Press Releases

1. In response to an interest from municipalities in Okinawa, Okinawa Liaison Office of Ministry of Foreign Affairs has held a Training program of English language teaching for elementary school teachers in Okinawa three times, at the Kadena elementary school, under the co-sponsorship of Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) and US Consulate General Naha since 2018.

2. This training program has been carried out with great cooperation from the US side, in order to help Japanese teachers who face a new challenge in teaching English as English education will become compulsory in all Japanese elementary schools from April 2020. In the past three sessions of this program (November 2018, May 2019, and January 30-31, 2020), 83 elementary school teachers in total participated.

3. In the American school, there are English language classes for students whose mother tongue are not English. Through class room visits and English conversation practice under a lecture by the teacher specialized the English language classes, the participants learned and experienced English teaching method adopted in the school with some activities. The participants have expressed their appreciation to this program.

4. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will continue to help Okinawa’s effort toward internationalization including human resource development in Okinawa prefecture.