The Course of Study for Senior High School English: Recent Developments, Implementation to Date, and Considerations for Future Research

The New Course of Study 2009 for Foreign languages: English (shin gakushuu shidou youryou: gaikokugo, eigo) will be enacted at the senior high school level from April 2013. The new curriculum further advocates a communicative approach to English language teaching, yet in spite of a succession of previous reforms to the national curriculum, communicative approaches to teaching English have not been widely adopted in Japanese senior high schools. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is threefold: First, I describe and explain key developments in the new curriculum; Next, I provide a review of the most recent empirical research into the implementation of the MEXT’s curricular to date, reassessing the role of university entrance examinations and drawing attention to a range of other obstacles operating against reform; Finally, I propose a suitable theoretical framework for researching teacher beliefs and intentions regarding their implementation of the Course of Study 2009