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Starting in 2009, 5th and 6th grade children around Japan will be required to take an English class and to aid their new would-be English teachers, the Ministry of Education has produced a new book called Eigo Noto (English Note(s)). The book is divided into two levels with level one for 5th grade and level two for 6th grade. The book also comes with a multimedia cd which is really just an interactive version of the book.

In use for only a few months now, Eigo Noto has already had its share of critics. One often cited complaint is that the teachers manual is in Japanese–not much use for the English speaking ALT’s (assistant language teachers) who will help with teaching the class.

Love it or hate it, a lot of schools will be using Eigo Noto and so rather than waste time fighting the system, here are some tips to make using Eigo Noto a little easier. Hopefully these tips will allow ALT’s to get more involvement in their classes too.

Before we get into the tips, let’s look at a basic Eigo Noto lesson. Lessons are generally divided into four different kinds of activities: Let’s Listen, Let’s Chant/Sing, Let’s Play and finally Activities.

Many Let’s Listen activities are dialogs on the CD. Instead of just listening to the CD, the HRT or Home Room Teacher and ALT could perform the dialogs as mini-skits. This also encourages the students because they’ll gain confidence by watching their HRT trying to speak English.

Let’s Play–this one is easy enough. As an ALT you should be leading the games as the Game Master. This is the fun stuff and probably what I enjoy most about being an ALT.

The singing and chanting activity, Let’s Sing/Chant, give the ALT a chance to lead a quick mini-practice session. The Alphabet song is one song in Eigo Noto so using that as an example, the Alt could say each letter and then have the students repeat. This give the ALT a chance to catch any problems with pronunciation that might get overlooked while the CD is playing.

Simply called, “Activites,” in Eigo Noto, this is probably the most difficult section to deal with because many of these activities are conducted entirely in Japanese. One activity in Eigo Noto asks kids to draw a picture and describe, in Japanese, what they eat for breakfast. If the ALT will do and complete the activity before class, he can use his completed example to explain the instruction for the activity. That way at least some part of the activity is in English.

Hopefully these tips will help when it comes time to teach using the new books. Eigo Noto is really like any other language book that’s out there in the market. Eigo Noto has its good point and bad points but ultimately success comes down to how the teacher is using it.