What is Shin-Eiken
Japanese / English
A Nation-wide teachers Organization in Japan
Shin-Eiken, New English Teachers Association, is a nation-wide teachers organization in Japan, having a membership about 1,000. An annual conference, various provincial and regional meetings are held regularly.
Shin-Eiken, was founded in 1959 inspired by the ideals- peace, democracy, pursuit of happiness freedom and justice- of The Constitution of Japan (1947).
The aim of Shin-Eiken is to create and develop a new English education that is properly rooted in democracy. Therefore, Shin-Eiken teachers would like to see every child achieve a certain degree of proficiency in foreign languages (English) to be international citizens. International understanding or global awareness leads to world peace.
A monthly Japanese language magazine for teachers of English, Shin Eigo Kyouiku, New English Classroom edited by teachers and published by Koubunken. It has 4,000 circulation over Japan.
We, teachers have tried to teach by the best materials as possible such as “I Have a Dream" by M. L. King, “The Concluding speech of the Great dictator" by C. Chaplin, The Story of My Life by H. Keller.
We also made the materials adopted from the records of A bomb survivors and so on. In addition, there are many good materials originated by teachers themselves which have both local and global perspective.
Teaching methodologies are also evolved by a student centered ideals. The method of Self-Expression, and have made much of the group learning method to encourage students to participate the class.
Followings are the ten discussion groups of the annual conference:
- Materials in textbooks
- Original creative materials
- Grammar
- Speaking
- Evaluation and achievement
- Helping self-learning
- Helping slow learners
- Self-Expression(Creative writing)
- Peace education
- Teaching with Native speakers of English