Adaptation of the CEFR to remedial English language education in Japan

Abstract

This article sets out to show how to contextualize CEFR descriptors to fit remedial English reading courses at Japanese tertiary institutions. The courses target incoming students who are typically accepted in the fall of their final high school year, and are offered between the time of acceptance and enrolment in the following April. The paper details steps for contextualizing CEFR descriptors and explains how we specify the descriptors for the remedial course. The adaptation of the CEFR comprises two steps. The first is to select CEFR descriptors relevant to the course. The selection is based on the purposes of the course and the proficiency level of the target learners. The second step is to expand on the selected descriptors in terms of reading tasks, text types, and text features. Text types associated with the reading tasks defined in the selected descriptors are identified, and text features are specified based on a close examination of the target level. Reading tasks are particularized according to text types and the actual texts assigned in each lesson. The resultant contextualization, varying in degree of specification, supports the different purposes of the course.

CEFR-aligned Primary Curriculum Framework:Rural National Primary School English Language Teachers’ Attitudes and Slants

“…In Japan, teachers' unfamiliarity with the framework made they find it difficult to connect reference levels and "can-do" descriptors to classroom activities (Markel, 2018). Furthermore, the case studies conducted in Japan reported that the implementation of CEFR-based holistic language curriculum reform emerged to be not easy (Nagai & O'Dwyer, 2011). Malaysian language teachers, nonetheless refuse to accept or comply with the CEFR, are not ready to take CEFR into their classroom implementation although they have attended CEFR related workshops and in-house training, and they have a conception in which they pinpointed that it is not easy for them to incorporate CEFR in their teaching (Uri & Aziz, 2018).…”

Evaluation of Remedial English using Gray Relational Analysis (GRA) method

“…MAD gives them a chance to draw their own cartoons, which they often do well. [14] One hundred and five colleges stated that they do not currently offer English medium courses, citing various reasons such as lack of money, lack of space, and lack of staff. Other reasons given were a reluctance to undertake a job considered to belong to high schools and the belief that most of the regular freshman English was actually adjuncts.…”

Leveling L2 Texts Through Readability: Combining Multilevel Linguistic Features with the CEFR

“…Many language tests, such as the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), have been mapped onto the CEFR (Tannenbaum & Wylie, 2005). In turn, educators have designed curricula based on the CEFR (Byram & Parmenter, 2012;Nagai et al, 2013).…”