Kind of a rant, but I also want to hear what others are going through (ALTs specifically).
I was wondering if any ALTs in Japan are teaching phonics in their classes (digraphs, diphthongs, silent letters, CVC, short/long vowels, etc.). I just made up a phonics curriculum for my elementary school students to follow since it’s so painful to see them struggle with reading and writing in English. My schools are using the Let’s Try and New Horizon textbooks, which don’t really have phonics materials, and the teachers don’t have any knowledge of phonics whatsoever.
I just feel like the public school system in Japan and MEXT are anti-phonics. It just seems like they want to follow the MEXT guidelines of teaching, which (I heard) states that children shouldn’t be reading or writing much in elementary school. But is anyone going against the guidelines and trying to teach actual useful materials (even with disapproval from teachers)? I don’t think it’s going to kill anyone to actually teach students how to read, so that’s why I’m going to teach phonics regardless of the curriculum we have to follow (it’s only going to be a 5-minute exercise at the beginning of my classes).
I’m just tired of coming to school and having the homeroom teachers and my dispatch company be happy with my teaching when I think it’s moreso “mediocre” than “stellar” as I’m just some native speaker who’s simply teaching phrases and vocabulary. I really care more about these students and want to see them have some sort of progress with English. Instead, the system is just setting them up for failure. I plan on switching jobs soon since I really can’t stand this torture of following mediocre lesson plans, but for the last few months of my current position, I really don’t want to set these kids up for failure. I want to make at least just a little bit of a difference in their lives and not be part of the reason why this country is purposely failing them at English. I know it’s not the end of the world, but it definitely isn’t fun for me, either. Seeing these kids struggle and asking me how to read words for them when they could be taught how to read those words is what kills me.
I know ALTs don’t have much power over the English language curriculum in Japan, but I don’t want to be part of the problem and enable this type of English teaching system. I’m only one person, but since there are many ALTs coming in and out of the country, I think we should try to teach something useful and not continue wasting time like this.
15 comments
Not an ALT, but years (decades?) back when I was one, I had good success teaching reading and writing in elementary school. Kids that age at my school seemed to love it – I got the feeling that at that age reading and writing English was genuinely fun as a kind of secret code. But that really only works when the other teachers are on board. It’s honestly not worth getting into an argument with the homeroom teacher over, especially because they are accountable for what goes on in their classroom and the ALT typically won’t be.
>I really don’t want to set these kids up for failure.
I have good news for you! You basically can’t.
If JHS kids have good motivation and a school system set up to support them, they can totally learn reading and writing from next to nothing going in. If they don’t have good motivation or a supportive school system… you won’t have done them any harm.
I sympathize, but trying to step beyond what your school is willing to support is a prime recipe for burn-out. It’s not your job to solve Japanese EFL for these kids.
There are techniques for stealthing in some phonemic awareness without lecturing on phonology. Here’s an activity I got from some famous teacher’s blog ages ago: Make a board game where the path the players move their pieces on is the shape of a letter of the alphabet. Populate each space with clip art for a word that begins with that sound. Make the path the players have to go through the board follow the stroke order for writing the letter. So one board is ‘b’ and all spaces are words that begin with ‘b’, one board ‘c’, and so on. Students take turns rolling dice, landing on pictures, trying to guess the word. Sound/letter writing correspondence is all there to be picked up, and not a single phonics “lesson” need ever have happened.
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My base school specifically asked me to teach phonics for 10 minutes at the start of each lesson. I taught in UK primary school for 9 years previously so use the same scheme for progression while trying to make the activities age appropriate.
I do think phonics has great value but it comes with issues, the main one being that it develops fluency without comprehension. In the UK I would try to counteract this by providing a literacy-rich environment with lots of comprehension activities. This is harder to do in my current role. I try my best to link it to other parts of the lessons.
When it comes to being an ALT working on a dispatch contract, the best thing to do is to repeat these phrases, to yourself, over and over – unless you want to get fired:
1. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
2. THey don’t pay me enough for me to care about this shit.
3. Ain’t in my job description.
That’s my recommendation, for what it’s worth.
I mean English time is pretty damn limited phonics has to share space with a lot of other skill development. I do agree phonics should share a decently large space in early language development but also think a lot of phonics advocates are nuts overly focused on one issue. (sorry have had a lot of back and forth with phonics people)
Some public school systems here do phonics and the Here We Go book incorporates a little (just one letter one sound but better than nothing). So I didn’t have the pushback as an ALT that you are getting.
If they allow you to teach it, do it. If they don’t – well, it’s frustrating. Sometimes if you wait it out and ask again you can get somewhere. If not – there are plenty of other jobs where you can have more teaching freedom.
I show the phonetics and ask them to read words. Get about 95% of the pronunciation right after a few sessions. But I teach at a daycare with after school 2nd years. So I’m free to teach as I please.
I believe the New Horizon elementary school book has 2 phonics songs in the back of the book. One is animals the other is food. You can use the digital material to find the slightly animated videos. Or you can use the qr code to just play the audio.
Play it and have the kids sing along. Then you can you can do little mini quizzes or challenges based on those pictures.
The book even has joined phonics like Ch,wh,oo, etc.
You can draw a picture of 🧀 or 🐋 and write _ _eese or _ _ale next to the picture. The kids write their answers on paper they are already using for 目当て or their daily goal sheet.
It takes less than 5 minutes each lesson.
I started teaching my kids phonics from the Jolly Phonics program and the results were amazing, even for just dedicating about fifteen to twenty minutes every class, once or twice a week. The rest of the class period was for the textbook stuff.
I taught it for a couple years before I came back to America last year, but I’m planning to return to Japan late next year to get back into teaching JP. It really is so helpful for them to learn how to read and write English, and they gain so much confidence when they do. I actually taught workshops for Jolly Phonics during the annual Skills Development Conference (for JET) two years in a row because I love the program so much and wanted to spread the good word to other ALTs and JTEs in attendance.
Seriously, if anyone wants a great program that lays out EVERYTHING for you, go with Jolly Phonics. They have a two day workshop you can take in Tokyo to learn how to do it, and they also have Jolly Grammar, altho I haven’t done that one yet. Definitely will take that workshop whenever I’m back though, because I’m positive it will be amazing too.
Anyways, I am not actually a JP salesperson 🤣 but I 1000% would be if I had good enough Japanese. They need to know about this program too, and the textbooks come in Japanese so they can totally teach it.
Tl;Dr : Jolly Phonics is the best, and should be taught nationwide in Japan.
MEXT is slowly requiring every grade to have testing to asses English ability. Ironically this is taking so much focus away from teaching actual communication skills and giving realistic speaking opportunities, that they can’t do anything. Last year, my 5-6 graders had no tests whatsoever, so we focused mostly on speaking and communication activities with a small reliance on the book. The results were great. The best part the kids LIKED English class. This year, complete 180. Very rigid, cut and dry lesson plan designated by MEXT with a performance test, written test, and “speaking” test. Pretty much every test has been a blinder up until now. The JTE I work with can’t fathom why this is happening this year. It’s truly sad. Oh and the kids HATE English class now.
We recently had a meeting at the Eikaiwa I work at about teaching phonics. One of the Japanese teachers stressed 3 points that you may want to consider.
1: When we teach phonics, we often add extra sounds to our pronunciation, like “This is the letter B, B says ‘Buh'” which can be taken as a completely different sound than “B-“.
2: Sounding out words, one of the benefits of learning phonics, is easier for native speakers because they have so much exposure to the sounds of words. When we sounded out words as children “Buh-a-tuh” we could relate it to sounding like “Bat”, but, without the constant reinforcement of immersion the students won’t make the connections as easily as we did.
Lastly, when they are trying to learn everything for their tests, and then we introduce a new concept like phonics into their curriculum, it might overload them. I had the idea that “If I could just cram this into their brilliant little hardworking Japanese brains, then they would improve exponentially and no longer suffer when reading new words!” But, now I realize that I wasn’t considering the whole picture, and that they already have so much to learn in regards to English (Let alone the rest of the stuff at public school and Juku)
I hope this is food for thought. Good luck!
It seems to vary from school to school.
New Horizon Elementary textbooks have a series of phonics exercises for grades 5/6 as well (Sounds and Letters) built into the curriculum, and should take less than 5 minutes of lesson time each day.
One school I was at, they used Jolly Phonics materials. Every student had a book, and the school had a login that allowed them to use the digital materials (video/audio) in class. They spent about 5-8 minutes at the beginning of each lesson, before moving onto the prescribed texts. It was a public school, and I always wondered where/how did they get the budget for it, as I had not seen it used in any other schools in that area.
Another school similarly spent 5-8 minutes at the start of each lesson on phonics. First, they played a video from the YouTube channel HFT/Have Fun Teaching. One alphabet per day. The rhythm of all their songs allows you to have a cycle of listen/repeat of each word, or 4/8 beat repeat of each “sound”. The focus here was on listening and reproduction, so the students were tasked to be totally silent during the “listening” parts, and not to shout (especially the lower grades) when repeating, but to try to pronounce the sounds clearly.
When all the letters of the alphabet were done, they moved on to writing with a worksheet. Again, one letter per day. Uppercase, lowercase, and a few words (eg: apple, ant… bus, baby… etc). The focus was for the students to write neatly using the lines, and not about trying to complete the worksheet as quickly as possible; then “reviewing” the sounds … A /a/ /a/ apple, A /a/ /a/ ant… Nothing revolutionary, but simple enough for the HRT/JTE and ALT to handle, and consistent enough for the students to follow.
Funabashi (Chiba prefecture) taught phonics at Elementary level when I was there and as far as I know still do!
The story goes that the Mayor felt his English education was severely lacking, especially his listening and speaking skills and wanted to make sure his city had the best English program in the prefecture. In my short time there I have to say, it worked! The kids could actually say (and differentiate) cut/cat very/berry fun/fan, et al, it was astonishing how much better they were than other cities I’d worked at.
Damn shame it’s not mandated country wide. Shingz uddo be bery different….
Hey OP, Is it ok if you send me a copy of your phonic curriculum? Im also in the same situation
I remember clapping to count syllables. Like “tennis” they would say 3 but I told them it was 2. Also, I refused to let students say things like “De-cem-bahh”. I accentuated the “Burrr”. They laughed how it sounded but the kids loved it.