I teach Eikaiwa so it’s mostly one-one-one but sometimes small groups of two or three.
Aside from the personal horror show of mine that is teaching kids, I find myself often so so bored.
Adults and teens can be the dullest people ever. I try and come up with various ideas so make the classes interesting but it’s like pulling teeth.
They often clock watch and sigh a lot.
I want to shout at them: “you’re bored because YOU are making this class boring!”
Rant over.
42 comments
Be honest with yourself – if you were them, would YOU want to be there?
Maybe they need a nap time, so they can lie down and become a floor bored.
Pun aside it really depends on the class or students. Adults paying to be there I will put in some effort but at the end of the day some of the burden is on them. Teens are little harder because of the insane number of mandatory education reasons a kid can be there. With those you have to just work with the situation and try to get the kid on board to do the same.
I don’t have a lot of bored students.
Find something they are interested and talk about that. Especially with only one student in the class it’s easy to tailor the lesson around their interests.
I feel like the only bored students I had in eikaiwa were junior high students whose parents were forcing them to be there.
I did have one old man talk really enthusiastically at me about the climate of Osaka for 40 minutes back in the day though. I was definitely bored, even if I put on a brave face. Ha.
It’s a You problem lol
I work at an Eikaiwa for kids of all ages, have about 20 classes per week, and the amount of engagement varies wildly within each age group. Some of my classes are super peppy and engaged, and others are just dull as rocks, or antsy to be done.
Some kids are just bored and can’t be bothered, others have positive attitudes and want to try. Whichever one there’s more of seems to set the tone for the rest of the class.
That being said, bored classes are classes that don’t learn, and it’s still on you to try and fix it by finding some way to engage them.
If you have adults spending their own money to be there, and clock-watching
it’s because you are boring
I have a mix. The adults are mostly all fun. They’re paying for it so the problem is rarely boredom but more often some particular personality trait or something inherited from their culture, or just long-term incapacity to really advance despite plenty of support.
A lot of kids are ok. My favourites seem genuinely happy to be there and to see their English improve and they beam when I compliment them on their progress.
There’s one that clearly has a medical issue that will probably never get diagnosed. Yawns the entire time, every reply to, “How are you today?” is “Sleepy.” without exception. Tells me she sleeps 10+ hours a night (as a 10yr old)
The most boring, unfortunately, are the few groups or individuals of girls/women between 15-35. I’m new to the country so haven’t yet figured out if it’s just a cultural thing but they really have nothing going on. No hobbies, no interests, nothing new, ever. Doesn’t change if they’re good students, bad students, good jobs, bad jobs, good marriages, bad marriages, no marriages. Just like, completely blank. White bread with the brown edges cut off.
It’s often the most challenging because I frequently feel like their English is often above average but every chapter from the textbook is like teaching them some fundamental concept about the world that surely also must exist in Japan but they have, like, no thought about it. And even trying to help them improve is like pulling teeth because there’s almost never a response to any new direction.
I’ve sort of just given up with them and figure that they enjoy it like that.
Students can pick up immediately if the teacher has checked-out and is just going through the motions.
It starts with the teacher making an effort; not in a “genki” sense of having to act like a clown for entertainment but showing an actual interest in the topic being studied and that you enjoy learning as well. Something easy might be to try new opening/closing routines ([examples here from Edutopia](https://www.edutopia.org/article/14-effective-opening-and-closing-routines-for-teachers/)) that both set expectations about what you’re looking for and to help improve their own skills – success is a great motivator.
This is coming from a North American high school perspective, so I do understand that ESL as a subject and the Japanese perspective on English classes provide their own challenges (I’ve been there) and you’re obviously not going to win over every single student.
If ALL of your students are “boring” – your students are not the problem.
It seems like you hate your job and your students can sense that.
Make the classes relevant to their life. Find out their hobbies, their interests and plan around that. In a small group, each can bring a small written piece about something their interested in and share it with the class. I had a student who was quite and shy, but once I told him to start talking about artifacts, he loved it.
From your post history, you’ve been teaching Eikawa for 5 years (too long for a dead end job) and hate it. You’re obviously bitter/jaded and the students can sense it. You may want to opt to return to your home country.
Do you know why the kids are bored? It reflects from the quality of the teacher.
If you have fun classes you have fun students.
“I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
Have you tried any kind of conversational games like Alias/Taboo or something like that?
People in the replies are super eager to rake you over the coals for this. I think that may be showing our gaijin community’s classic need to feel good by busting each other down. It might be your fault. It might not be.
It’s just the luck of the draw sometimes how a personality coalesces in a class. I’ve had classes where somehow the kids more or less chosen at random from the whole grade just happened to wind up as the 25 kids who all can’t stand talking to each other but who will eagerly do a grammar worksheet on their own. Or sometimes there is a bully working behind the scenes to make a chilling effect – if no one is willing to stick out their neck even for easy questions and tasks, ask yourself who is making them afraid to when your back is turned.
Sometimes it’s personalities or attitudes that just don’t jive. For example, there are always a few adult students at big eikaiwas whose only reason to be there seems to be to lecture their foreign teachers about weird nihonjinron ideas. Or sometimes if the eikaiwa imposes a certain set of classroom materials, maybe they’re incompatible with your class. I’ve had kids classes who were utterly disinterested in the cartoon flash cards and song-and-dance routine demanded by my eikaiwa, but if I ever deviated from the script corporate wrote for my class, my manager would try to clamp down on me and tell me I was doing my job wrong – even if students responded much better to my changes. To a degree your job at eikaiwa is to be an interchangeable cog because if you actually do your job as well as it is possible to, whoever they hire to replace you after you get sick of working for minimum wage might not be able to keep up.
So it may not actually be your fault. But you should think about it as your responsibility. Your students or their families are paying good money to be in your classes, and while everybody has an off class once in a while, life is too short to have a group of students you can’t stand teaching day after day. Find a way to make it fun within the boundaries you have to work with, or start looking for an ethical way out of that situation.
It happens from time to time.
Some people are just boring as balls.
That’s how it goes. Some people take eikaiwa lessons because their parents want them to, or their boss wants them to, or because it’s just something to do to get them out of the house. They don’t have any real motivation to learn, so it can be very difficult to find ways to make the class interesting for them.
I’ve found that the more seriously you try to teach, the less motivation they’ll have. That is, they aren’t there to learn. They’re there to be entertained. No matter what you do, they will sit and stare and act like you’re trying to torture them. The best you can do is act genki and play games.
That’s one of the banes of the job. If you are a serious teacher, who is really trying to teach, then these unmotivated people can really get you down.
And yeah, some people are just really fucking boring and have nothing to say. There’s no cure for that.
If you are forced to stick to a routine (eg no small talk, just text books) it can be really boring. If you aren’t, maybe ask them what their week was like. For my experience ,small talk makes my students super excited. Now they even prepare slides to talk about their week. No one really asks them at work and I think they’re dying to share. (And this is why I love teaching salary men and women)
Why are you even in this line of work if you:
1. Hate it
2. Don’t like kids
They’re not boring, you’re boring. Do you make an effort to get to know them? Make them laugh? Teach them something interesting? Play fun and engaging games? Give them something creative to do?
If you don’t make an effort then why should they?
My students weren’t bored in my class but I was often bored. They had a good time chatting away to me and I just pretended like I was interested and smiled.
When I was a teacher back in the day I remember of all my private lessons half were amazing and were like my mates. We’d laugh together, have proper conversations and even though they were kids they were absolutely hilarious.
Then I had a bunch who’d just sit there silently. I never got upset about it because it’s not their choice to be there so I was always nice to them but Jesus Christ they were boring. What did you eat for dinner? ‘Pastaaaaa’ just the same answers for everything.
Try AngryOjisan game for iOS for the kids there’s also another version laughing ojisan, works best for 1st and 2nd grade elementary. It’s guaranteed a laugh.
A lot of people are saying you are the problem here, but I shared your experience at eikaiwa. Aside from a few people, the adult students were dull. Some of them would suck the life out of me. It usually had little to do with language ability either. They never seemed to have anything going on in their lives, so you couldn’t get them talking about anything. The most interesting thing about them was that they were taking English classes (often for no other reason than to plug a hole in their schedule).
The adults and teenagers I’ve encountered in other contexts (business, university) haven’t been like that at all. They’ve mostly been quite fun and interesting people who’ve had a lot going on. I think it’s just the type of person who goes to eikaiwa just for something to do, unfortunately.
If your students are bored … you’re the boring one. You fail at student engagement, something that eikaiwas fail to teach to people who have zero teaching experience
That you think kids classes are a horror show speaks volumes. Kids classes are the easiest and generally most fun classes imo.
Wow, a lot of commenters here want to blame the OP but I can totally relate to their plight.
I have taught adults who have been studying English as a hobby for 20+ years and they come in, sit back, and their attitude is, “What have you got for me?” And when you try to engage them with the material, they give back one or two word answers. They’re perfectly pleasant – it’s not like they’re sulking or resentful – it’s just that they don’t seem to have any opinions or anything to say. And that’s when it becomes quite obvious why, after decades, their English hasn’t progressed much if at all: They are passive in their learning. They seem to believe that just showing up to a weekly lesson will improve their English.
It’s like if someone believed that they could get in shape by going to the gym and looking at the machines, maybe walking slowly on the treadmill for a couple minutes and then getting off.
A student who goes to an Eikawa class with no questions, no real desire to speak, and no motivation – even if they’re otherwise friendly and pleasant – is very, very difficult to deal with.
Sounds like you’re a bad teacher.
A student’s job isn’t to entertain the teacher. I’ve never thought of a student as boring or not. Even if a student seems what I’d normally call boring it’s likely that they lack the language skill or language confidence to show their personality. So it’s so irrelevant to my job I’ve never even considered it.
*I find myself often so so bored.*
That’s the core of the problem right there! The students read your energy and match it! In the schools, the teachers are plain, straightfoward and not fun! They don’t usually step outside the box. So the students match that energy and stay in the box. Ask the students what do THEY want to talk about and reassure them that anything (except sex) is up for conversation. Anime, games, movies, tv shows, books and ask them questions about it! Watch the air change!
I’ll give you a clue, think about how you would want to be taught and go from there. Observe other teachers and make notes such as “that’s boring”, “what a pretender”, etc. Avoid doing that.
Make some flash cards with totally random topics. I really understand how you feel but just putting a few cards in front of the student will put a little more pressure on them to speak. Result!
I really hope this works because I’ve been in those situations.
Maybe this gig is just not for you. It’s your job to make the class entertaining.
It can be a struggle to teach adults sometimes if they don’t have the tools for making decent conversation in class; what I aimed at when teaching adults was actualpy teaching them how to have a conversation in english, have them asking questions and then follow up questions… It can feel like they just want you to do all the hard work but actually they might just be struggling.
I did classes on personal and not personap questions too and what is appropriate for meeting first time in western conversation, because we come from a different culture than them. We wouldnt ask “how old are you” as a first question but they would.
Anyway i know how you feel, I’m glad i don’t teach adults any more but if you try different techniques you’ll probably find some students you’ll have some decent conversations with. You will always get the occasional ones that it will always feel like pulling teeth tho
I prefer teaching children but adults can be hit or miss. Kids have goals like extrance exams and such to pass. A lot of adults go to eikaiwa because it’s a hobby. There are no goals other than getting out of the house.
But saying that, a lot of the adults o have now are decent. They’ve had interesting lives and like to talk.
I teach almost exclusively adults. I work hard to make sure they don’t get bored by making materials about things they can talk about and argue about. Sometimes this means being creative with subject matter. If you’re working from a textbook, make your lesson about the material but not exclusively the material. Ask for their view on things. If they can’t do that, try to elicit any kind of language to grease up the gears.
Can you speak a second language? One of the hardest parts of learning is having to communicate and comprehend on the level of a baby. Don’t presume they’re boring because they can’t express themselves correctly. You’re there to teach them how, now have a good time.
I actually find it total opposite – little kids who are forced to be there by their parents are the bored – even when I try and make things so fun for them. It’s such a challenge sometimes.
Adults and teens are easy peasy because they have a hunger and eagerness. You can communicate more mature ideas to them and and find what they’re interested in more easily.
I teach at a university. Yes, most of the students are boring. In the past I’ve had students record a short self introduction speech. I give them a few basic requirements but otherwise they’re free to add any information they’d like. About 90% of them are “my favorite food is sushi. My hobby is listening to music”.
Other people have commented that students can pick up on signs that a teacher has checked out and doesn’t want to be there. But this isn’t that. This is the first week of class. They’re doing a non-graded assignment so I can listen to their English and get a sense of who they are as a person and they’re almost all carbon copies of each other.
Replies didn’t pass the vibe check. Some students are just boring & idk why that seems like such an impossibility for the replies.
Yep. Same. But who cares, just get paid and bounce home, repeat.