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Lynn
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 696
Location: in between
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 Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:19 am Post subject: Re: Why the reluctance to adopt a modern curriculum? |
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| Mark wrote: |
| In Japan, students thoroughly practice everything before they try to communicate anything. . |
I once went to a dance class in Japan. We were learning the salsa or something and the teacher had a cd playing. While we were practicing the steps the CD continued on to a Waltz song. I was like,"uh...hello? We need to change the CD to a salsa song" But the teacher wouldn't because she was busy teaching us the steps. Every Japanese person in that room completely ignored the rhythm and beat to that Waltz song and continued with their memorized salsa steps. It was very frustrating.
I never went back to class after that. A good Japanese friend told me that Japanese like to do "kata" like in karate. The don't just feel the rhythm and groove withit. They memorize the steps and then add music later. |
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JimDunlop2
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Posts: 2286
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:38 am Post subject: Re: Why the reluctance to adopt a modern curriculum? |
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| Lynn wrote: |
| A good Japanese friend told me that Japanese like to do "kata" like in karate. The don't just feel the rhythm and groove withit. They memorize the steps and then add music later. |
The problem with that, of course, is self-evident. We just finished teaching ichi-nensei chu-gakkou students the months of the year. They didn't LEARN them as such, but rather they memorized a LIST. So when my JTE gave them a test that was structured like this:
1. What is the first month of the year?
2. What is the second month of the year?
And so on.... There were definitely a few students who "missed a month" somewhere in the middle.... Then the rest of their test was wrong. It was all "shifted" by a month.
Eg.
sixth month: May
seventh month: June
eighth month: July
etc....
Did the students learn their months? Nope. They memorized a list of words which had no meaning to them. |
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taikibansei
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Posts: 811
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| 5. and those college entrance exams. |
About six months ago, I posted extensively to a thread on this topic, including a lot of supporting information showing that the center/university entrance exams themselves are not the real problem. E.g., while junior and senior high school pedagogy has basically remained stagnant (well, there have been the periodic superficial changes...) over the last 15 years, the exams have increasingly focused on critical thinking, analysis, writing, and listening skills. I speak from both experience (I wrote a number of the darn exams) and research--there are a large number of studies out there which document the growing distance between what is taught in the schools and what is tested on the exams.
Several things at work here--some of which have already been discussed. First, due to demographic pressures, fewer and fewer people actually fail the exams anymore (e.g., if a particular university program needs 50 students and only 40 apply...), removing any need for curriculum/pedagogical changes (the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' strategy). Second, motivation--I remain convinced that even for many so-called 'English majors,' attaining true fluency in English is not a major (or even important) goal. English language learning too often is pursued more as a hobby/status symbol, with the results you'd expect.
Indeed, I found studying English often on par with traveling overseas with one of those set Japanese tours. You know, the ones where literally everything is planned for you, where everyone sticks together constantly--led by a tour guide (often waving a flag) who does most of the communicating/negotiating with those outside the group. These excursions often result in great souvenirs and the occasional, always safe and predictable, 'cross-cultural' anecdote--but for me, it's hard to say that you actually experienced that country. And indeed, for many of the people on those tours, actually experiencing a particular country was not a major, or even important, goal. Similarly, too many English students I met wanted not fluency per se, but a weekly taste of the exotic, not to mention an anecdote or two about their foreign teacher to tell their friends. |
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