Systematized Classroom English?

After having talked with my friend about concrete techniques for English classrooms in Japan, I came up an idea that it must be helpful for both EFL/ESL learners (especially for EFL) to create systematic vocabulary and phrase lists for classroom-English.

In Japan, the most realistic goal of English education is to achieve a high score in tests, especially for high school, college or university entrance exams. The ministry of Education, Culture, Sports Science & Technology in Japan (文部科学省) have issued a new version of the Course of Study (Nation wide syllabus for schools), and in it, they mentioned that one of the final goals of Japan's English education is to achieve a communication competence, but still, how to measure the skill mostly relies on the tests which have basically not changed over years.
So, how can we achieve the goal without making the class an examination-preparation style?
This is hard. This is hard especially in Japan, because we have developed an exam-prep teaching style and it has been successfully surviving over decades.

Well, here comes my friend's idea, "creating a systematic words-and-phrases lists for classroom English". By "classroom English", he means English which the teachers use in front of their students.
Why did he call it "systematic"? It's because the lists are to be created from vocabulary/phrase corpora or some forms of stocks (i.e. Books) which are created based on the vocabulary/phrases for specific tests.
For example, we can create a list based on Eiken (Japan's government-authorized English test), TOEIC, TOEFL , or school entrance exams. If teachers use English in classrooms based on these lists, students will be able to get more input which is their priority.
His idea, I think, is based on the learner's LAD (Language Acquisition Device), in which input becomes intake by noticing, and the intake creates L2 knowledge. The more systematized set of vocabulary/phrases students are provided with, the more likely they are able to learn the input as their L2 knowledge.

I think this is a realistic idea, and I agree with this.
One thing I would like to add to my friend's idea is that the data from which lists will be created can be extracted from words and phrases, what we call, "for communicative use".
Is it difficult to choose communicative words/phrases? Is there hardships which destroy the hoped usefulness of classroom English?

Anyway, I'm happy that you took a look at my post :)
Thank you:)

Keep loving what you're doing.

Elizabeth Gilbert, a respectable writer, had a presentation in TED which is inspiring and encouraging for all of us despite what we do.

Her message is that we have to love our job, be stubborn about it, and believe that we will someday achieve an extraordinary, terrific consequence.

Extensive and intensive learning?

Imagine that you are a student who studies the theories and methods of teaching English as either second or foreign language, and one of your friends asks you an advise on how to study English because he/she is going to take English test such as TOEFL or TOEIC. How would you advise?

In fact, this is the case which happens to me sometimes, as I'm enjoying my campus life in Japan. When we are asked this kind of question by our friend, we're likely to observe the friend's English level and think what ability is needed for the test which he/she is taking, and give best appropriate answer we have come up with at that moment: this is the process that I do when I'm asked. Let's back to the answer of the question. Is there one best way to learn English for all the learners, for all levels? The answer is, unfortunately, no. Good ways to learn English depend on the learner's every single factor, age, first language, character, goals, skills and so forth. So, we take as many factors as possible into consideration, sometimes guess the missing factors, and extract a possible good way to achieve the goal. And after you answered the question, you get surprised at the time and energy you spent to get that answer, and wonder if there is a manual for advising language learners.

Well, I will not try my best to make a manual, spending all the summer break left over, but I would like to suggest today a useful aspect of learning when you are engaged in foreign language learning. That is extensive and intensive learning.

Extensive and intensive learning is not something totally new for the field of language learning (or, I would say English learning in this blog). This has already been introduced in reading field. While in extensive reading, the learners read a lot of books whose levels are slightly under their English levels, without looking up unknown words, while in intensive reading, they read books whose levels are the same or bit higher than their levels, with looking up each unknown words and pay great attention to the sentence structure. The quantity matters in extensive reading, and quality matters in intensive reading.

Having learned this idea, extensive and intensive reading, I have thought if it can be applied to other language skills, listening, writing, and speaking. And it seems that the idea works well on these three skills as well as on reading. When a learner practice writing, they can do both extensive writing and intensive writing, and so as in other skills. The important idea here, is that in the extensive learning, quantity matters, and in the intensive learning, quality matters. The purpose of the extensive learning is to get much experience of and get used to doing the task, and get knowledge from that experience, as the learner is exposed to a good amount of input. The purpose of the intensive learning is to consider and analyze the information from the task as much as possible, and get deeper insight of the target language. These two are not standing by itself independently, however. These two have to be balanced in order to get the most of the learning.

The extensive and the intensive learning is not something which can answer the previous question "what's the best way to learn English". It does, however, have potential to be one effective way to learn English, and I hope this idea will help learners who want to improve their language skills.