Presentation and Discussion Report

Post date: May 6, 2014 5:38:10 AM

I would talk about educational problems in Japan. Nowadays, so many foreigners come to Japan every year. And also, many foreign children come to Japan and they need to take education. But there is an educational problem for them.Firstly, I will talk about the current situation. Every year, over two millions foreigners, including children, come to Japan. In Japan, children, whose age is 6 to 15, must take a compulsory education, so foreign children need to take education at elementary schools or junior high schools same as Japanese children. But some children cannot go to school or cannot take education in Japan. There are various reasons why their parents cannot send them to school. It is because lake of money or language barrier or planning to come back to their home countries soon. And I focused on language barrierSecondly, I will explain about language barrier. Language barrier causes some troubles between Japanese and non-Japanese speakers. For example, parents who are non-Japanese speaker cannot understand Japanese, so they cannot help their children’s homework. And teachers who are Japanese cannot speak students’ mother tongue, so they cannot teach study to their students. And the most problem is the case of student. Students cannot understand study, so they cannot keep up with other students’ level. And also, they cannot communicate with other students. Finally, they sometimes drop out of school. Japanese government does not require foreign children to take compulsory education, so if they say “I want to drop out of school.”, their teacher or principal do not stop them. Some parents try to send their children to international school. There are various countries’ children and they can communicate with other students. But international school fees are more expensive than fees at Japanese public school. Furthermore, international school don’t carry out a medical examination, so parents cannot know children’s body condition or if children get sick, they have to take children to go to hospital and they have to tell body’s condition to doctor in Japanese.

Thirdly, I introduce about another solution to remove language barrier. Recently, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology introduced a curriculum named JSL which stands for Japanese as a second Language. The aim of this curriculum is removing language barrier and getting the language skill to keep up with other students in Japanese school. The content of it is teaching Japanese through the study to students in elementary school or junior high school. Firstly, students are separated with their Japanese language skill, and they can choose one topic from 15 topics in 5 themes. This curriculum has 3 steps to learn Japanese. First step is experiments. They learn knowledge about science, social studies or some subjects. And second step is Questioning mind. After learning subjects, they ask what they cannot understand to teachers. It is important for students to have questions about study. And Final step is telling. Students tell what they learn to other students or teacher. This step is practice to tell their thinking to other person. This curriculum is effective not only to keep up with other students for studies but also to communicate with Japanese.

I discussed about another solution to remove language barrier except JML with group members. JML is very good idea to help foreign children take education, but some small city or town cannot introduce this program. This is because government gives much money to big city whose population is large. We talked about the way to remove the gap between big city and small one. We found one solution. Government should require help from organizations or companies. And organizations and companies give money to small cities as business. Both companies and cities whose budget is lack have profit in this solution.

526+100words / 40minites