Curriculum and Materials



Curriculum and materials vary greatly between schools. Much depends on the schools target market, and the goals of the students. High schools must use textbooks approved by the ministry of education, and university teachers are often restricted by what is approved by the department. Private schools go from one extreme to the other, some schools have a rigidly set curriculum and others allowing the teacher complete freedom. Many schools will have teachers create new materials themselves. Smaller schools tend to have less rigid curriculum, but also are more liable to give you classes with mixed proficiency levels; they often just introduce you to a wall of textbooks collected over time, and tell you to make whatever lessons you like from whatever books strike you.

Usually, however, a school tends to have a "core text," around which most of the lessons are based. There are two common types of lesson organization: grammar-based and "notional-functional." Grammar-based texts will center each unit on a grammar structure, beginning with the easiest (e.g., simple present, present continuous) and moving on to more complicated structures (e.g., clauses, phrases); "notional-functional" syllabuses center each unit around a function of language, e.g. "introductions," "invitations," "asking for information," etc. The notional-functional syllabus tends to de-emphasize grammar, though it is still present in the form of objectives within any given lesson.

Materials are usually purchased from the wide variety of commercial texts available; some are designed specifically for the Japanese market in mind, but all too often the books are designed for ESL use in North America or the U.K., and then later sold overseas as EFL texts in hopes of increasing sales. As a result, you may get textbooks which are not designed with your students in mind. During my first few years as a teacher, I was given a book series called "Streamline," which while useful, was not ideal and I became tired of it very quickly. At the next school I worked at, we used a core grammar text (the Lado series) supplemented by a few dozen auxiliary texts from which we could choose freely. The last job I worked at used an in-house text produced together with a language school attached to an American university; there were no auxiliary texts, but the series was custom-made for the school's needs, was based on some of the latest teaching theory, and worked extremely well for what it was designed to do.

How set a curriculum is determines how much preparation time (as opposed to "contact hours") is required. If you work at a large school with a rigidly set curriculum, you will often not be required to do much preparation at all. The school will get more profits if the time teachers are paid for is spent in the classroom rather than at a desk. Classes tend to be spaced 10 to 20 minutes apart. Other schools, however, will have you prepare materials, meaning fewer contact hours. Be careful of schools that do not specify the amount of preparation time; you may wind up having to work longer than you thought, all told.



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