The Linden Hall curriculum is designed so that students naturally develop the ability to speak, listen, read and write.

By interacting with native English-speaking teachers on a day-to-day basis, students gain crucial listening skills as well as speaking skills. Students also participate in “Show and Tell” where they make a presentation about a given topic or theme. In order to develop “ability in reading” and “ability in writing”, students’ reading and writing skills are built through exposure to English books. Students will read these books both silently and aloud, as well as take part in writing activities about the books they have read. The four key language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening are incorporated within the curriculum in a way that ensures balanced development.

3,882 hours of classes delivered in English results in a high level of acquisition.

Japanese people generally need to study for approximately 3000 hours to master English. At Linden Hall students will surpass this number over the 6 years of elementary school. As a result, when students proceed to Junior High School and beyond, the time that other students spend studying English is able to be used in different and meaningful ways.

Class Hours in English

Unit: Number of classes. Each class is 45 minutes. Numbers in parentheses are the class hours converted to actual hours.
*See: MEXT in Japan, Japanese Government Courses Guidelines for Elementary Schools

Each year students of Linden Hall also take either the TOEFL Primary or TOEFL tests. Each year we see many students achieving excellent results such as 218/220 in TOEFL Primary Step 1, 230/230 in TOEFL Primary Step 2 and 885/900 in TOEFL Junior.

Academic enrichment through Team Teaching

All classes taught in English adopt “team-teaching” consisting of a foreign teacher and a Japanese teacher. This means teachers are able to support children who are not yet familiar with English, provide supplementary lessons in Japanese for the content they have learned in English, and further deepen their understanding.

Our School is Recognised as an Ichijou-Kou^*1 and Therefore Designated a Specially Exempt School by the MEXT^*2

Linden Hall School is an Ichijou-Kou that administers an educational programme that is in accordance with the MEXT’s curriculum. Because we provide an English immersion programme and environmental studies course, we are designated a Specially Exempt School. In addition, as we use English-translated textbooks approved by the MEXT, there should be no curricular issues in the unlikely event that a student seeks a transfer to a public or private, junior or senior high school.
*1 Ichijou-Kou refers to educational institutions stipulated in Article 1 of the School Education Law in Japan, and includes kindergartens, elementary schools, junior high schools, compulsory education schools, high schools, secondary schools, schools for students with special needs, universities, and technical colleges.
*2 MEXT refers to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology