Is English teaching really disappearing?

29 comments

1. Yes. And no.

   While I do see many small “meh” schools closing and we can see the mess of Coco Juku – Gaba / Nova, it could seem there is a calm decay. And the overseas DMM options, have students that try and leave quickly.

   However, the schools that pay decently and hire native English (and mainly based in JP) like AEON Online, are getting busier and busier.

2. As AI continues to develop and online interactions become more integrated into society (and people become more comfortable with them), then it is likely that more eikawa work will shift from in-person arrangements in Japan to online sessions with teachers where the base pay is lower (and thus the lessons are cheaper).

   It also seems reasonable that AI may replace a lot of the need for casual conversation classes, as it can be quite good at simple interaction (and reasonable good at explaining grammar points as well, meaning it might also encroach on some areas of written instruction).

   That said, some people will always prefer and choose the in-person option, either because they value the direct in-person interactions (or think they are superior), or because they are not comfortable with the non in-person options.

   However, as long as AI continues to produce confidently incorrect answers, it probably isn’t a real threat yet to the translation industry (any more than Google Translate or DeepL has been).

   Edit: And neither of those will replace the babysitting aspect of kids lessons (and the free time it gives parents)

3. Maybe for adults, but I doubt it will disappear for children.

   I work for BeStudio once a week to supplement my income and during the pandemic we had to teach classes for a few months (maybe more, I can’t remember exactly) via zoom. It was as hard as you can imagine. Trying to engage with students was just that, trying.

   For adults, I guess you could be right. I can definitely imagine it losing out to online overseas teachers. Not completely, as I’m sure many people prefer to be face to face with their teachers.

4. Kids classes in eikaiwas are packed. Sure you can do online classes but the majority of those parents are looking for an English babysitter more than anything. That’s not going to change anytime soon.

5. Ya I think so. I recently got out of English teaching and went into a japanese company. I’m glad I did because most of the English companies I used to work for the last few years all were steadily losing students (adults and kids). I kinda saw the writing on the wall and luckily I got out in a timely manner.

   I still work part time (once a week) teaching kids but it is just a little extra income and it’s super easy, short and fun work.

   Perhaps in the future, teaching English will turn into a primarily part time thing 🤔

6. What you’ve described isn’t English teaching disappearing, it’s English teaching moving online.

7. This is entirely my opionion, but other than for specialized needs, it’s going away completely. Think about the reasons people “need” to study English.

   One common need for English is for travel, but translation apps like google translate have already almost entirely filled that need. Unless people are complete luddites, google translate and AI translation are more than sufficient to take care of that need.

   Another common need for English is for business. In most cases this means business for trading, and in most situations, a basic level of communication is sufficient. Here too, translation apps can be sufficient, and it’s not going to be long before wireless ear buds in combination with a phone will be able to provide the means for a real time AI interpreted conversation (they already can to a certain extent).

   Finally, there is a need for English because it’s a mandatory subject in school. However, as the reliance on AI translation becomes internationally commonplace in the above two situations, the need for English as a subject in schools will also disappear.

   That said, there will always be a need for truly bilingual people who can have a conversation about specialized topics (engineering, medical, etc) that AI won’t provide enough accuracy for, or where a small difference in word choice could mean the difference between life and death. English teachers who have specialized knowledge in these areas will continue to be in demand, but competition for these positions will be fierce.

   Of course, there are other reasons for studying English, but they make up so little of the overall demand for English education that they won’t be able to support an entire industry of English education.

   Edit: I get the feeling that I’m being misread here. OP said …

   >I’m not talking legit qualified teachers, I mean just English conversation jobs in eikaiwa.

   So above, I’m addressing English as a for-profit industry in Japan.

8. Well, yeah – that’s the entire point, isn’t it?

   Coasting along on nativespeakerism just isn’t possible anymore. Why should someone pay you a bunch of money to talk at them, when they can pay someone who is just as qualified (read: not qualified) to talk at them, but for much much less? It’s barely even a contest!

   You either need to get qualifications and become a real teacher, or realize that you aren’t any more qualified than any other rando with a PC and microphone, and you aren’t going to get paid for basically doing nothing.

9. COVID showed the companies that online is more cost effective and now they outsource to countries like south Africa for cheap labor

10. Albeit slow, even MEXT’s official plan is to one day phase out the majority of ALT’s in Japan and have the next wave of Japanese English teachers be qualified enough to teach English by themselves in the classroom. I can imagine a future where English teachers are used almost exclusively for international, private schools or university

11. I have several schools that are doing well, in the short term Covid is more or less behind us and we’ve had our best year since pre-Covid times.

    In the long term AI and a gradual shift toward more online lessons are both things that are happening but there aren’t going to be any major changes anytime soon. Maybe we will see in ten to twenty years but for the immediate future business is good.

12. I don’t think they’re dying but:

    * I do think variety is slim (mostly group classes, in person, rarely any variety in lesson length, mostly for kids etc.)
    * Many feel outdated (I don’t know many that have an up-to-date and modern image or interface system, and they all operate the same basically).
    * A lot are still inaccessible (there’s a lot of students who clearly need special needs support but because it’s Japan, training people on being able to teach those types of people appropriately and being able to know who those people are is taboo).
    * As well as, I think a lot of the courses/schools cost are far too high.

    So I’m not surprised if less people are joining these eikaiwas.

13. It’s definitely not disappearing for kids. Zoom kids classes during COVID were incredibly difficult, a lot of kids had trouble staying focused and then it also became parent responsibility to catch their kid if they simply left the computer. Also like someone else said, parents like the babysitting aspect of in person classes.

14. Nope…not dying, very much still a thing and increasing

15. Eikaiwa is shrinking as an industry. However, International preschools, English based “gakudo” or after-school programs, and Eiken focused jukus are on the rise.

    So, no English teaching is not disappearing, but where and what teachers are teaching is shifting. ALT work seems largely unaltered from what I see, including, sadly, salaries.

16. I was talking to the Google support AI yesterday.

    At this point in time I have more confidence in my JHS students’ ability to teach English than AI.

17. I can comment more as a customer than a teacher – although I did teach for NOVA in the 90s.

    JMHO, but the market hasn’t so much gone away as it has changed. There seems to be a fair amount of work in the kids customer segment. It’s not great paying work, but you have things like Kid’s Duo, Nova Kids, the teachers they send out to primary schools, heaps of smaller local private places, etc.

    The adult segment for casual learners F2F in class -which was enormous in the 90s – does seem to have taken a really big hit. I imagine it a bit like guitar lessons. They used to be a huge thing in the 80s/90s and now you have youtube lessons and online teachers and online video tutuorials that probably take out 80% of the demand particularly in the lower to intermediate. And if you think about it, that was always the business model with NOVA, AEON, ECC, etc. – English for the masses, with the widest point of the pyramid down in the beginner levels. None of those schools were ever really good at (or really trying to) service the higher level learner.

18. None of speculations are based on data. It’s just what you’ve seen or assuming?

19. Its changing

20. Well, considering that the average Japanese numbskull that would go to an eikaiwa in 2023 would rather stay online with someone from the Philippines who is cheaper, and more importantly, they can feel superior to, I’d say the bottom barrel eikaiwa jobs are going to diminish.

21. Although there has been a shift to online lessons, on the basis of convenience, and for cheaper lessons; the physical classrooms are still full and not going anywhere.
    The quality is simply incomparable between them.

22. I have retired in Japan. I saw the tail end of pre-Internet English teaching. The real gold rush was pretty brief, and by 2000 it was getting tough to make a livable wage.

    I’m told that Korea is better these days, but don’t know for sure.

    However, I spent a couple of years teaching in Chinese universities. And I think China is a vast sea of opportunities for people wanting to teach English in Asia. However, for at least a few years, there are going to be worries about politics and war. Brave souls that can ignore these worries will find all kinds of opportunities.

23. I’d say the last peak was during the Olympics for adults but after 2020, many Japanese got used to the cheap alternative of online English lessons by everyone other than the USA or Europe. Heck, even at my school, it just non native English teachers. I’m the only native out of the 6. Most of the Japanese I know learn from online Meetups, Skype from Philippines or Chinese, or from the foreigners who have established schools in the super over saturated market. Hopefully people learn to fill in other roles instead of relying on teaching English. However, that also needs Japan to stop being strict about the Japanese speaking level requirements.

24. I don’t think it’s disappearing but I think people respect it less these days. The salaries have gone down (despite inflation) and if it hasn’t already, I think this is going to lead to a lower grade of gaijin coming over to teach.

    For example when I went over with Nova I came over as a qualified teacher (wanting a gap year to work out ‘what next’) and was in a group house with a few others who were working through crossroads in life. One was the child of 2 doctors who’d just finished pre-med and narrowly missed out on a place in med so did a gap year… the other way a highly motivated dude from New York who spoke multiple languages, knew LOTS of rich people from uni (lotsa bankers / business owners in Japan) and was just raking a bit of time off to work out ‘what next’.

    Unsurprisingly (in hindsight – though I woulda said ‘bullshit’ if you told me back then) I’m a corporate lawyer, one guy’s a doctor and the other runs a youtube channel with 2m+ subscribers (plus a related business). From those Nova days I can think of various other success stories, including a guy who’s a Michelin critique (don’t ask me how I know or we’ll both be killed). Another was a senior staffer in Obama’s administration (pretty high profile). A lot were also ‘ninjas’ who studied Japanese at uni and found kickarse local jobs.

    There were some dropkicks…sure. However, Nova paid ~280k a month (plus ALWAYS had overtime on offer, making it 300k+ for only a few extra hours) and it was a liveable wage for a single dude in a group house. I had lotsa mad piss-ups, we were all active (I ran 10km+ with my housemates each day before work) and rather than crying into our beers / sulking, we spent time discussing ‘what next’ – true gap year kinda stuff!

    People still come and I’m sure MANY are gonna be faaaar more successful than me in life. Let’s not pretend I’m some big cheese (I simply ‘upgraded’ my quals after a few years in Japan planning ‘what next’). However I suspect the quality’s slowly dropping off over time. It was never a high bar but IMO (based on reddit posts) there used to be far more creative juices flying around about ‘what next’. Now, most people seem to just wanna find direct hire gigs or do a TESOL. Not bagging it (I did a TESOL) but I personally encourage people to think a little bit harder than that.

25. I don’t think it’s disappearing, but I do think that the English teaching jobs that most people use to come to Japan will decline in the future, and many are already declining now. If someone is coming to Japan now to be an ALT or eikaiwa teacher as a career, even if that’s not a good option now, I think it literally won’t be an option in the future. If you want to keep teaching English, you should skill up and get hired by a specialized public school program (like one with a specialized English program), private school, university, or international school. Eikaiwa and ALT will probably become mostly online or AI in the future.

26. Or maybe just *other* sane jobs for foreigners are opening up?

27. No, but it is depressing.

28. There’s definitely less kids being born, you can’t argue with that. But maybe more kids become interested in learning English, so it offsets.

    I know the company I used to work for in 2010 has shut loads of schools and consolidated many.

29. Not necessarily, but certain companies are going tits-up due to shit-tier business practices (*COUGH COUGH SEIHA COUGH*). Past that, there’s always gonna be a market for that shit.