Job Discussion Forums

[robertokun]

It's coming next year. What do you think of this article?

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090305f1.html

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

It shows that it won't really be very successful. Students take their cues from their homeroom teachers- people who say they don't like the language and don't think it should be taught at the elementary level. Even when they try to hide that, it takes a kid about 3.5 seconds to realize their homeroom teacher is not in-favour of this subject material, and so they react accordingly (often by not taking it seriously or by a passive aggressiveness that will continue through junior and senior high until almost halfway through their final year at senior high when they realize that they aren't going to pass the university entrance exam because they haven't done anything to learn this language after maybe learning the alphabet six years earlier. At that point they may blame their teachers, or they may decide that they themselves are just too stupid to learn it. Either way it's an awful situation).

It's being added because other countries have added it and the appalling level of English language achievement in this country combined with a shorter curriculum is an embarrassment to the country. Did other countries not revamp the other levels so that they would carry on from where the elementary level left off? Because Japan isn't doing that. They still start off from zero at the junior high level- meaning that the elementary level is basically useless: it will be a 'let's play with a genki foreigner so that you can see them as fun people, but somehow not real people' class.

There isn't a set curriculum although the textbook is the defacto curriculum in Japan. The education system in this country is designed to produce people able to take instructions from the top- it emphasizes the hierarchal nature of the society, one which is even more prevalent within the mainstream education system than other areas (leading to a decline in the number of people who want to become teachers). Teachers often say they have to cover the textbook (which is actually untrue- they have to teach the curriculum and so the schools use textbooks, but they could cover the curriculum without a textbook, if they made their own materials, but schools decide on textbooks and therefore they have to teach them) but what it is actually hiding is that most (almost all) teachers aren't equipped to do much else, because the education system is designed on creating people who follow orders- orders from their teachers, orders from their bosses, orders on what to do based on what the textbook says to do.

If they really wanted to improve English education at the k-12 level in this country, then the first thing they would do is to make it possible for students to fail the subject and have to retake it, so they couldn't just sit like lumps or goof off all the time (and that would improve not just English, but every single subject in school, and very likely attitudes towards education by the students and decrease the necessity for parents to spend thousands of dollars a year on juku and/or eikaiwa classes). The national curriculum documents actually say that there will be an increased importance placed on self expression in Japanese language class because it is apparent that Japanese students simply cannot express themselves in their own language. (However, this is just not being done, but it does allow for some awesome passing of the buck). Then they would look at the situation and see that although there are some JTEs who have trained specifically for the elementary level there is nowhere near enough, but there is very little or no point in having qualified teachers of other subjects there who don't know the language- it would be like putting a math teaching in a Spanish language classroom based on the fact that they studied first year French in university. They hardly ever do that at the junior or senior high levels for a reason). They need to train more people. A lot more people. Then have English taught at the elementary level by professional teachers of English for the elementary level and give the homeroom teacher that time to do some marking or whatever. But that would involve hiring a lot of new teachers.

'English Activities' is just a way to avoid revamping the junior high and senior high to reflect a longer curriulum, and hoping that by playing games (something that the kids are largely too self-conscious to really want to do, and don't have the skills to do more junior high school level language games) the kids will decide that they want to study more at the junior/senior high level. But that won't actually happen in 90+ percent of the cases. However, it will get the country out of the embarrassing situation in which the education system doesn't look as good as Korea's, China's or Thailand's.

[ShioriEigoKyoushi]

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[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[ShioriEigoKyoushi]

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[Glenski]

Don't expect many if any Japanese athletes to interview in English. Even the ones who have reached the pros and relocated outside the country don't learn enough of the local languages to use it in an interview. (Notable exception is the soccer player Nakata. There was a news article about foreign women golfers not long ago, which said there was going to be a language test for them so that they could actually conduct interviews without a translator, but I haven't heard of that happening yet. Just leave it that Japanese golfers were among the disgruntled.)

HR teachers are not happy with being told to teach English. True. When English was initially introduced to elementary schools here, HR teachers had less than 6 months to prepare. Blame the government, but at least there was no defined curriculum, and schools did whatever they pleased. I have read how HR teachers are often trying now to get that language training they need.

[David W]

Miki Ando speaks pretty good English. And is sometimes hot.

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

[ShioriEigoKyoushi]

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[Glenski]

[Glenski]

[seklarwia]

I wouldn't look too badly on sportsmen who apparently don't know much English. It's not as if English speaking sportmen are any better at making a real effort to learn other languages when they go abroad. Our very own Beckham didn't exactly make the effort to learn Spanish when he was playing for Real Madrid.

And then there is the problem of the "big scoop" that exists in many English speaking countries. Often the best selling news are slip ups, conflicts, etc rather than game news at all. Look at the Bridge and Terry conflict. They never broadcast those handshaking ceremonies, yet they did this time and now the big news is that Bridge didn't shake Terry's hand.

Reporters and interviewers are often little more than circling sharks. And when the tone of the question or remark is often more important than the words being used, I wouldn't advise foreign sportsmen to do non-rehearsed interviews in English without an interpretor on hand unless they had pretty much native ability. If there is a slip up when an interpretor is being used then the sportsman can't be held accountable. If they are confident enough to go without, everything they say will be treated as something coming from somebody fully proficient in English and if the sportsman makes a mistake or is lured into giving a damaging response without realising, you can guarentee that when it is given to the public, the reporters and editors will almost certainly neglect to mention that the sportsman in question clearly didn't understand the connotations of what they were asked or what they said in response or that they likely said something by mistake because they don't speak English well.

[ShioriEigoKyoushi]

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[David W]

Kosuke Kitajima also speaks pretty good English.

[starteacher]

Implementing a nationwide curriculam for English for a country the size of Japan isn't easy.

I wonder how it would be like to implement Spanish for all elementary schools in US, or French in UK, etc. Not from JHS but from ES age.

But the JT article says that China has done so for English in 2005. Does anyone know much of this, for I just wonder how rural parts of China can afford it (or is it just sporadic across the country and the Chinese media propaganda let it know that such an English program is held nationwide?). Korea is much smaller as well as Taiwan to implement national curriculams. I bet it wasn't easy either in India or Singapore or Malaysia or HK at first, maybe a bit of force and whip from the colonizers helped these places !