The new Course of Study for senior high schools was announced by the MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology - Japan) in March 2009 for implementation in April 2013. This paper reviews the debate over the decree that“(English) classes, in principle, should be conducted in English."First, I will offer a historical review of the attempts to teach and learn English in English. Looking back on the history of English language education in Japan, we have always seen a dilemma as to whether to teach English in English or in Japanese. In the beginning of Meiji Era, we started with the“Seisoku (orthodox method)"that foreign teachers employed and the“Hensoku (unorthodox method)"used by Japanese teachers. English was the language for instruction in“Seisoku"and it was Japanese in“Hensoku."This duality has persisted up to now, each finding more favour than the other by turns. In the latter part of the paper, we will summarise the key issues of the debates over the MEXT's statement.
山田 et al. (Thu,) studied this question.