TAKAKO AIKAWA: So we had two different sessions. One is grammar session, and the other one is drill session. Grammar session is to teach or introduce new grammar items, and usually, we do this grammar session, we are using English, especially for beginners classes. The drill session is to practice what students have learned in grammar session, so lots of drills and interactive activities in class, and drills sessions are entirely in Japanese, even from day two of the first year. And in terms of proportion, we usually spend one day for grammar session and four to five days for drill sessions per each lesson.
So for grammar session, the students are supposed to read grammar notes of the textbook, so each lesson, we have grammar notes on the textbook. And at the same time, each lesson introduces 40 to 50 new vocabularies, so students are supposed to learn those new vocabularies as well. For drill sessions, we have a lot of online interactive exercises, so students are supposed to go to this online site and then do a lot of practice. So conducting drills sessions entirely in Japanese it's quite challenging for us, but I believe that language needs to be learned together with context. So as a language teacher, and then I believe that other colleagues do the same thing, too, we bring a lot of visual aids. so that the classroom becomes more like a real context, and then we try to create a so-called immersive environment in class, and that way we can conduct interactive drills.
