Job Discussion Forums

[Deda80]

Hi!! Can anyone tell me some common learning difficulties Japanese students in general have when learning English?

thank you!!

[mrjohndub]

If you mean clinical learning disabilities--and I don't necessarily think that you do from reading your post--they have the same as any other given demographic.

...And on that note...In my experience, people seem quick here to deny that a child might have a learning disability. It's one of those things that makes Japanese (children) different from everybody else, or so they would like to think. I can recall several occasions in which a teacher, including myself in one instance, mentioned this as a possible/partial cause of a student's lack of progress...even citing well-known warning signs and taking into account an obvious genuine concern for the child...and the comments were met with the sort of attitude that we must not understand Japanese children, culture, etc. and general ignorance of what a learning disability is in any case.

[PAULH]

[TokyoLiz]

What Paulh said - a lack of well-trained teachers.

Foreign teachers are generally not required to have TESOL, specialized knowledge (linguistics, composition, etc.), or professional development (k-12 qualifications). As a result, generally students are not stimulated enough and the classrooms are not well managed, resulting in poor learning outcomes.

Japanese teachers of English are a whole different topic. Education reform in 2003 raised the bar for Japanese teachers. See http://www.mext.go.jp/english/org/formal/16.htm

[TK4Lakers]

Teaching an as ALT....I'd say first and foremost the biggest difficulty in teaching English to these kids is that they see no reason to learn another language....and I see their point. Who wouldn't think it to be pointless when living in your own coutnry and having a 2nd (difficult, I must say) language shoved down your throat since ES.

Besides the lackluster effort and attitudes, there are many other factors that come into play. The kids might've had a bad experience with an ALT or the "English" language before, the kids (where I teach, atleast) are from a rural area where there is little to no English exposure and parents and schools don't put as much strenght into the program, and the JTE might make the lessons too mundane and boring for them to not find the extra motivation to do well.

That all said, there are still a good amount of students who try hard and give it their all, or have a genuine interest in learning about the language and culture.

[guitarcries]

One of the biggest problems my kids have is an extreme fear of making a mistake. More than half the time they don't give an answer, I can tell that they know the answer... they are just incredibly terrified of saying the wrong thing. With adult students, in my experience, they can be trained out of this with productive pressure (giving them time limits that force them to give some kind of answer), joking around (pretending to fall asleep if they take too long to give an answer), or repeatedly encouraging them to "guess" when they're not sure. Kids on the other hand are really difficult sometimes. I have one young female student who will just shut down and not speak or even look at me for the rest of the class if I push her even the slightest bit too hard... I've learned not to by now, though. But sometimes even still she gets like that by no doing of mine.

That's the biggest problem I've noticed, among quite a few others. But I'm sure many of these others are problems for all students of English or other foreign languages.

[mrjohndub]

[Chris21]

If you're interested in some specific language difficulties that Japanese students struggle with, I've found that my Japanese students struggle with countable/uncountable nouns (i.e. an apple, NOT a milk), subject-verb agreement (i.e. he play tennis), and prepositions (i.e. when to use at, in, on).

Of course learners will have difficulty with almost all language areas at one point, but I think Japanese are particularly susceptible to counting nouns because the counting system in Japanese is quite different. 3rd person verb inflection is also absent in Japanese, leading to problems (particularly when Japanese students speak). As for prespositions, it seems to me that most language student studying most languages seems to struggle with them.

[wangtesol]

One unusual thing in Japan, compared to other countries, is that it was invaded by a military and under a foreign govenment occupation in some large parts from 1945 until as late as 1971.

So, one difficulty that is hard to prove but I think is pretty obvious: wouldn't a local population resist the language planning of the occupier (i.e., teach them English)?

If the US had been taken over by Germany, wouldn't there be institutional and personal resistance to learning German?

In Japan teaching young kids the English alphabet in katakana seems to me like institutionalized resistance against the country that occupied their government.

By the way, check the Middle East Forum on Dave's to find an article by Bill Templor (posted by Abu Fletcher) on US government language planning for Iraq. Apparently they are/were basing it on the language planning model they used in Japan.

[PAULH]

[Deda80]

oh, guys... you gave me all great answers. I would like to teach in Tokyo, but I wanted to have some info about Japanese students and the way they study our language and you gave me so many answers!!
Thank you so much!

[gaijinalways]

Surprised no one mentioned some obvious ones (besides the motivational and cultural aspects that Paul H kindly posted, though he did mention about pronunciationa little)

Japanese has no articles (the, an, a)

Japanese has no future tense (they use present with a future time word, Chinese is similar)

Japanese verbs don't take an object, where many English verbs do. (ex, I see it, I found it)

Japanese doesn't have distinct 'r' and 'l' sounds, and they commonly confuse 'f' and 'h' as well

Japanese sentence structure always has the verb at the end, i.e. S-O-V vs English S-V-O

Hope these differences help.

[Like a Rolling Stone]

[PAULH]

[Like a Rolling Stone]