Job Discussion Forums

[dove]

Many of the methods (such as audio-lingual) used to teach English in Japan clearly don't work. So what approach do you take? I tend to use the functional approach. For example, I might teach how to report troubles that one could experience when traveling abroad: My wallet was stolen, I was robbed, My room was broken into, I think I was overcharged, My room hasn't been cleaned, etc. Within that function, I review the passive voice grammar and I introduce vocabulary. Then the students role play various situations. And of course, the students discuss their own travel experiences.

I teach this way as much as possible, and I might add this is how I like to learn Japanese.

How about you? I am especially interested in what you university instructors and private high school teachers do, since those are the most coveted jobs in Japan. Do you feel a lot of success? Are your students getting it?

Thanks!
Dove

[Glenski]

Let's start right off with high school students. Mine, anyway. They don't get it, and they didn't want it. Half a dozen teachers at one school alone, with experience in eikaiwas, JET, and their own businesses, spanning the past two decades.

Reason why?

1) The half that were on the escalator school plan to a sister university didn't even need to take an entrance exam.
2) The other half knew that no matter what we taught, it wasn't going to help their entrance exams anyway.

What / How did we teach? Name it. Reading, writing, oral communication. Team teaching (with NET or JTE) or solo teaching.

As for university, I also teach the gamut of reading, writing, listening, TOEIC prep, and oral communication classes. To ask how I teach them is too broad to answer in just one post.

[Brooks]

I think things are getting harder.
There are fewer university students than there used to be, and some schools will close. Some teachers will lose their jobs.

The birth rate is down and private schools are competing with each other for students. The quality of applicants is less than it was.

There is less interest in learning English than 5 years ago, in my experience.
The students that want to go abroad still want to learn, but I find they are worse at English generally.

Test scores have gone down, so the foreign teachers I work
with, instead of teaching oral skills in their once a week classes, are teaching grammar and reading instead.

But last year I taught a couple classes for 12th graders for
listening and reading, along with a couple of Japanese teachers, and overall I think they got better at English.


In my club, things are ok. Students practice English songs and learn drama. They are motivated, so they improve.
Motivation is the key, but task based learning is also important.

OC classes are another story. I always find it weird when students don`t want to speak English in these classes. Some do of course, but a few are antisocial when exchange students visit the classes.