Job Discussion Forums

[gaijinalways]

I was telling my wife about my frustrations yesterday with university student motivation in Japan. Many students here seem to make very little progress over time. Some of this is due to;

inadequate number of language classes in a week

some language classes that only focus on grammar-translation (yakudoku), generally taught by Japanese English instructors

classes with too many students for much real teacher-students interaction time, especially on an individual basis

poor media resources, even at technology schools

poor access to computers on the school grounds, especially for part-timer lecturers

But, some of the things that students can control are poor;

doing homework or classwork at all or making an effort to do it well

focusing on task and not
-doing homework for another class
-checking a schedule for another class
-texting a friend
-sleeping
-not realizing that a language class is just that, a chance to use that language rather than your L1 (so students often start doing a task in Japanese, even though they are often reminded to do it in English)

So I am curious, is this a problem in the country you teach in (if you're not in Japan), and why does it seem so prevelant here in Japan, this poor motivation in language classes? Is it only certain departments that are more affected by it (business seems to be one of the more common ones)?

[tedkarma]

I'm not sure some of them "lost" it - many of them never had it and take the courses only because are required.

Kind of like when I took my statistical methods class . . .

[mondrian]

[gaijinalways]

Several of the universities are supposed to be top by Japanese standards (of course), but of course at the moment I am not teaching in the English department, but am surprised that the business management students are sooo uninterested in English.

[Chris_Crossley]