Job Discussion Forums

[jrwhisky]

This question goes especially to those have experience in teaching students outside of Japan.

I'm just curious, do you feel as though what you can teach and how you teach is particularily limited in Japan?

Sometimes when I am searching through the idea cookbook I'm quick to discard anything that requires a lot of imagination or creativity.

[currentaffairs]

Depends on class and the kind of program that you are talking about..

My university classes usually took 2-3 weeks to warm up. They weren't used to walking around the classroom and mingling with others. But, after awhile they got used to my methods.

The university also streamed students according to their specialisation, and so English majors were easier to deal with compared to Science majors...

[mitsui]

Yes. I thought my experience in Poland, Russia and Morocco would help but in some ways no.

I taught motivated students there.
I didn't have to be really strict.

Many of my students in Japan have been lazy and spoiled.
I have had to be more creative and strict, especially in Japanese.
These days I have to try even harder as anyone can go to university.

[ssjup81]

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to Japanese universities, but I was always under the impression that they were difficult to get into, but easy to graduate from, whereas it's the opposite in other countries, where it's generally not as difficult to get in, but more difficult to graduate from.

[currentaffairs]

Yes, but the mid tier/lower tier universities are not so hard to get into. I am also not sure if all universities have entrance exams, although public universities do, I think.

[mitsui]

Things have changed a lot. Lots of students used to go to juku, but these days, especially at escalator schools, students don't have to study.

Where I work now I think about 70 percent of kids do no homework.
It feels more like a summer camp as clubs dominate everything.
Many lower level universities are just businesses, and want as many students as possible. That way they don't have to start getting rid of teachers.

In the future, with fewer students, things will get grim as schools will close.
That is one reason why many teachers, including Japanese, are on limited contracts.

Some of the worse universities just let students in by interview and/or recommendation. It is students from outside who have to take the exams.
Students from the attached high schools will generally be worse.

[spiral78]

[move]

Something I try to avoid is using activities where I expect individuals to volunteer information, for example, warm up talk at the beginning about their weekend. However, I think that after pair/group work it is useful to call on students randomly because it shows that they will be held accountable during activities.

Group work usually works well, especially if you assign students roles (e.g. recorder, dictionary user, etc.). Students get lots of practice doing this in junior high and high school.

Looking back on the university students' feedback, one thing they usually liked was that they could meet other students in my class. So I try to mix up student pairs and groups whenever possible using name cards. Seriously, boys will sit on one side of the class and the girls on the other. It's like an onsen or a junior high dance. Hey, I gotta do something to fight the declining birthrate.

[TokyoLiz]

I'll qualify the following information by saying that I have limited experience teaching high school students in my native Canada. I have taught so-called returnees in junior and senior high school here in the Kanto region, other Asian students resident in Japan (mostly Chinese) and supported visiting foreign students.

Returnee student groups tend to relish challenging and creative material when they understand that I expect them to achieve at their grade level or above in language arts (composition and reading). Asside from the usual paragraph-to-essay writing classes, I taught a course in fairy tales and creative writing to junior high girls who were high EFL and returnee. They wrote heaps of short stories and enjoyed the work.

When it comes to junior and senior high EFL, I depend on group activities to complete grammar, reading and writing activities, and when checking answers, the students respond chorally. I only call on individuals to answer in open class when they know the answer.

When we do solo work, I ask the students to work at their own pace, and when they finish, they approach my desk for individual answer check. I can manage this in classes of 16-30 people. I get to advise them individually, and they return to their desks ready to work independently. It also helps me keep up with them personally. I teach seven different groups in two grades, so that's a lot of people to keep track of.

In preparation for writing tests and speeches, the students produce 2-3 short compositions (paragraphs, speeches and pair conversations) every term. I find that they need a lot of time to write in class. My biggest concern for my students is that they will struggle to write under pressure on external tests.

My students do mixers, pair information gaps, communication activities etc. adequately, but they need to be reminded to stay on task.

This summer I will teach a short seminar to junior high students. I've adapted mock tests with multiple choice questions so that the students interact, read aloud, and write full sentence responses from the MCRs taken from the tests.

As an experiment I will ask them to write a short creative composition based on a picture prompt. I can't expect them to just write. I'll model the activity in a listening/gap fill so they can see a model of what I expect. No model means they complain -"What am I supposed to do?!"

I can't stand whiners. So I prep in anticipation of heading them off

[jrwhisky]

I had to ask this because for quite a while I though that I was just bias. Your responses have certainly vindicated my beliefs.

Its quite a relief actually.