For context, I am a first year ALT who came over with a dispatch company but will be switching over to direct hire for the next school year. I formed a good relationship with a number of people at the BOE who asked for my feedback about how English classes are being conducted.
Long story short, they came to both schools to observe classes and were shocked by how little I was utilized and how (at the elementary level) barely any English was spoken inside the classroom, students indifferent to the lesson content, etc…
It helps that a few of them lived overseas at one point and speak fluent English, so they realized right away how counterintuitive the methods and lesson plans provided by the dispatch company and textbooks (New Horizons, Lets Try, Sunshine) actually were. Going forward, they want to incorporate more natural English into the classroom, and use activities that will actually engage the students with good conversation practice.
Perhaps It would be too difficult to pull off, but what recommendations do you have to make a meaningful change in this situation? Are there any textbooks (In the style of Genki or Minna no NIhongo?) for the age groups I mentioned that would make good replacements for the subpar books we have now?
I realize there are many, many problems with English education In Japan and the ALT system In general. However, I genuinely like my students and think they deserve good learning opportunities. So many of them are bright and eager to learn. It\`s painful seeing them become more and more demotivated as you reach higher grade levels and they can barely ask “how are you?”
If It makes a difference, no teachers at the elementary level speak English, but the two JTE\`s at my junior high school do (albeit not the best).
22 comments
I always thought that the Japanese teacher can teach them grammar wayyy better than natives ever can (as it is in their language). If I were to make a change, it would be to use the ALT’s for only conversation, no grammar at all.
Man, that’s awesome. Switch to Communicative Language Teaching. You might be limited to pre-approved textbooks. There is a tremendous opportunity to get away from traditional teaching methods.
Step one is to hire actual professionals with real qualifications and experience that will know what changes need to be made and how to make them.
Since that’s not in any way possible, and you’ve at least got the BoE’s ear, sell them on good second/foreign language acquisition practices. If you don’t know what those are, try to give yourself a crash course on SLA, best practices for language classes, and what to remove/avoid (grammar translation, explicit grammar instruction, isolated skills exercises, etc).
The materials and goals won’t change since they are mandated by MEXT, but you can supplement and go above/outside of them as long as you cover the minimum. For your utilization, actual team teaching for the same class/cohort is an acquired skill. You and your JTE need to figure out what each of you is responsible for, but it’s more on the JTE to prepare for and understand this since you’re “teaching” ok their license. You’re there to cover their weaknesses, which will be pronunciation, authenticity, cultural usage, and spontaneous production, so focus on encouraging the JTE to make activities relevant to the above more prevalent.
English in English would be a huge move up – for Elementary school kids that’s relatively easy as mostly its communicative drills with games and songs etc. anyway.
JHS you need to start with the first years and carry on throughout, it’s difficult / impossible to go from 0 classroom English to 100% for students that have been taught traditionally previously.
Give the students something to communicate about, write their own sentences, stories, skits, make their own examples – shopping or directions for example.
Lot’s of student led learning, student participation, comprehension checking with student made explanations of the grammar etc. You need to remember that one of the tasks that is critical is that the students are taking very important high school entrance exams that currently feature very little actual speaking.
Critical Pedagogy.
I believe the best thing anyone can do to make a positive change towards developing speaking skills is to make a major component of grades determined by speaking exams.
After you say speaking is very important, and we are going to include a lot more speaking, you must then assess speaking, or teachers and students alike will not give speaking lessons the time and effort they should. Teachers will also skip speaking lessons, students won`t practice outside of class, and no one will really care if students can speak, if it is not tested.
After you have decided that speaking is important, you set goals based on what you think the students can achieve, their needs, draft exams that test those skills, and build lessons which teach those skills.
The JTEs follow the textbooks. Tell the BOE to contract out to companies that actually accept legitimate feedback.
Writing practice. A quick 5 minute sheet to write something every day. I just have them write out the greeting: Today is XXXX, XXXXX ##th. It is XXXXX today.
It helps with days and months, and they practice just writing in general. You can add a question or a sentence to try and get more letters in there, or change it up a little. What day was yesterday, what day is tomorrow (My classes are W F for elementary, they know those two days very well xD).
I’ve started that with 4th grade and have large print worksheets for them with letters to copy for parts of it, but a half sheet once they feel comfortable writing it out. 5th and 6th grade students can finish it in roughly 2 minutes with an extra question to answer.
You can start having more conversations at the start of class if you or your JTE is confident working through meaning. Say a sentence, and see what they understood, then work them through then meaning, then repeat the sentence. Write questions out on the board in English, work through pronunciation, then what they understand, then give them one word at a time until they can figure out the meaning.
Start with a question, then modify a single aspect of it, and see if they follow the meaning.
Lots of things you can do on the fly if the class is active and responsive. If they aren’t, you probably need to get creative with the activities. I’m not good with that part, but building sentences one bit at a time is easy enough. I dunno. It really depends on how your students respond and your own personality. Good luck though, direct hire is a very nice situation to be in.
One of the most important things about being a good language instructor is knowing when to shut up and just letting your student(s) lead the conversation, occasionally pointing out big mistakes.
What I would do, is perhaps run the lesson with visuals and sentence patterns.
First, I would establish basic common expressions (excuse me, no thanks, wait, etc) so they can play around with those. For regular classes going forward I’d establish a target lesson per class. (Assuming you teach one class a week)
So you show a photo to the students and explain the situation. Visuals are important, they help reinforce the student to know what they’re learning.
Then write the sentence(s) on the board in large font. Doesn’t matter if they can’t read, they’ll be able to guesstimate the amount of words they need to say.
Then have them repeat the sentences after you. Many times. Point to each word you read, enunciate it, then say the sentence naturally. Say again and again. Change the intonation, make a funny voice, etc. The point is not to be flat or robotic like they usually tend to be.
Ideally, you’ll have some flash cards to go through and introduce new (or review previous) vocabulary.
Make them comfortable saying it, then just listen to them.
An easy one would be “I like x”, a more difficult one could be “The Man is wearing x” depending on the grade.
Next, introduce the question “what do you like?” And have them repeat that as well, build the muscle memory, enunciate a lot so they mimic you and build proper muscle memory. Finally, have them stand up and ask+answer each other’s question. Some will forget, others will help out, it’ll be a little chaotic but this is their sandbox time.
After 5-10 minutes have them sit back down and maybe ask you a question of their own, you can give silly examples, kids love that.
Additionally, you could make them write it on a paper to help further reading and writing skills.
In future lessons, pull out the previous prompt sheets and see if they remember what they are. Critical for creating long term memories.
Hope this helps.
Ay yo? Lol maybe ITA but if they asked you then you ask us like wtf? 😂
What are your qualifications, and do you actually have experience in creating and implementing curriculum? I mean, we can’t even begin to give you advice unless we know where you are in terms of your own skills and understanding of SLA. Just recommending a book isn’t going to be of much help if you are in charge of re-creating an entire program, as you seem to be saying.
I have a few thoughts:
1. The BOE chose those textbooks. For ES 5-6 and JHS 1-3 They only have a few to choose from really: Sunshine, New Horizon, and a handful of others. Let’s Try is published by MEXT as more or less the official text for ES 3-4 “foreign language activities” so the BOE probably won’t change it out.
2. Until speaking becomes part of the general high school exams, it will remain on the back burner.
3. As much as possible, ignore the book of lesson plans from the dispatch company. The kids are getting more than enough grammar practice, which is what the lessons focus on. Plan activities that are inherently fun and that give the students the opportunity to practice what they know as well as learn a few new words in a fun context.
I’d say start by taking a comparative look at how other countries with languages fundamentally different from English go about teaching it, especially East and South Asian countries.
There’s SO MUCH that could be done better and earlier, so this is a huge opportunity.
My first lesson of the year is “Classroom English”, using simple daily phrases like “sit down” “stand up” “look here” “make a line”. It’s very very important to set that tone immediately and keep encouraging it. After about 3-4 weeks of actually using it, not only will the students use it more themselves, they’ll start using it throughout the day and at home.
I was always so happy when HRTs and parents would tell me that their kids were using English even when I wasn’t around.
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I’d say just sit back and see what the school/boe decides to do. If you’re asked for an opinion give it but otherwise don’t bother. It’s not really your job honestly. The best thing you can do for students is be positive and reward them for trying and being interested. Years and years have went by where they observe and see that English education is lacking, but nothing ever changes in a meaningful way, least of which through contract ALTs.
All the good books I know of come from overseas publishers, and the BOEs usually don’t want them (those government contracts are hard to break).
I am a foreign JTE (like I was an ALT, then went to a university in Japan, got a teaching license here, and got hired as a regular teacher)
I can tell you a few things
1. You aren’t changing the textbooks, and no you cannot choose your own.
2. As long as there is no English teacher in your elementary schools you are more or less free to do as you want, ignore your dispatch companies lesson plans and make your own.
3. If you have an idea that requires using another classroom or purchasing something, run it by one of the following three people….your head teacher (kyomushunin) vice principal (kyotosensei) or the head teacher of the grade you are teaching (gakunen shunin)…..if you are at a small elementary school then you can just ask the one teacher for the grade you want to do with it…..some examples of lesson I did in the past……..cooking lesson in English (I say it was a cooking lesson, we made smores and talked about Xmas in America), P.E. lessons in English, pick a sport the kids generally like from their P.E. class teach them some vocab about it in English and just play for a while, Science in English – we made invisible ink, each kid wrote a word in English using it and the other kids had to find the word they were assigned…….and so on…….if you can prove you aren’t a dumbass your schools will usually be cool with those kind of lessons
4. The advantage of being an ALT in a school with no English teacher is that no one expects anything from you….and you aren’t a regular teacher (even if you are a direct hire, you are still not classified in the same way) so you kind of get forgotten about, and everythign you do is a bonus. So take advantage of that, and go nuts.
in regards to JHS
1. For the most part, you are just gonna have to shut up and deal with it. We have a curriculum that we must finish within the school year, and tests that we must do at certain times of the year, and you, nor anyone within your school building has the power to change it.
2. As a result of #1, JHS teachers simply don’t have enough time to do things outside of what is required. If you can form a good relationship with them, you can work on making fun speaking activities, and hopefully they will give you the time to use them, but it’s much more difficult.
3. Continuing the same story while making arbitrary bullet points….3rd grade students in JHS will take be taking high school entrance exams from February through March, and 99% of them have 0 speaking element to them, so right around this time of year all 3rd grade lessons more or less drop the speaking element, rush to finish the textbook as fast as possible, and spend 100% of their time prepping for that test. So if you do wanna try some new things, it is best to try them on the first grade classes.
The students don’t get enough English class time to become fluent. It’s such a tiny portion of their week it’s just not gonna happen.
The only things I can think of that would immediately help is committing to as much English as possible during class time. There shouldn’t really be any Japanese in the English textbooks either but here we are. Try find some supplementary material for whatever the books are covering and use them less. Plenty of English books outside of Japan you can take from. You have the advantage here because you’re able to search for these things in English.
Phonics in ES are essential if they’re to start studying and reading new words by themselves. Otherwise they spend their entire time in school memorising each individual word. Do it every day if you have to.
Work on answer sentences, filler sentences and reactions and build up the difficulty. It’ll give them a small toolbox to be able to keep a conversation going outside of the Q & A dialogue.
They would get better a lot faster if they were doing some stuff outside of class time. Even Duolingo or a series like Earworm where they can sit with earphones and practice some shadowing. That’s going to depend on the BoE and parents though.
The culture can be a bit of a hurdle too when trying to get them to communicate. Interests and how deeply the students think about topics is just different so conversation can fall flat. There’s not a lot of room in the society and education system for building critical thinking skills and I think that goes hand in hand with language development. Even in their native language. I’ve seen it at University here too when they get forced to do their own research for the first time. It can be a struggle.
I knew about this before and that why developed Eigo Ganbare years ago. The materials have changed over time, but remains the same as a supplement to the JHS textbooks. The focus has always been students working on simple conversations in pairs and doing presentation projects in groups. Though, I also know some JTEs just want their ALTs to prepare fun games because their lessons are the opposite.
I am a current second year ALT (at the same Junior High School I was in the first year), so although I cannot give perspective from a Japanese Elementary School perspective yet, I can give an interesting perspective the Junior High level. Yes, I am aware there are seasoned ALTs on this post who have MUCH more experience thus far and are thinking what can a newbie me have to offer, but despite this I thought it was worth adding my 2 cents, regarding the textbooks which my Junior Highschool uses in their curriculum – Here We Go. From both a supporting/assisting, observing, and on occasion, even a T1 role, I have seen and experienced that the texts Here We Go 1, 2 & 3 (particularly 2 & 3), are fantastic for both teaching English grammar, speaking, and listening in an easy to understand and fun/engaging manner IF (with the big emphasis beings ‘if) the material is utilized in the RIGHT way. The chapters/units of the text are carefully structured in a format where each individual part is of equal importance, i.e., there is script which focuses on reading/pronunciation, basic explanation and examples of the key grammar points (which the JTE or T1 can teach in more detail using both English and Japanese explantion), listening exercises which utilizes the key grammar point(s) just covered, and MOST important of all, activities which are completed either individually in pairs, groups or even as a whole class. These activities are extremely important as they are based around the key grammar points being taught, and they allow the students to get the much needed speaking practice, as most involve some level of speaking and/or writing in English, either in pairs, small groups, or presentations in front of the class as a group or individually. What is great about most of these activities as although they give a specific case study/way of doing the activity/outline, the teacher(s) can customize this and alter the parameters of the activity as they see fit, as long as it is still focused around the key grammar points. Since starting at my school, I have seen both excellent examples of the usage of the textbook material and also of the complete opposite. Obviously time management is important for JTEs when making their lesson plan for each class however some of them unfortunately focus too much of their time on only teaching the grammar (mostly done in Japanese) and thus decide to skip most (or even all in some cases) of the extra activities in the text books, and often a number of the listening exercises as well, then just through in random small student pair interactions as they go in their very limited time (often responsibility of that gets given to the ALT to come up with something in very limited time, and on the spot). So, to sum things up, I think ‘Here We Go’ is an excellent text for Japanese Junior High students, as long as it is utilized properly and to its fullest, i.e., all the materials are in the book for a reason!
wow, that’s a tough spot. getting legit teachers in there would be a game changer but it’s an uphill battle, for sure. improving the skills of the local teachers might be the most feasible option, but it’s a long road. best of luck with the meetings, hope you can make some progress there.