Job Discussion Forums

[Mark]

Ok, this might seem like a strange question, but I haven't really seen it properly answered:

Who benefits from the current system of English education?

After all, Japan spends (apparently) 5 trillion yen per year on English education. This is quite a chunk of change and is more than the annual budgets of more than a few countries.

Most things don't exist unless they benefit somebody in some way. At the very least, there's usually some organization that is at least trying to preserve itself.

There's a lot of talk on this board about all the problems and whatnot, but there's never any talk about the benefits. Surely someone must be benefiting?

Let's look at the current system (folks may dispute some points):

1) Most Japanese English teachers cannot speak English at a level that would be necessary to teach it (Let's say about an FCE level).

2) Lessons, even for younger learners, are usually taught entirely in Japanese and consist of explaining stuff. These kinds of lessons are well-known to be useless.

3) Foreigners are rarely given proper teaching positions. Foreigners are there to "practice conversation" with and are rarely expected to actually have any background in modern language instruction.

4) Students must write a quite difficult university entrance exam that has no real connection to practical english ability.

5) There is a huge conversation school industry that usually provides once a week 1960s-style audiolingual lessons (or some variation) that are well-known to be ineffective.

So, everybody understands why the current system doesn't work. Japanese students who study English properly actually do learn the language. So, why is the current system maintained? Who benefits?

I know that many people don't know much about modern language instruction outside of Japan, but why does nobody look? It's not like it's hard to find out.

I just can't imagine that people are willing to throw that much money away and not care about the results or want to do any genuine research to see how to improve the results.

[fluffyhamster]

Well, on JET (for example), the AET can stand to benefit: those who can remain at heart positive despite the obstacles, committed to doing something to improve things, and who succeed in implementing a few changes to modest success, probably won't be stuck for ideas when they are in charge of their own classes wherever after JET; that is, I find that answering the sort of questions, and countering the sort of objections that occur on JET really makes one think and rethink the most fundamental things. This is the sort of challenging environment where a teacher really can hone a solid approach that will eventually work for even the most "challenging" of students. A stint teaching elsewhere should be a breeze after Japan.

[Mark]

Ha! That's great and you're probably right. If you can survive teaching in Japan, anywhere else really should be a breeze! Of course, in other countries, they actually expect something of their teachers.......

[Mark]

I'd also add that the JTEs seems to be getting a pretty good deal out of it. Many of them are paid good wages to teach a language they themselves never learned in the first place, a language that they themselves no longer study or try to improve their ability in. They are also hired to teach a modern foreign language, and most of them seem completely ignorant of the methodology for doing so. And, if the students don't learn English, nobody blames the teachers.

It's really amazing when you think about it. Might as well hire me to be a flamenco teacher: "Well, I saw this once on TV, so let's just twirl about and stamp the floor and whatnot. Great! Everybody passes!"

[fluffyhamster]

The thing is to keep plugging away at things, have little research projects and whatnot, going on in your own time and mind even when the Japanese all around you are doing their best three monkey impersonations.

When I've mentioned teaching ideas here on the Japan forum, I've been surprised at the negative (indeed, sometimes hostile) reponse, as if ideas mentioned in the context of Japan would have no wider relevance or potential.

[fluffyhamster]

Well, I don't like to criticize the JTEs too harshly or relentlessly because I recognize the fact that non-natives can be fine teachers; there's also the notion of providing beginner students with an attainable model to emulate and respect in at least the short-term (it's silly to imagine that all traces of Japanese influence in their English will vanish - see e.g. Jenkins' writings), rather than always striving starry-eyed for perfection (ironically held in the minds of most Japanese to be personified by only native speakers). I'd agree however that it does help if the teachers have looked beyond the textbook and exams and can see where things are functionally and discoursally, rather than always just morphosyntactically, wrong (and an appreciation of how English is used by competent speakers the world over actually helps resolve those tricky "grammar" questions and problems).

[Mark]

I'm not at all saying that JTEs are bad because they're Japanese. My problem is that they don't speak English well enough to teach it (or communicate at all in many cases) and they are unaware of anything that's happened in second language acquisition since, well, ever.

I fully agree with the idea that non-native speakers can be fantastic language teachers.

Yes, Japanese will always have a Japanese accent. That's fine. Yes, the focus on "perfection" is silly. "Sounding like a native speaker" should not be a goal.

But you can't teach a language you don't speak. There's a reason I don't teach Hungarian! There's a reason why people who can't speak reasonably standard English are not popular as teachers.

Would you want to learn Japanese from someone who only spoke Kagoshima-ben? Or from a foreigner who only spoke a little bit themselves?

Also, it' the Japanese themselves who fixate over the ideal of grammatical accuracy and "native speaker perfection" being important. JTEs encourage this. Japanese students get all worked up over whether they're making little errors when in fact nobody but them really cares.

If a student says "I have 3 cat", no big deal. If they say "me 3 cat have", well, that's legitimately a problem, but there are plenty of immigrants in English countries who speak that way and get on fine.

[Mark]

Anyway, I still say that the system is a pretty sweet ride for JTEs.

And JETs!

Anybody else a beneficiary?

[fluffyhamster]

[Glenski]