I’m looking for a new job and almost everything I see that’s education related is some sort of upstart “international school” that puts lots of emphasis on games and songs and shit like that. The salary is never good enough for me to give them the time of day, but it has me asking myself the title question.
Everyone knows that English language education is a farce here, so, yeah, I’m wondering whether any schools (especially elementary) just focus on proper language teaching / learning. Grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises to build proficiency the same as you would in any other language. The method isn’t novel and it works in every other country where English is learned as a second language.
18 comments
Not really.
Yes, there are.
> Everyone knows that English language education is a farce here…
> …almost everything I see that’s education related… puts lots of emphasis on games and songs and shit like that.
> [I wanna just teach]… grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises to build proficiency the same as you would in any other language.
Make your own eikaiwa that throws grammar textbooks at kids and focuses on reading/writing. See how you go! Sounds like you’re just jaded and need to go home…
You can ask to see their curriculum; it’s not against the rules to do this. If they answer right away and are excited you’re talking about that – hooray!
If they balk and suck their teeth, you might have saved yourself a real headache.
It’s not impossible to get a curriculum together, train teachers, set expectations with parents, get admin on board for assessment, develop a school culture of growth, identify course materials and get them in your students’ hands, fund and stock your library, and develop time for unassisted activities. What’s more, it requires upkeep and continual training as new faculty come onboard, or any of the materials or expectations change.
At this moment, I cannot point to you an existing example of who does this best – mainly because I forgot their names – but if a certain director of CLIL education at a top-flight Japanese school with a. Twin brother who developed a school out on the Fukutoshin line is reading this, uh have at it sir.
Immersion schools do. But they are far and few.
You sound like someone who has never taught a day in their life.
If you’re an alt with some autonomy then you choose what to do. I don’t think youre based in reality.
There probably are, but because traditional Japanese language teaching techniques have been so backward for so long, the market unfairly rewards businesses that claim to have novel methods (even if they aren’t really) and since the market rewards sales techniques over teaching expertise, people who don’t really know what they’re doing but who can package that ignorance as innovation are strong candidates for getting control of teaching programs.
That said:
>just focus on proper language teaching / learning. Grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises to build proficiency the same as you would in any other language. The method isn’t novel and it works in every other country where English is learned as a second language.
Focusing on grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, and speaking isn’t really a *method* per se. They are aspects of language learning, sure, but methods answer the question ‘how’ and all the aspects you cite are too broad to answer that question in and of themselves.
I bristle at the notion Japanese people are uniquely unique as language learners so we should throw out all international expertise in language learning and defer only to Japanese English teachers who have entrenched power in the Japanese EFL world, but that doesn’t mean Japanese learners are exactly the same as learners in other countries. Europeans get a lot more for free when learning English because most European languages are a lot closer to English, and very few countries in the world have robust enough local entertainment industries that the learner population is totally comfortable never engaging in English language media. Japanese learners of English need some extra motivation to break out of their L1 bubble, and I think there is room for innovation there.
Really, the problem is that language learning is a long process that requires sustained effort from the learner, meaning it’s next to impossible for a casual observer to separate the successes attributable to the program and the successes attributable to the individual student. So instead of judging a program on its claims to innovation, we should really be judging programs by more quantifiable metrics: how many people in their leadership have advanced degrees in relevant fields, how many their students achieve success on internationally-recognized measures of English ability, how many of their graduates can turn their English achievements into meaningful work that engages with English, how many of their managers can articulate what their claimed innovation actually is in a detailed manner without using buzzwords and jargon to discourage people from asking, “hey, what does all that you just said *actually mean*?” etc.
Or alternatively, if the salary for teachers is shit, that’s a good sign they don’t give a damn about if the teachers are actually good at the job, meaning this whole conversation about teaching theory is moot.
Even when I took college classes in accounting the professor said teaching is 80% entertaining and 20% learning.
You were entertained when you nodded your head and smiled at what they said and you were learning when your eyes glazed over in class.
For “language schools” aimed at kids they do this but it’s more apparent to adults. No kid wants to be strapped to a desk doing worksheets and tape recorder learning. Kids love games and songs. Teachers see that and go hard on the games and songs because it makes their jobs easier.
As to how effective those games and songs are is for another thread to debate.
There are some good points here all around. OP has a point that a lot of schools focus on games/songs while saying they are international. I do agree with others here that it is not true everywhere. There are schools which do immersion or another communicative method, but so much of what is taught here is based on rote memorization, behaviorism, that it is easy to understand the complaint. Games and songs can help with language acquisition if done well. Answer to the original post is yes but probably few and far between.
Weird post with a lack of knowledge of best practices for learning, especially for elementary teaching…have you taught in an elementary school? Having kids sitting down and drilling grammar all day is far from best practice right now. Plenty of research backs gamifying classes. That’s not the problem with Japanese English education.
What are your credentials to demanding more money?
> I’m looking for a new job and almost everything I see that’s education related is some sort of upstart “international school” that puts lots of emphasis on games and songs and shit like that.
You’re talking about minimally-regulated “international schools”. The two in my area are daycare/afterschool care with no accreditation and English-speaking staff.
The pay is low so they don’t attract ELT or ECE teachers. But that’s not what they’re offering, anyway. Those “international schools” are competing for customers and English is a gimmick.
> I’m wondering whether any schools (especially elementary) just focus on proper language teaching / learning. Grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises to build proficiency the same as you would in any other language.
Jukus and Kumon do that.
> The method isn’t novel and it works in every other country where English is learned as a second language.
There is no monolithic “method” in ELT.
Try thinking back to when you were in elementary school: did you straight up do grammar exercises for your second language classes? Or were the classes intertwined with songs/shows/games/projects.
If you’re expecting only grammar exercises then you have the wrong idea about teaching effectively.
Just because you think the straightest line to native abilities is repeating after you, reading together in class, and copying what you write, it is not so.
Students (more so younger) tend to learn better when given some independency. They start to piece together the language. You also need to understand that second language acquisition is not the same as primary language acquisition.
So with that in mind, good luck on your job hunt and expectations.
I read all the comments. There are a lot of people flaming you (and for good reason). You see a real issue in these silly English schools but you are blaming the wrong thing. It’s not the fun and games that is causing the poor outcomes.
Many English schools for kids here in Japan aren’t about kids learning. They are about tricking parents into separating their wallets. There’s a huge desire for kids to learn English and parents know that Elementary school doesn’t work for that. The schools here focus on what the Elementary schools are missing- it needs to be fun.
Where you are wrong is that having fun while learning IS the most effective way. So while a large amount of schools aren’t teaching well, getting poor results, and wasting the parents’ money, it’s not the fun in the classroom that is the problem. Games and fun can be so much more effective than boring book time. This is especially true for language learning, which requires kids to talk to one another, open up, and break the ice. It’s just a shame that most of the “fun English learning” isn’t well thought out or balanced for maximum learning. But that’s private business for you.
I have 15+ years of teaching both in Canada and Japan and ran my own school here for 5 years. I’m someone that cares deeply that my teaching is effective and would not work for a company if I wasn’t making a difference. I have a great track record of getting English to stick. It’s complicated and difficult and salaries in the industry just don’t pay enough to get the talent needed. The main goal is to make the kids want to learn for their own benefit. It’s just easier for a school to have happy colours and sing-along songs and gloss cover the tricky part of re-wiring the young brains to learn a very difficult language.
Have you ever met a child?
Good luck teaching a four year old grammar.
Are you familiar with language acquisition?
ah, good ol edutainment. if you actually give a shit about teaching, get a masters and teach somewhere reputable.
I found this on YouTube. Its a shorts playlist of English vocabulary words. It explains words with examples and images.
English Vocabulary 10000: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIoEZ48EK1XgKIkbMSMMhzPko3R3zgoEH