Project in English

Student Voice

Thanks for browsing the Chufu homepage and taking an interest in the Project in English courses that we teach here at Chuo University Junior & High school. On this page we have included some video examples of the work our students have produced over the last academic year. Perhaps the best place to start is to hear from a few of our students with regards to how they feel about PIE.

About the Project in English Courses

Project in English (PIE) is a task-based course taught with one native teacher and one Japanese teacher. The PIE course was designed by the English teachers at Chufu to give our students a platform to improve their English language skills. All students who enter Chufu will study PIE as one of their core subjects. In junior high school there is one PIE lesson a week, and in high school there are two lessons a week.

The overall goal in PIE is to learn how to express yourself in simple, but natural English – though the way the course has been designed means our students are also given many opportunities to improve their presentation skills and develop their critical thinking. The PIE course also offers students the chance to enhance their research skills, helping them to learn how to make professional presentations – using PowerPoint (PP) or Keynote – and edit videos along the way.

Most aspects of the course are conducted in English, and students are encouraged to speak, conduct research, write notes and present in English as much as possible. The students regularly work together in pairs or small groups. This collaborative learning encourages the students to communicate and solve problems together and also enables those students who are more fluent in English to support their classmates. 

We have designed the PIE syllabus to be as flexible as possible to encourage our students to become autonomous learners. Each grade focuses on a particular theme that we explore together. Students are given the freedom to choose a research topic that they are interested in, and in many cases, can make a presentation in the style of their choice. We want to promote students’ independence and have them take responsibility for their own learning. 

The students’ learning is supported by “scaffolding”, which means before the students are asked to complete a specific task they are provided with appropriate instruction and are given time to practice to enable them to be competent in the necessary skills. For example, paraphrasing in English from sources on the internet is an important skill which demonstrates that the student understands the content and can re-write it in their own words. 

*The pictures below are taken from the PIE-4 term 1 project.
Students are required to research an overseas company and make a poster about that company. They need to find at least five interesting things and also show that company’s relationship with Japan.

*The pictures below are taken from the PIE-5 term 2 ‘charity’ project.
Students are required to research a charity and create an 8-slide PowerPoint/Keynote.
They need to research the charity and then express their opinion about the work that charity does. They also need to offer some in-depth analysis of how effective the charity’s is.

High School Second Grade – Third Term Video Showreel

A short video highlighting the work produced by some of our second-grade students during the third term. Working in groups of 4, each group was asked to create a 5-minute TV show about a global issue they chose to research.

PIE Online

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, online learning has become more and more common in Japan. During the enforced school closure from April 2020, we had to teach the PIE courses online. We have always focused strongly on technology and innovation within the classroom, and the pandemic gave us the opportunity to create our own multimedia lessons to help our students continue to improve their English skills outside of the classroom environment. We created weekly 12-minute videos on a wide range of subjects covering themes such as video games, shopping, mental health, music and sports. The lessons contained both interactive activities, vocabulary quizzes, writing exercises and the chance for our students to create their own videos and other fun content. We felt it was important that they had the opportunity to further their knowledge and understanding regarding how COVID-19 is affecting our daily lives.

Evaluation

The evaluation for the PIE courses differs for each school grade.
In junior high school there are no tests, and all the grading is based on the students’ projects and their participation and attitude in the classroom. The PIE grade is 20% of their overall English grade.

In high school PIE is a standalone course. In 1st and 2nd year, the students are also graded on their participation and attitude in the classroom, however the students must also do a test based on the materials they have studied. Tests make up 30-50% of their grades depending on the specific course.

There are no tests at all for high school 3rd year. All grades are based on their projects and class participation.

In order to continuously improve our PIE courses, we regularly administer questionnaires via Google Forms to get feedback from the students on the effectiveness of the course – what was good and what could be improved. It also gives the students a chance to evaluate and reflect on themselves and assess how they worked with their classmates.

Project in English – Course Overview