No, seriously like what are we all doing here? What is the point of teaching English in Japan? I adore my students and sincerely enjoy the time getting to know them and have fun with them. Some of the teachers are pretty great too. However, the teaching part has become so redundant to me. I had to sit through a class where a teacher was teaching some grammar points and they were all wrong. I wanted to say something but my company warned me against making the teacher look a certain way.
Okay? So… does that mean we just allow the children to also copy these mistakes?
Don’t even get me started on performance tests either because about only a handful of the students can ACTUALLY speak English. If accuracy is on the rubric then the rest have automatically failed. They are not fluent. Not even close. I’m not trying to be a pessimist. In fact I learned three languages with two being at primary school. It is indeed possible to achieve fluency in another language at school yet Japan hasn’t taken notes on how to properly execute a bilingual curriculum. I’m pretty much there to repeat my ten words and that’s it. The part that gets to me is that they don’t even have the ability to articulate the sounds accurately. That goes back to just skipping phonics in elementary school. And I absolutely don’t blame my students for this. I hear that only international schools teach English. Okay so does that mean you have to be rich to learn English?? How is that fair to lower income families??? As someone who came from rags I am fortunate that my education focused on the English language hence why I’m even here in the first place.
My question is, why are we teaching English? If we are not striving for fluency then what’s all this for? If this is just in the hopes of passing an entrance exam then language ceases to have meaning.
Like I don’t know if it’s just me but like my Japanese is okay but I’m not about to start teaching Japanese. Can someone explain to me how some teachers who aren’t qualified to teach English teach it anyway?? Again, no hate to them some of them are nice people I’m sure but like how? It’s almost a disservice really. I’m just over it. I hate what my job has become. I’m planning on quitting really soon so this is just something I wanted to get off my chest. If I’m wrong about anything please feel free to correct me.
by THROWRA-Ok-Trust2651