Background—GrapeSEED’s OriginsGrapeSEED’s global success in teaching English to young learners

stems from its strong foundation of over four decades of classroom teaching experience, combined with world-class, breakthrough educational research.

Based on Four Decades of Classroom Experience

The GrapeSEED English Arts Curriculum for Children was born out of more than four decades of English teaching success at the MeySen Academy in Sendai, Japan. A premier educational institution, the MeySen Academy specializes in teaching English as a second language (ESL) to children between the ages of 4 and 12.

The school’s “joy of learning” philosophy—core to the culture at MeySen’s two campuses in Sendai, Japan—has in�uenced many K-6th grade educational institutions throughout Asia.

Backed By Breakthrough Educational Research

Several years ago, as part of an internal effort to seek the highest levels of educational excellence, the MeySen leadership undertook a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of early English education for children—both in its own facilities and internationally.

This breakthrough research, facilitated by world experts in English language acquisition and early childhood learning, concluded that to improve English education for children by an order of magnitude, fundamental changes were needed in the philosophy, approach, and curriculum used to teach English to young children—and that these changes could best be accomplished by adopting a functional-notional approach to teaching English.

Based on this research, MeySen went on to develop the GrapeSEED curriculum, built entirely on functional-notional teaching methods.

“I think the MeySen curriculum has a lot of potential. The

quality is clearly very high. Your materials, the books and the audio/visual, are of much higher

quality than other programs on the market. “—David Paul, Founder of David English House and author of

Teaching Children in Asia

Creation of the GrapeSEED CurriculumThe GrapeSEED English Arts Curriculum for Children is the world’s �rst comprehensive English language

curriculum based on the acclaimed functional-notional approach to teaching English—an approach speci�cally designed for teaching children.

In 2006, before creating the �rst storybook, the curriculum designers invested a year of research and planning. Beginning with a blank slate, they built everything on the framework of the functional-notional approach. For example, they derived vocabulary not from lists, but from common functions that children would want to perform, such as eat or play.

The designers created a comprehensive, yet streamlined, functional-notional system and added a daily feature called pronunciation focus, which aids the teacher in systematically emphasizing important sounds. They also replaced ordinary phonics instruction, developed for children who already know English, with a new phonics approach that doesn’t require prior knowledge of the language. In addition, they developed a complete reading and writing readiness program and a language arts program that prepares students to learn independently through reading and writing.

The goal of this effort was to have a smarter, more ef�cient

program—one that removes the obstacles to learning found in traditional, adult-oriented curricula; provides more exposure to the elements that are most important for teaching English to young children; and ensures positive results. To further bolster the success of the curriculum, the designers added the Extended English Environment, a unique element that multiplies the effectiveness of all the rest by enabling students to continue their learning at home.

To learn more about GrapeSEED, please e-mail us at:

licensing@grapeseed.com Or visit: www.grapeseed.com