I’ve been in Japan teaching for roughly 2 years now, and MAAAAAAAAAN, I don’t know how much my own experience reflects those of others in the country, but how do you guys feel about how English is taught here?
It’s very much compartmentalized, and I feel as though it doesn’t do a great enough job of making sure that the children (ES in my case) understand the basics of the English language and have a steady foundation before moving on to learning more practical applications and uses of the language that will/would relate to the everyday lives and talking about themselves. Even more-so, I feel as though a lot of the Japanese teachers in my case have some irrational fear of teaching them anything useful if it’ll deviate from what they know and the textbook. For example, as one of my JTEs was teaching a few of the students the alphabet and getting them used to memorizing them, I asked if she had any further intentions of perhaps having them practice writing them too, or learning their phonics as well, to which she responded “Well, no. Why would I do that?” And I was just kind of like “Uhh… ‘cause it’s important?”
Like I remember learning Spanish and all of teachers made sure that I learned and understood the alphabet & phonics of the language first and foremost before I even attempted ANYTHNG else, and as a result I was able to truly read, write, and speak the language as intended.
There’s more to it here and there, but the basic gist of my question is, how do you guys go about accepting that the difficulties associated with attempting to teach the actual foundations due to pushback from the teachers you work with as well as the general “feeling” that most SEEM to have about learning/speaking English here? Like they’re more into having the appearance of speaking the language rather than properly being able to do so. (And this isn’t a ‘new’ thing to me whatsoever, just gets more ridiculous to see the longer I do this.)
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do my best to introduce them to cultural and language differences they’re more likely to interact with, things like “What’s Up” and “Yo”, otherwise, help them pass their tests and move on. the ones that care will learn it properly if they want, the ones that dont wont. The teaching materials are there if they want to do it, 99% of kids don’t give a fuck and are in a culture that doesn’t give a fuck so why should they?
most zoomers that are working in customer service jobs nowadays can speak enough english to get by in foreigner situations versus the 30 year olds who cant speak a single word of it. they’re making progress and kids being introduced to it can do it in do or die situations versus not having anything in the old system.
Most of my issues with this I have stem for from my JHS because atleast for ES, the students get to have fun and less restrictions with lessons. I get it, they (JHS JTEs) mainly care about the test scores. Most of my kids use google translate (makes grading a lot more interesting I’ll tell you that) because they are taught to just blindly repeat everything, even if they don’t know what they are saying or understand how we arrived at X grammatical point.
My copium is encouraging the kids to use their own words so that I, the native English speak can put 2 and 2 together and realize what they’re trying to say. This was a method my Japanese professor used in college. Basically, as long as you get your point across, even if you make mistakes, and I can understand it, that’s what matters. Some of my JTE are hell bent on trying to get them to regurgitate the book answers verbatim to the point of taking point away if the students use their own words (I know, crazy). This is where I am able to push back because they task me with grading/administering speaking tests. I encourage the students to use the words they know along with gestures and try to pick out the key words in the question. I also told them that having a good attitude, being able to laugh off mistakes, and not giving up is helps their grade.
I have a student that I nicknamed “Pizza kun” because on the first speaking test, he walked into the room and with peak Chad energy confidence said “I am Pizza!” instead of “I like Pizza” and repeated it again when I was like huh. When he realized his mistake he started laughing and was like “no no no! I like Pizza! Name no pizza! I no pizza!” and he winged the rest of the test. He thought he failed because he didn’t give the verbatim answers, but when I called him as VIP, he was in shock and so happy he passed. I gave him a Buzz Light Year sticker and he was showing it off to everyone for the rest of the day.
Edit: Basically what I’m saying is, my cope is to get students to use actual skills (gestures, good attitude, being able to laugh off mistakes) that can help them feel more comfortable communicating with me (and visiting ALTs etc) outside the classroom. I think this is a good thing to have for foreign language learning. Sometimes the JTEs get so by the book, that when they take points away for a correct answer, the poor kids get so discouraged. I hate seeing this so I do my best to fight for points when grading, or make notes about positive things I see they did.
The majority of English taught in Japan is EFL for academic purposes. By that I don’t mean EAP/ESP but in the literal sense that it is taught to be digested in the same way as Math or Science, and then tested for a grade, and that grade is generally the goal.
Through that lense, it’s not terribly different from how high school level foreign language classes are taught in other countries. Practicality, real world use, authenticity, and functional competence are more the domain of ESL classes, courses, and study. There are many reasons why commiting more to ESL in Japan would be difficult if not impossible in nearly all contexts, and it’s not really the place of assistants and tutors to try to make that push. Japan would have to find a real need for actual English acquisition and fluency for curriculum and practices to change.
Something underrated that I think ALTs and foreign English teachers can feasibly accomplish is pronunciation.
With a little work and the right strategy, it only takes one or two lessons to teach students how to differentiate between similar phonemes (the dg in dredge vs the s in collision). Using diagrams of the mouth and the tongue and practising along with students is also a low-effort, yet infinitely useful plan that genuinely probably does help.
Recently I’ve decided I’m going to dedicate far more time and resources to this kind of thing.
>Like they’re more into having the appearance of speaking the language rather than properly being able to do so.
You said it yourself here. You’re not teaching English as much as you are “Eigo”. One is a living dynamic language that requires some semblance of a pedagogic approach to teach the actual fundamentals to encourage retention and the other is a faux party trick gained through rote memorization and blinding levels of genki on behalf of the ALT used only to pass tests and give something to parents to gloat about to their friends. Its pretty easy to mentally check out and autopilot for 8 hours a day when you’re but a cog in the latter.
English schools (eikaiwa) teach conversation like you’re playing mad libs. There’s no actual grammar.
None of my adult students in the higest tier knew what an infinitive was, what the word infinitive stood for, or what forms they could be changed to. They’ve seen the word *infinitive* and if you say “The infinitive is the verb.” they’ll be like “Oh! Right. Right. Good. Yes.” but they don’t *really* know. Hell I still get looks when I explain there’s only two articles in the English language, *a* and *the*, and how they’re used with nouns. And these are near-native level speakers I’m teaching this to.
English taught at eikaiwa in Japan is just listen and repeat with no actual depth. Without the depth they’re not going to actually *understand* the language. They can use it. But they’ll never get better at it beyond having a broken accent and limited vocabulary.
The books they use will throw out words but never actually define them. Every book I’ve used has had instructions for using phrasal verbs, adverb clauses, adjectives, etc… but nowhere in the book do they actually discuss what this grammar is, the rules for its use, or a variety of example. If the instructor doesn’t know (most don’t) then it’s never really taught to them.
What do you mean, understanding the basics before they apply anything? That they should understand all the different be-doushi before learning how to ask for something with “Can I have…”?
It doesn’t feel like I’m teaching English most of the time. Feels like I’m quizzing students on the same stuff so they can pass tests.
I don’t blame the teachers, some of them can do quite well. But the material is such dog crap. Poorly organized and compiled by companies that are grandfathered into English education and continue to suck. Grammar points are split into multiple points just so they can use a specific phrase in the reading. A phrase that could simply be changed so the kids can understand it.
Ah, you’re starting to see the REAL dirty secret… and this secret applies to 90%+ of EVERYTHING in Japan:
It’s purely about appearances. Not to mention, put yourself in a middle school or high school student’s shoes: maybe if you were really good at the language, you cared… but otherwise, it’s just another subject, and while in school most Japanese have no intention of visiting abroad… and if they’re in the countryside, there’s also almost no chance they’ll ever meet a foreigner outside of the ALT in school. So, they have no reason to care about learning English. And the teachers? Most teachers are overworked and underpaid, so they do the minimal of planning a lesson via the textbook, teach the class for 50 minutes, and then just rinse and repeat (and I know ALTs who are pretty much the same way!)
Now, how do I deal with it? In my current situation… I’ve got things pretty easy at the moment. One of the reasons I got into this business in the first place is that I enjoy working with the kids… and Japanese kids are (usually) better than having to deal with many American children (I’ve got a lot of experience doing that too). And when I originally started, my pay was literally double what I was making in America- I was working in a very countryside area myself on just above minimum wage- although that has changed a little bit since the yen became extremely weak. Even so… I enjoy what I do and have a pretty easy lifestyle right now, so I can’t complain too much.
Without thinking about it too deeply (which I recommend for your own sanity if you stay doing this work much longer), if I studied a language for over 8 years and couldn’t even say “Hi, how are you? I’m fine, thanks. It’s really sunny today,” by the end of it I would…not feel great about my education.
But then again, maybe disillusionment and confusion at the outside world isn’t a bug so much as a feature of Gaikokugo (you know, the language that’s not kokugo/that gaikokujin speak) education.
I’ve come to accept that English isn’t, in fact, taught here, and that I’m in the wrong country for intelligence. It is what it is.
I feel your pain, I am fortunate enough to have a really cool JTE that listens to my suggestions. It may take some convincing at first but you’ll get there. At the very least you can use the phonics sections at the back of New Horizon 5&6. Often I just pre-make some materials, make it look beautiful and then ask if we can do this in class (E.g phonics karuta). The kids love it and it’s actually helpful. The JTE also appreciates that I have some cool materials to use in class. All the best!
I was an ALT for a year with a lot of freedom and didn’t need to use a textbook because they would do that with their homeroom teacher. I would have to teach the kids (high schoolers) things like how to use “although” in a sentence. It takes a lot of time because the level is so different in one class; one kid is essentially fluent while the other doesn’t know what “because” means.
Aside from prepared topics like the mentioned above, I would try to show them how you can use English in a fun and easy way, like making them listen to pop songs and fill out the words that would be missing from the lyrics.
You have to remember, these kids are DRILLED like crazy to get the highest score. You get to go home after your classes end, but they have to keep learning (either at school or Jukku). I never felt frustrated with the kids, but the teaching system is another story.
I didn’t. I begged, I pleaded and I explained.
Then I realized
A. Nobody cares.
B. Others have fought this fight likely for decades.
C. It’s never going to change.
I came to terms with it by dialling down what I expected from it. When I did my CELTA and worked in Europe I was working with motivated adults. Not anymore. Just do what you can within the framework you’re operating in I guess.
By the way, a student did a good presentation last semester about Korea Vs Japan English learning. In Korea, the lessons are something like 80% taught in English from (I think the student said) junior high level. In Japan it is like 5%.
You just have to do what you can and then switch off if it starts to eat at you.
I just accepted it after a year or so. No individual is going to be able to change the system, so I just do the best I can for my students given the constraints.
Yep.
They teach students all ABOUT English in Japan; they don’t teach you how to use it well.
Imagine reading books about skiing for years, then finally trying to ski down a mountain for a final examination.
That pretty much sums it up.
Casting my mind back to when I did that gig…
My boss once asked me how students could improve their English level. I said something to the effect of “as Japanese kids are good at doing drill-type learning, they should learn the verbs “be”, “do”, and “have” in the past, present and future tense, positive and negative forms, until they know them inside out and backwards. Then you can start them on other things, which will include, for instance, saying what they did and what they’re going to do”. That went down about as well as you would imagine, and we continued with the Let’s Dance And Sing With The Zany Gaijin routine to keep the parents happy.
Step one, disabuse yourself of the notion that you are teaching English. You aren’t. You are, at best, helping to teach “Eigo”. A different kettle of fish entirely.
“Eigo” is usually taught by Japanese, to Japanese, in Japanese,with Japanese books, in order to pass Japanese tests.
Whatever you do that might take away from that is not useful and can in fact be counterproductive. And will stay that way until Mombusho adds an oral component to language testing.
Once you hit the university level it does get a bit better. The pressure is off and you can have a bit of fun and be more creative. Now all we have to worry about is ChatGPT causing the teaching of writing to be basically impossible…
I could vent, but other people have echoed my thoughts already.
It’s water under the fridge, man.
Reality is that 99.99% of ALT/Eikaiwa teachers would not only accomplish less but also do a worse job of teaching if it were left to them to do curriculum design/etc. Not only that, but the majority cannot even communicate in Japanese in any meaningful way yet urge their students to “just speak!” as if that is working for them in any way with their own second language acquisition
I work at eikaiwa. I am being paid to make up for what the schools are lacking.
I gotta name my potential bias up front: partway between when I started and now I moved from public school to private and from rural school to Tokyo. So that has got to color my assessment of things.
But generally, I feel like the state of TESOL in Japan has actually improved a fair bit from when I started. It is absolutely unfair to claim that Japanese schools are still using the same approach they used say in 2000. The teaching methods, the tools, the textbooks, the technology… it’s all better.
The problem is this growth hasn’t kept pace with demand. Yes, Japan has improved its TESOL, but so has every other country in the world, and a good deal of them (especially regional competitors Japanese people love to compare themselves against) have improved as much or more. So when I first got here, people were telling me that Japan had the lowest English achievement in Asia and people tried to excuse it by suggesting only rich people in other Asian countries took English tests. Now I’m still getting shown graphs that put Japanese English achievement at the bottom of Asia, except now we all definitely know it’s not just rich people in Japan’s neighbors taking those tests. And with international internet communication, the need for English is so much greater. So yes, Japan got better, but not by enough, maybe even to the degree that it feels like the gap is worse than before.
One of the things I’m butting heads against right now is that the stereotype of Japanese teaching methods being old-fashioned is so famous that too many people uncritically accept products and services that claim to break that traditional learning mold. All you have to do is claim your teaching approach is innovative, and you can get someone with budget access in a school to consider your product. Add in “technology” and “the cloud” buzzwords, name-drop a famous Japanese company or university as a client/customer/connection, and basically you can sell complete bullshit to some schools. It’s not so much that the pendulum is swinging away from the traditional Japanese teaching methods that everyone complains about. It’s more that cosplaying as being different from that is so popular that people accept marketing along those lines uncritically. Products, apps, and subscription-based educational services are a dime-a-dozen these days. I would like to stop constantly having to waste my time on the next slick salesperson to walk through the door so we can develop institutional best practices for the apps we already spent money on.
I came over as a registered Australian teacher with a master of education (plus bachelor’s in education) and did a TESOL while in Japan. In short, I liked using most of the methodology. It’s Japan specific (intentionally fit for purpose), energetic and most people will come outta the system with enough grammar that they can master English in ~6-12 months of living overseas. To me this is pretty darn good once you realise it’s being delivered to a mass of disinterested kids who are just attending school because they’re forced to.
To me the methodology largely checks out. Learning languages isn’t rocket science and there’s no getting around the fact they require a LOT of boring as rote learning. As a tragic, conversational speaker of Japanese who’s very functional but would struggle with N5 kanji… putting this stuff in the bank as a kid adds up big time. I wish I’d learned a fuck load of kanji as a kid (for example) because then I’d have an easier pathway to Japanese and Chinese as an adult. Many quite vocal/emotional ALTs fail to see these pathways being built. I suggest this is partly due to them being assistants, surrounded by teachers who are doing the teaching / assessing against the curriculum to demonstrate that progress is being made. If you’re REALLY interested then I’m sure any teacher can show you a map of how kids have progressed (no don’t go stubbornly demanding one now just to be a dick – my point is that they HAVE to report on this kinda stuff and will).
IMO the culture shock most experience (particularly as non-teachers) is that they’ve NEVER lived in a place where English isn’t the dominant language and they act as if the system has failed if it isn’t giving people fluent English by the time they graduate. From an educational perspective, I think this is an unreasonable goal given that English isn’t a second language in Japan. It’s not like Quebec where… I dunno if anybody understands why locals can NOT speak English! However, they don’t so whatevz I guess.
Like all education systems, there are flaws. IMO anybody saying that [insert western educational system – let’s say the USA / UK / Canada / Australia…etc] is waaay better and set them up perfectly with foreign languages, they’re talking smack. We all ended up teaching in Japan while working out what to do next in life for a reason. I can only speak for myself, but it’s not because I received an amazing education and was all set on an amazing path in life…
Your example of spanish, the alphabet is virtually the same. phonics are very similar.
Just a comparison, Japanese doesn’t have labiodental sounds, for example, so v’s and f’s are a struggle. its like if trilling your R’s was necessary to differentiate words in spanish.
As far as reading, its completely different systems.
The cherry is most kids aren’t that thrilled or motivated on their own to study English. It’ll vary from year to year, but Math has similar struggles.
As an ALT I’m not here to revolutionize the system. I interact with the kids and give them a reason to try if I can. Most by middle school can read simple questions and respond, and one or two are finishing Eiken 3 and 2 levels. But most will struggle with it enough to pass their high school entrance exams and move on.
I’m lucky enough to be T1 in my 1st-4th grade classes at ES but I brought up phonics really quickly and luckily both my JTEs and homeroom teachers were on board, so I definitely have a lot of control over how things are taught.
However, I do not like how at ES they mostly get taught phrases to memorize without understanding the grammatical structure of what they’re saying, because it means they can’t form their own thoughts. This changes in JHS which is why my JTE doesn’t want to spend too much time on it. I’ve also taught some grammar to my 6th graders, but they didn’t know what words like “verb” or “noun” meant (and I taught this in Japanese), so it was very hard to explain.
Honestly textbooks are a big thing I’m unhappy about. The English is strange and it feels like no native speaker was consulted when writing things in the book.
However I’m gonna say PUSH FOR PHONICS!!! I’ve got 4th graders that can read basic sentences when a couple years back my 6th graders couldn’t really read.