278

PROFILETEACHING AND ASSESSING LITERACY USINGA BALANCED APPROACH: EFFECTS OF CAN-DO
SELF-ASSESSMENT ON EARLY EFL LEARNERS
Following the January and July 2023 issues, Emiko Izumi from the School of Education & Graduate
School of Education at Kwansei Gakuin University discusses the content and results of her
collaborative research on the teaching and assessment of reading and writing for early English
as foreign language (EFL) learners in Japan
Reading and writing lessons should be

In the district where the programme‘consonant + short vowel + consonant,’

conducted in small, incremental steps.

was implemented, about 15,000

like cat and dog; level 2 includes words

Especially for Japanese learners ofstudents have received the systematicwith consonant digraphs like shop andEnglish, it is very difficult to learn theand explicit bottom-up instruction

dish; level 3 includes words withalphabet (upper- and lower-caseevery year since 2017. This instruction

consonant clusters like frog and clock;letters) and to connect letters andinvolves about seven minutes oflevel 4 includes final-e words like cakesounds. The English language has aliteracy instruction in a weekly classand nice; and, finally, level 5 includes

different phonological system andfrom the third grade.

words with vowel digraphs like rain
and boat.

graphemes from Japanese, so it isimportant for learners to recognise

Since 2016, Dr Mitsue Allen-Tamai, aphonemes and develop phonologicalmember of Dr Izumi‘s research group,

As a result, 74% of the students wereawareness.

has been researching how students

able to respond quickly to thewho received the literacy instruction

uppercase letters and 67% to theWith this being said, we recommend aevaluated their abilities. Among thelowercase letters, since the target wasbalanced approach that introduces

many things we have learned, the Can-three or higher on a four-point scale.

bottom-up strategies, such as phonics

Do scale evaluation was very effective

Based on the test results, the average

instruction that teaches the rules forin allowing students to evaluate theirpercentage of correct responses forlinking sounds and letters, and a top-ability accurately.

both uppercase and lowercase letters
was close to 90%, so it can be said that

down approach, such as understanding
content from songs, stories, and93 sixth graders participated in thispicture books with a focus on meaning.

study in 2022 and student self-

the goal was achieved.

appraisals were collected along with

As for the relationship between sounds

A bottom-up approach toteaching and assessing
literacy: Correlations between
self-rating and tests ofalphabet and phonologicalawarenessthree criterion measures of reading

and letters, the children seemed toability: letter-name knowledge, sound-have the most difficulty withletter knowledge, and word knowledge.

consonants, followed by two-letter

Starting in 2020, when the latest

consonants, short vowels, and finally
The Can-Do scale self-assessment waslong vowels, in this order. The second

used for letter-name knowledge and alevel of the three-level scale-”fairly wellthree-point Likert scale assessment

understood” was most popular, which

national curriculum was introduced,

was used to evaluate their sound-letter

meant that many children understood

students in the upper grades ofknowledge (consonants, short vowels,

those sound-letter associations.

Japanese public elementary schools areconsonant digraphs, and long vowels).

now able take twice-weekly foreign

We created experimental Can-Do scales

However, one-quarter of the students

language classes. This article discusses

for decoding.

answered, “I don’t understand at all”

a unique literacy education programme(level 1) for long vowels, so decoding

and the relationship between literacy

This uses a five-level scale, asking atwords with long vowels was stilland self-assessments of the students

what level words can be read. Level 1 isperceived to be quite difficult for thewho participated in the programme.

the ability to read words withelementary school children.

LBS Activities Using Momotaro. From Sorting to Retelling

PROFILE279

the contents of the stories in English,
even with their limited knowledge,
scaffolded by visuals and the teacher’s
storytelling. Furthermore, they became
more motivated to read the story on
their own as they wanted to knowwhat would happen next.
Teaching reading and writing toCorrelations between self-assessments

prompts. There were three questions

elementary school students in Japan

showed that the strongest correlation

to match the goal of each lesson forstarted recently in 2020 and, due to thewas found between self-assessments

students to choose from four scalesdifficulty in understanding sound-letterof uppercase and lowercase letterand a space for their free description torelations and reading words, more

knowledge (r = .914), followed byassess their own performance.

research in this area is in urgent need.

consonant and consonant digraph

Besides the need to implement aknowledge (r = .723), and finally

The LBS method consists of fourbalanced of both bottom-up andbetween short and long vowel

main parts:

top-down approaches, we need to• Interactive storytelling, that is,assess Japanese people’s reading ability

Next, we examined the relationshiptelling the story of a picture bookas it is such a complex area.

between the skill measured in each test

while interacting with students;

keep searching for more tools toknowledge (r = .720).

Our study suggests that using thisand its self-assessment. Interestingly,
the highest correlation coefficient was• Reordering the plot of the story as a

Can-Do scale self-assessment as afound between each skill and the self-class and in groups;

formative tool should share theteachers’ goals with students, help

assessment of decoding, followed by• Retelling the story in a group; andstudents to realise for themselves

between the test score of uppercase• An output activity depending on theto their increased self-efficacy.

letters and the self-evaluation ofage and cognitive level of thedecoding was higher than that between

students.

that of consonants. It is interesting towhat they can or cannot do, and leadnote that the correlation coefficient

the test score and uppercase selfevaluation. The same was true for theAt a private elementary school wherelowercase, consonant, short vowel,

students are taught English twice aand long vowel knowledge.

week, sixth graders (N=30) had fivelessons under this LBS method and theTeaching and assessing
literacy through a top-down
approach

Can-Do scale self-assessments wereAs one sector of Dr Izumi’s researchand its self-assessment increased

group, the top-down method for(r = .492 to r = .691) as the lessons

fostering elementary school students’proceeded. It was also noted thatemergent literacy has been studied bythose who assessed themselves as low

Professor Mayumi Tabuchi and her

as 1 (It is still very hard) or 2 (I couldcolleagues. A series of effective

understand with the visuals in the

English activities, followed by telling abook somehow) when asked “Do youstory with the picture book, has beenunderstand the story?” had changed

practiced and named the ‘Learning bynotably.

conducted four times. The results show
the correlations between each unit quiz

Storytelling’ (LBS) method.
The qualitative analysis of the students’
A qualitative analysis was conductedcomments showed they graduallybased on students’ responses to threegained confidence in understanding

Emiko Izumi, Ph.D.
Professor, Assistant Dean
School of Education &Graduate School of Education
Kwansei Gakuin University
Tel: +81 798 52 4376
emiko@kwansei.ac.jp
http://www.izumi-lab.jp/easel.html
https://researchmap.jp/read0202610/?lang=en
https://kaken.nii.ac.jp/ja/grant/KAKEN
HI-PROJECT-18H00690/
https://kaken.nii.ac.jp/grant/KAKENHI-PROJECT-22H00684/