My Japanese friend (father) also spoke to his children in English since they were born and both kids speak English (and Japanese) fluently by the time they were in kindergarten. Pay a teacher well, let them rest for god's sake, and show them respect, just imagine how much better their lessons will be and how, ideally, it will motivate the kids. While my written French is as bad as the above, I know I can speak really bad French, communicatively, because then I went and lived there and got by. Back to the solution. Japanese is one of the official languages of Palau...just saying. The fact that you would ask this on a Japanese news website that's written in English is quite frankly disturbing. When the usual approach doesn’t work, try something different. I had great fun when I went to Japan I stayed in the youth hostels and I helped the Japanese staff to speak , sorry improve there English, I tried to explain there is a difference in the R and L IE London road, and red is a loverly colour, they repeated (in frustration) to pronounce them, as they told me they never practice English this way before and were amazed ...all good fun, just learning English from a text book is ok but it does not inter react with the language, I also have a friend in Tokyo and she is a translator, her emails are superb in fact better than some of the local kids near me who can't string a full sentence together without grammatical errors, as she addmits she can't speak a word of English, how odd! Indians, especially in urban areas, are not just taught English, but taught all their subjects in English as well. I'm under the impression it's policy in a lot of places - the foreign teacher must be exactly that, regardless whether he/she has played pachinko for the past 50 years with a fag hanging out of their mouth. First Annual Law School Fair: coronavirus style. I could write a book on this, I probably should, but for now I will close with a couple last remarks... Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) are usually taught in university in the same fashion as they are in grade-school... that is to say that they are also taught by another JTE who quite often poorly uses ALTs and struggles with the clear and effective use of contemporary English. when her child made a mistake playing the piano. One of the additional things I would throw in is that it is highly ineffective to teach any meaningful active skills classes to a classroom of 30-40 students. I’m amazed by how in the UK, people pronounce the names in the mother tong pronunciation of the person named. Anecdotally, I grew up in Texas, and we were forced to learn Spanish (my town was small, and we had no other options); Spanish was obviously the most practical choice, and there's a far better chance of interacting with a Spanish speaker in Texas than there is a fluent or native English speaker in Japan. Celebrating Think-Pair-Share, the Little Strategy That Could, and sharing some best practices for making it work for you. In these circumstances I usually see Asians (not just japanese) as the marginalised groups, not even able to mingle amongst themselves. The fundamental issue is not English education per se, but Japanese people and society does not want to learn English well because that is a capitulation to foreigners, and the US in particular. I know that we aren't supposed to use Japanese in class but that was the last straw in a long line of purposeful mistranslations. I went to a high school where English was taught in a grammar class, composition class and conversation class. What a wealth of knowledge here! I think that Cleo's point, as well as a point brought up in the article, is that Japan focuses too much on writing, and not enough on communication. Most katakana are based on English and almost 30% of spoken Japanese is comprised of katana. This morning, I used my TOIRE after waking. South Korea, Spain, and Italy have "English villages", village-like programs where students are immersed in English. Unfortunately they have to learn both as its part of the cirriculum. They should show it during JHS or HS lessons. Why not American learn Japanese in their school ? What kind of nonsence is this ?All those TV shows and movies exist in Japan, but translated in Japan language, and for games, majority of western games are not so popular in Japan, specially FPS games , but those that are , are translated in Japan language, so, no need for English ,, and for international business , again , its only small portion of Japan people who will, in their life time, to be in position to get into contact with those international firms . They would be better off have they loosen up and chat with anyone who comes their way. The quality of the textbooks are quite low. England, Australia and the USA didn't go out an promote the language... it came about due to timing. Every foreigner who spends any amount of time in Japan will understand the fundamental need to change the way students study English. Yes! I personally majored in Applied Linguistics, and I found that any time I've tried to apply what I learned, I am fought and told basically that 'Japanese people don't do things that way' Thankfully I do not work in public schools, or for a 'chain' for profit school, but getting students to change bad habits is very difficult and I find most do not want me to explain how English works, but to tell them 'the correct answer' and to fix every little pronunciation flaw so they can 'sound' like a native. Yeah, won't need any English then... Just realised I used "disinterested" instead of "uninterested". If u really want to have a good command of English conversation, I found out u need to be in foreign language speaking evironment day and night. Time to reconsider. But helping teachers find more time has always been a problem I couldn’t solve. Cleo has a good point. Maybe all we need is to model the competencies we wish to see in our students every day. Maybe include English newspaper articles (that you select, if students are minors). Can you tell the difference between こんにゃく and こんやく by listening? Try making a mistake when writing Japanese and it`ll also be considered incorrect. Read again what I wrote, I expressly said things should not be reduced to 'let's enjoy Engrish'. Japanese people are very smart, so they will become good globalized people soon by utilizing their good knowledge. Just one of the problems for each student (and, as it turned out, me) was that without knowing even the title of the essay, to say nothing of having not been privy to the introductory paragraphs, it was difficult to know "just what the hell is this?" Secondly, they should spend 6 years learning what they now learn in 3 years. It’s time to add dogfooding — the practice of using your own product as a consumer in order to find and fix the bugs — to our own teaching practice. Students in junior high and high school would regularly be sent abroad to boost their English language skills, and schools and the government would create more opportunities in which students could encounter English within Japan. -- Are Japan’s efforts at internationalization succeeding or not? Of all the hours of English education, how many of those hours were spent actually listening to and speaking English? I don't dispute what you're saying at all. Remember me. I never planned to teach middle school. It has nothing to do with culture. So I think the school system should be teaching not just communication, but communication strategies - that is if they aren't already. Last time I heard Japanese elder sue The Government by putting English phrases into Nihongo. But a recent thread on the Japan subreddit, which seems to have been started by an English educator, tried to assemble as many opinions as possible about the matter in one place. Thank you verry mach is incorrect so ya they lose the marks. My friends child entered public school in Grade 1 in Vancouver and the father works remotely from Canada. Most kids are lost by the time they're in high school. If it doesn't look, act, or sound Japanese they are in a state of confusion, or disbelief. Some classes have students with level pre-one in the class with barely passable 4 levels. It is also interesting to know just how many borrowed words there are in hiragana-Japanese. And for gods sake, after phonics is taught, there should be no katakana in any English textbooks. Or could it actually be widening the same gaps you’re trying to close? So a first generational immigrant can keep their accents, as long as the English spoken is correct. And communication should be the primary focus of using a language. This list of tools, processes, and general advice will get you started. This, however, will be a very big change in the centuries-old customs (I cannot find a better word at the moment) establishing the way in which personal and social communication is done in the country. And that's why it will never be fixed. So much opportunity to grow as a person is lost and I think this is a real tragedy, there is a blatant disregard to pronounce the words and expressions in the way that would be intelligable to a native speaker who resides neither in Japan nor is familiar with the country. On the podcast, I interview educators, students, administrators and parents about the psychological and social dynamics of school, trade secrets, and other juicy things you’ll never learn in a textbook. It is a lot more difficult to mispronounce Japanese, since (contra David Varnes) Japanese sounds are a lot easier than the fricatives (is that the right word for "v", "th", "f",? These are not things most Japanese like to do. One of the biggest problems is the fact that so many English teachers cannot hold a simple conversation in English with a native speaker. It's at the point now in Japan that English is the new kanji; replacing the character with something in English, but unless you know what it means then on its own it means nothing. If not, here's the answer. I would get someone who already speaks very good English to go to the demo class with you, and if you have any questions about the teacher ask the teacher themselves not the school. I also get them to lie - "just say the negative to all the questions you are about to be asked". I find nothing new in the article. the real reasons are the three big M's !!! Have you ever learned Chinese? At school, he has music class, where he practiced REKODA, while the teacher followed on the PIANO. I agree, most of the english teachers say in these private language schools are not certified/qualified teachers in english language, the only qualification is that they are from an english speaking country, this only worsens the situation for those japanese who sincerely want to improve there english, the only option is to live/work abroad for sometime and learn the language natively, the once who do, there english in time becomes as good as anyone. as a crude example, take two english words that have different pronunciations, but same pronunciations in japanese. Hence, wasei eigo and katakana pronunciation viewed as valid forms of English. Is it from Aberdeen? So what should we be doing instead? It's not a blatant disregard to English. Fair enough. Why is Japan 'The Exception' to being able to learn English? Nevertheless this does in no way affect our pride of speaking our very own variant of German nobody else in the world will understand. Take these 3 hacks, for example…. With their spending power and access to networks, the Japanese have tremendous potential to pick and encourage some of these methods, but to me it just seems like they are content in a comfortable shell waving to the world as it whizzes by! Easier said than done. The problem is about 95% of the so called native English teachers in Japan have absolutely no idea how to teach English. They come to Japan to party and date Japanese women for the most part and are not serious educators in the slightest degree. ", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yoshihiro_Hattori. One of the best podcasts I subscribe to. Those interested in “What’s wrong with English education?” (October 7) might want to look at the research and progress made in language acquisition over the last four decades, studies published in respectable professional journals and scientific books.Â, There is now overwhelming evidence that we acquire. It seems that such lack of communication skills (from our western point of view anyway) is actually deeply seated in the way Japanese people communicate with each other. He shook his head and said, "not at all." Language is for communication and learning one other than mother tongue could be a challenge to many. Having travelled to different countries in Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, Northern and Southern America I can say: the ability to communicate in English is quite helpful. I think it's common to a greater or lesser extent in rural areas and small towns throughout the world and was taken to extremes in Nazi Germany, Maoist China, under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Rwanda and off and on now for about three millennia in the Middle East. Discover how easy it is to add mistake analysis to your classroom. —Ms Bobbalina. Explore six different ways to add more movement to your classroom. The art of persuasion is an essential life skill. There is simply no way to learn a language without practicing speaking and hearing it. Students would have to accomplish real tasks using language, and those tasks would form the context in which students discover the language. So I'm curious to know your opinions. The problem: teachers who can't speak english, and speakers of english who can't teach. Some are home. Lookit all the kids today who will happily spend hours reading a comic book or playing a video game just to get to the end; that's not stuff they're going to be tested on. Tell me , what use Japan will have with that ? Are these changes really going to help? The program requires study in a foreign language. such as "v" "f" "th" and gutterals (? Physical movement makes learning stick better. I, myself, started out as an ALT with nearly two-thousand teaching hours under my belt... but spent my initial couple years learning Japanese through silently watching English classes that were often taught in not less than 70% Japanese. Six cool apps and websites that are worth a look this year. With people using the internet heavily for multiple purposes, it becomes increasingly important to speak English. Students need to be taught that English is useful. As long as this species of social science remains the criminal at large, I doubt Japanese will be successful at English, or any other foreign language for that matter. English likewise is more "animal" (less in the mouth, more requiring of throat and lip muscles) than Japanese. 2,458 Likes, 122 Comments - University of South Carolina (@uofsc) on Instagram: “Do you know a future Gamecock thinking about #GoingGarnet? When Yamaha decided to start including English diphones in the libraries, the singers providing the library source recordings had to go from providing 500 diphones per pitch for the Japanese-only language packages to 2,500 diphones for the Japanese/English language packages. You can't speak Japanese in class so you speak in English - they mistranslate what you say to conform to the test they're taking, 100% of the time - making you look like a bumbling idiot who can't speak Japanese and shouldn't be teaching. My honest conclusion is that you couldn't and cannot, unless your school is an international school. Yeah, but we all know people who have lived in Japan for 20 years and can't say or understand anything. But '99%' is woefully defeatist. She has simultaneous blog articles with all the links mentioned. If you are a tourist good luck. Mind boggling. Another thing is that if English is not to be examined like all the other lessons, students lose their interest. I got my first indication of the system of teaching English in Japanese universities in 1971 when living in a boarding house with a Japanese university student. My Chinese cousin did that and speaks English very well. What I want to stress here is that "culture" is not the cause of the ineffective English education in Japan. I am rewarded by every single episode with new nuggests of wisdom and ideas to be put into practice. Japanese because they have an islander culture that resist change. Lack of confidence is a major reason why many Japanese people are afraid to use English and they often have a very defeatist attitude. The main reason is that we don't practice in english. Starr Sackstein is at the front of the pack, and in a new podcast episode, she tells me how it all works. “I’m Japanese, so I will never use English in the future.”. Cool. It is a small step and I know it needs improvement, but I think it is at least a step in the right direction. Don't even get me started on the amount of people that can't tell they're, their, and there or your and you're apart. For Japanese students, distinguishing b and v, or si and shi, or stopping adding u at the end of every consonant may be somewhat easily attained. At my current hostel there are people from all over, but when mingling it is taken for granted that English will be used. We get slotted into "the foreign teacher job" at whatever level of the industry our credentials allow us to reach and it's very rare that there's any thought at all given to how this job fits into a career arc. This fantastic station-rotation lesson gets the job done, and it can be used with all kinds of other content as well. How can you adjust your voice, posture and other nonverbals to give yourself more presence and confidence in the classroom? So how do you do it when teaching online? Ummm....a whole lot more than speak Japanese. Will they achieve better sucess in the west ? That's how I learned Japanese, watching 24 dubbed in Japanese: Is there any other country that teaches "Romanji" english? No, they are not immigrants, nor did they live in a native English country for a long time as children. I love Japan, and I hope they take steps to integrate before they become truly noncompetitive. I want to know the effective way to teach English as a foreign language. A lot of you are out there giving lectures, presentations, and workshops, and your slideshows need work. Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), British, or Computer-Aided Instruction (CAI)/Computer-Aided Language Instruction (CALI), American, is briefly defined in a seminal work by Levy (1997: p. 1) as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning". Many regular ed teachers feel inadequately prepared to serve the needs of students with special needs. [email protected]. It seems to me that most human language phonemes (in the vast majority of languages at least) are made within the mouth. They are lost. But Alas, I could understand only 20 % of local American in college. Instead of trying to create their dream school within the system, this group of brave, forward-thinking educators just built it from scratch. Almost all English speakers don't even bother with correct spelling and grammar when writing (just look on the Internet and you'll see) so why should they be so criticized for mistakes? Just opinion, but encourage them to take home something interest to watch on DVD, with English soundtrack, Japanese soundtrack if possible, and Japanese and English captions. It’s just awful. ****JTE try this: Give students a virtual tour of English speaking countries, or with English speakers via Skype. To do the work of a teacher and stick with it long enough to get good at it, you need a level of emotional resilience most other jobs will never require. language in a very simple way: by understanding what we hear and what we read. There very people who will disagree with me with probably write a very nice rebuttal - but it will be something that most native English speakers would struggle to write. It can feel unnatural at first, but once you’ve given validation a try, some of your most difficult conversations are going to get a whole lot better. If you live in area where this is not possible, you can listen to daily English conversation program on radio or TV. Exactly; they have learned not to produce more than the absolute minimum necessary, in case they make a mistake. These seven tips will help. Japanese language lessons in high school are as boring as bat sh*# - both for the students and the teacher delivering them. Yep. Wadsworth, 2010), It is also interesting to know just how many borrowed words there are in hiragana-Japanese. http://tinyurl.com/mucfk8f. It is not only in English Japanese are afraid of taking chances. The English language is full of an amazing amount of slang and commonly incomplete sentences that any speaker would be able to comprehend (I can understand "that, get, me" as well as I understand "Get that for me"). 3. When the student pronounces the sound, the teacher will praise him half of the time, while correct him half of the time, making the student totally puzzled. I disagree, I teach occasionally and one student was actually a qualified English teacher.... she couldn't have a conversation with a 5 year old native English speaker. Yeah.. all i can say are the 3 big M's.... Whilst English tuition will always have room for improvement, what I read in the article could equally be applied to the French I received at school. (when what high school kids do is very limited) With a solid foundation, those who need English will have a great starting point. There are many points in your post above I'd consider quote worthy. I can tell the difference between the root, and the engagement, and I'd be surprised if my other friends who have been here for more than a decade couldn't. As others have mentioned, it literally opens up a whole world. Not to mention messing with British vs American English. My point was that the ones who try that bit harder, but don't get it 100% right, get penalised, while the ones who do the minimum go to the top of the class. Sometimes I can make out what Spanish-language TV shows are saying, if there's captions to read. The biggest problem with conversation school is people who want a quick fix to their English woes, and think they can 'buy' English as if it were a hat you put on your head and makes you talk. Either learn the language as the rest of Asia is able to or keep the victimization and watch your relevancy plummet even more. One of the main culprits, in my experience, is that the Japanese peace education curriculum fosters a "they are out to get us and take advantage of us" mentality. Japanese has 44 or 45, depending on the source you use. Even if you’re a great teacher, even if you’re a swell person most days, sometimes it all gets to be too much and you just snap. ... ... i have published many books including 5 with a total of 7000 haiku and 1000+senryu in the original w/ romanization, literal gloss & an average of two translations each.