The main aim of English Activities in elementary school is not to learn English but to experience the enjoyment of communication activities in English. ・Wanting to understand an unknown language not noticed in their daily lives. ・Wishing to be able to somehow express themselves in a language they cannot use freely. These feelings are the "bud" of communicative competence, something beyond their experience of communicating solely in Japanese, their mother tongue. We hope children can develop a desire to build relations with others through experiences of communicating with others, rather than simply learning words and expressions in English.

Babies and infants start to learn a language by absorbing and accumulating the words and expressions they hear. When this language reaches a certain level, it naturally starts to flow out, just as water starts to overflow the rim when water is poured into a glass. We believe English Activities in elementary school should aim for the same process. When children continuously listen to teachers talking to them, responses from children will naturally appear. Rather than modeling words and sentences and asking the children to repeat, teachers should wait for language to naturally emerge from children. We believe that language learning should start from developing listening and comprehension skills.

In order to foster children's positive attitudes to try to communicate, rather than teaching and pushing the children to learn English, we believe homeroom teachers, who understand each of their students the most, should play the main role in conducting English Activities in elementary schools. The homeroom teacher is the only person who knows all the children's names, their different personalities, subjects each child is strong at, and likes and dislikes. We hope that the homeroom teachers themselves will jump into the class and communicate with the children in English, even when native speakers such as ALTs, AETs, or other volunteer teachers with good skills of English are supporting the lessons. The children should watch their own teacher eagerly taking the challenge to speak in English along with them.

Although both being beginning learners of English, there will be a great difference between what first graders and sixth graders will show interest and curiosity in. We hope to respect the children's stages of development more than anything else. Children will try to listen and understand what the teacher is saying if the content of activities match the developmental levels of children and satisfy their intellectual curiosity. It is possible to repeatedly expose children to the same vocabulary and expressions if we can select topics that meet the interest and curiosity of the children. Children will be exposed to English at a similar level over and over without realizing it by experiencing various activities that interest them. We consider activities that correspond with children's development are those that are based on content suitable for their grade level, rather than those that continue to rise in English level.

In some other texts, certain target expressions are presented and children are required to repeatedly practice the expressions in hope that they will learn to be able to use them. Such lessons are simply rote learning activities that do not contribute to the development of children's communicative competence. They will also take away the enjoyment of English activities. However, in JUNIOR COLUMBUS children will come across English in real contexts through experiences of making things with their own hands and investigating topics based on their own ideas. This is what we consider "English used in real situations." Children will seriously listen, try to understand, and do their best in expressing themselves because English is used for a purpose, and not simply for memorization.