Crossing the language barrier through play — the after-school children’s club English lessons “Eigo GO!”

The APU College of Sustainability and Tourism emphasizes practicum in the local field, and as part of this it has run student-led problem-solving projects (Field Practicum) continuously with the Hiji Town Hall since fiscal 2023. This article is a record of one of those fiscal 2025 projects: the initiative of the English education team ‘Eigo GO!’.

Contents

1. The trigger — giving children an encounter with English

2. Searching for a partner — a first miss, and reconsulting the town hall

3. Three lessons — embedding English inside play

4. What didn’t go well — letting go of “teaching”

5. What we learned

6. Going forward

1 The trigger — giving children an encounter with English

“Eigo GO!” is a team of four students from Japan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Mongolia. Precisely because the members themselves are studying in Japan across a language barrier, they held the wish that “English isn’t scary. We want you to try speaking with confidence.”

Children in Hiji Town have limited chances to encounter English outside of school lessons. English learning is centered on textbooks, and there are few places to actually use it out loud. At the same time, it became clear that there was a need to learn English. So the team decided to deliver, themselves, lessons where children could learn enjoyably through play without being overwhelmed by English.

2 Searching for a partner — a first miss, and reconsulting the town hall

The first wall was securing a place to hold the activity. Through a town-hall contact person we met at the town kickoff meeting, we were introduced to and met someone with English-teaching experience, but it turned out our aims did not match. Rather than stopping here, we consulted the town-hall contact person again, and were introduced to a teacher at an after-school children’s club.

For the subsequent coordination, a member who could speak Japanese became the point of contact, exchanging schedules and lesson plans with the teacher over LINE. On December 8, 2025, we visited the facility, actually saw the children and the classroom environment, and made the plan concrete.

3 Three lessons — embedding English inside play

The lessons took the basic flow of “learning English words → a game using the words → review,” swapping the theme and the play each of the three times.

In Session 1, after pronunciation practice using illustration cards and the blackboard, on to Fruit Basket. Each child got a word sticker, and the child whose word was called moved seats. The final round combined two words, like “red + dog,” a device that mobilized all the vocabulary they had learned.

In Session 2, after learning words using real objects such as towels and flowers, a treasure hunt: find the items hidden in the classroom and say their names in English when you find them. Children who could say it got a candy reward.

Session 3 began with a self-introduction game presenting with learned words, like “my favorite animal is” and “my favorite color is,” and wrapped up with a ping-pong game with words written on the bottoms of cups. Say the word on the cup a ball landed in and get a sticker; at the end candy was handed to everyone, a design that left no one behind.

The costs for printing materials and the reward candy were covered by ourselves, without relying on grants or the like. It is a lesson you can start small, combining tools on hand with familiar play.

4 What didn’t go well — letting go of “teaching”

Things often did not go as planned. In Session 2 the plan was to teach about 15 words and then do the treasure hunt, but some words were difficult for the children, and we had to reduce the number of words. In Session 3, too, we could use only one of the several worksheets we had prepared. The children’s English level was more basic than we had assumed beforehand.

As a result, we could not teach as many words as originally planned, and shifted our footing to a game-centered structure. But this decision to “let go of teaching” was also the reason the children could keep enjoying English without coming to dislike it.

Also, there were sessions where not everyone was present due to illness. Sessions 1 and 2 were run by three people, and only Session 3 had all four members present. Sessions with everyone present clearly had different energy in the room, and the children enjoyed it all the more. Whatever mood you’re in, smile, be energetic, and react big. We learned firsthand that this directly connects to the children’s sense of security and motivation.

5 What we learned

The biggest lesson from practice was “don’t decide the other party’s level before you meet them.” Our prior assumptions were overturned in the first session, and by adjusting the plan after observing the actual situation, we could create a learning space that was comfortable and fun for the children by the final session.

The lesson in team management is communication and mutual respect. We held pre-lesson meetings online, but matching everyone’s availability was hard, and absences and lateness sometimes led to confusion in the next session’s game flow. Explaining circumstances openly and respecting each other’s time and situation supported the teamwork in the final stretch.

Also, the importance of deciding early on how to record and settle advanced expenses remained as a practical lesson.

6 Going forward

After the final session, the team reported the response to this initiative at a reflection meeting with the Hiji Town Hall. The children’s ability to memorize English words and their eagerness to participate were beyond imagination, and whether a framework could be built for APU student volunteers to teach English continuously — that was the team’s proposal to the town. In the members’ reflections there was also a voice wanting to try teaching English to junior high students next. We hope that the small lesson born in the after-school classroom will be passed on to someone next.