructed from two aspects, which are both logic of teaching materials and construction of classes situation. The discussion of this paper was summarized as follows. Teachers inquiry in physical education classes must be constructed as a series of inquiries. This series consists of a series based on logic of teaching materials and a series relevant to construction of classes situation. In case of the former, according to types of teaching materials and the object of classes, teachers inquiry is constructed from either viewpoint of "a series of motor skills - a hierarchy of motor learning" or "a structure of movement combination (Bewegungskombination: by G. Schnabel)" involving algorithm of movement. In case of the latter, it is considered that teachers inquiry evolves from inquiry about learning task to inquiry relevant to observation (inquiry about a point of view in the observation - inquiry about evaluation of the observation).
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