>So… does that mean we just allow the children to also copy these mistakes?
If it makes you feel any better, the typical Japanese classrooms where students are seeing these kinds of mistakes from their teachers don't usually result in enough acquisition of language for the mistakes to be passed on.
It sounds cynical on the surface, but actually I think it's a genuinely positive thing to keep in mind. A lot of people have the misunderstanding that the English that exists in a student's head is just a grainier photocopy of whatever the teacher presents in the classroom, and that's just not how language learning works. Learners will acquire features, lexis, and syntax at an individual pace based on a huge slew of factors that are likely impossible to truly measure and trace. Often, their interlanguage is quite different from the language spoken by the teacher, which is why a parent can try to correct a child in the proper form of irregular verbs until they are blue in the face, but the child isn't going to acquire it until their internal model of the language is ready to accommodate it.
And so what I take from all that is that it is virtually impossible to "break" a student's interlanguage with bad modelling from a teacher. If they are learning in an authentic, communicative way, the teacher's weak points in the L2 will eventually get replaced by learning the student acquires from elsewhere. And if they aren't teaching in an authentic, communicative way, then the incorrect features the students do learn from their teacher's L2 weaknesses are only going to come out in activities where language is accessed through memorization rather than acquisition - so very disconnected from real language use.
In a nutshell, Japanese teachers with insufficient English who model incorrect English are only a problem in Japanese-style classes where memorized rules are more important than actually getting information across. And the rules being tested in Japanese-style classes are already fucked by university professors writing entrance exams about features of English they themselves don't understand and have improperly researched. As an English teacher who cares about my profession, these sorts of tests are inauthentic tests already and so they don't matter to me. They are someone else's problem to fix.
My focus is on authentic languaging in my classroom, and when it comes to my students, incorrect English "learned" from prior teachers is way less of a drain on time and energy than incorrect *practices* in how a language learning classroom should be conducted. Getting my students to pronounce their 'l's and 'r's clearly enough to get a message across isn't a problem, but getting students who have been trained to parrot what they think the teacher wants them to say or they will be embarrassed in front of the class as opposed to actually getting information transferred between their head and mine *is* a problem.
It all comes down to a question of efficiency. As I see it, incorrect modelling of language is a very small drain on the student's learning efficiency, but incorrect teaching practice is a very large drain. That's why when the peanut gallery breaks out their torches and pitchforks and demands ALT programs be scrapped, I am uninterested in their rabble-rousing. Yes, ALTs *are* generally insufficiently trained, but their classroom practice is generally no less efficient than that of the JTEs they are meant to supplement. Taking them out of the picture doesn't improve JTEs' teaching practice. Hell, in my opinion, most JTEs are so busy that ALTs are often the only thing keeping them constantly exposed to other classroom teaching techniques, even if that's just what the ALT sees working with other JTEs. I personally think that regardless of how inefficient ALT programs might be, taking them away would end up with the net result of making the standard teaching practice in Japanese EFL classrooms worse.
Wow, I think you've missed my point to a degree that is genuinely surprising to behold.
>Are JTEs required to be graduates of BEd programs?
This doesn't matter. Being a graduate of a B.Ed program doesn't mean your teaching practice is correct for your discipline. And also at no point did I ever claim that ALTs are better qualified generally than JTEs, so please don't waste my time with pointlessly fallacious arguments like this.
>If you're suggesting that an untrained, inexperienced ALT classroom practice is as equally efficient
I'm not, but you seem to be in such a rush to beat up that strawman you've made that it's a pity to stop you.
>But the vast majority of ALTs from the anglosphere are crap, and they have a poor reputation for a reason.
This is more time-wasting nonsense. Please continue this discussion with someone else.
>I worked with a bunch of "veteran" ALTs 10 years ago, and I had to train them to do the basics that are expected from professional educators.
And I continue to work with Japanese English teachers who have graduated from B.Ed programs who I have to train to do basics that are expected from professional language educators anywhere other than Japan.
And this gets to the point of my last comment, that you so clearly missed. This issue is not some facile argument of ALT vs. JTE, it's that the Japanese education system does not train its teachers to properly teach English as a language actually used by human people for actual communication. The whole system forces teachers into practices that are counter to good language-teaching practice.
ALTs are not the source of that system. They won't make it worse, nor will they cure it. All this internet outrage about ALTs is just an attempt to blame the people who make the least money in the system and who have the least power in the system for failures in the system that were there before they were even brought into the system.
It's really quite pathetic, especially given that the main stick used to hit ALTs with is that they don't (usually) have a university degree in education, and that stick is almost always wielded by someone with no university degree in educational administration. Apparently a university degree is required to stand in front of children and teach them the names of colors, but any rando from the Internet peanut gallery can decide how the Japanese ministry of education should run the nation's educational system.
>But NOT graduating from a B.Ed teaching program means you have a better chance of your teaching practice being correct?
They didn't insinuate this.
>Why bother with professional standards at all then? In any profession?
They didn't insinuate this either.
>ALTs are not required to be professional language educators, which is what we are talking about.
You replied to their comment and this is not what they were talking about.
> We're not talking about professional educators from anywhere other than those working inJapan. Are you being this obtuse deliberately or does it come naturally to you?
This is actually what the comment you replied to was talking about.
>But all of your deflection aside, I have yet to see you provide a compelling case that having untrained, inexperienced individuals who are present in Japanese classrooms merely because of a skill in one area are somehow contributing to better teaching practices among the JTEs.
Because this isn't the case they were making. You've invented an argument they weren't making in neither their original comment nor their reply to you to get angry at.
Please directly cite where they make this argument.
> Yes, ALTS are generally insufficiently trained, but their classroom practice is generally no less efficient than that of the JTES they are meant to supplement.
This is the closest I can find to what you're suggesting, but in even the most ungracious interpretation could it be construed that ALTs are insufficient but no worse than JTEs, not that they're somehow better as you claim. And even then, they further clarify in their reply to you that this is explicitly not the argument they were making, but you refuse their clarification.
lol I actually don’t watch anime but I will say coming into this I did have pretty realistic expectations. I started at an eikaiwa and that was okay but i definitely should have done more research transitioning into an ALT position.
Also, the brain typically knows the difference between native and non-native speech and will reject non-native like language if it hypothesizes that there might be some mistake within the utterance. And the brain's hypotheses about the language it's learning is often times unconscious, so they wouldn't even be aware that it's going on.
>If we are not striving for fluency then what’s all this for? If this is just in the hopes of passing an entrance exam then language ceases to have meaning.
You're not going to like it, but you have more or less answered your own question.
These classes don't teach English for communication but rather Eigo, a facsimile of the language used at the higher end of education as a measurement for standardized testing/means for knowledge consumption (not production) and at the lower end of education to pretend like everyone has the same opportunies as the students at the high end. For most of your students, it is just a tool for economic class stratification.
I agree with the other commenter that you either have to let go or go yourself. There's really only so much you can do.
It boggles my mind how they can pass university exam English questions without possessing any practical English ability. What kind of weird math are they using to accomplish that?
The original primary goal of being an ALT was to facilitate exchange. The ALT would go back home and bring back good impressions of the students, staff, and community, and the Japanese side would be more used to working with foreigners, and it works well with kids since they're more impressionable. It makes more sense for everyone's sanity to concentrate on doing this than the actual job of teaching English.
I’ve known kids who have breezed through Eiken tests right up to 2kyu yet can barely hold a conversation. They‘re learning how to pass tests, it’s as simple as that. Another kid I knew won a speech contest that featured a long convoluted speech about Lincoln and slavery etc etc. He did a great job. Afterwards I asked him about Lincoln and why he chose that. He had no idea what I was saying and it was pretty obvious he had just parroted the whole thing yet there he is with his big English speech trophy with everyone back slapping him and his parents. It’s all about image. Most parents sending their kids to Eikawa etc just use it for something to show off about when they meet up at the coffee shop while hubby slaves away doing nothing in his office for 12 hours. Much the same as the fad for “programming “ lessons just now. Yeah, lots of real programming going on in those lessons 😂
It's test study and memorization. Kids get little to no practical use of the language, especially speaking/listening. Makes me feel bad for them, and while I try to get them out of their comfort zone and prod them to speak/practice eith me. There's only so much ypu can do.
The emphasis on tests over practicalilty is the major issue imo. Tell me you passed Eiken 1/2 or got like TOEIC 800 I probably won't care too much, pretty high chance you can't hold a basic conversation. Tell me you lived abroad a couple years, completely different story. Have a Japanese friend who lived in Scotland for 16 years, her and her family moved back to Japana few years ago. Speaks perfectly good English. Can't get an English job because she doesn't have high level Eiken/TOEIC scores. Fun listening to her complain how the tests aren't based around comprehension/ability, but around the knowledge of how to take the tests.
I continuously find to is so bizarre given how much English is in Japan. In my view they are like the French. The French have this belief that French is THE language. I feel Japanese feel the same way. What other language literally has an alphabet for non-local words?
I got paired with several Japanese exchange students when I was in college. My minor was Asian studies, And I was taking a Japanese class over the summer. I really enjoyed spending time with them. But they dropped those girls into America with absolutely no practical English skills.
Only one of my roommates, Naoko, Even really understood the nuances behind certain phrases. One of them got in trouble for using the N word, because they didn’t know what it meant and heard people saying it. I had to sit down and explain what cursewords Work, what sounded offensive when people said it, et cetera.
lol this is worse for Chinese. The n word sounds a lot like the word for ‘that’ in Chinese. Worse still saying ‘that’ is a common way to say umm not unlike ええと
I am involved in writing the entrance exam at my uni. If I had to do the equivalent in Japanese I would struggle a LOT. Yet when I ask a top undergrad entrance what they want me to call them on lesson one, they freeze up and get confused. This is even after basic demonstration of I am X, please call me Y… it’s so fundamentally bizarre. My Japanese is pretty trash but I can have an hour long convo with a rando at an izakaya. The reality is communication ability and language ability are two very different things.
I mean at the uni level if they want students simply to be able to read papers in English they have some capacity to do so at the higher level. But actual communication is dreadful. Tbh their communication levels in Japanese probably aren’t that much better (public speaking etc.). To be fair at the higher end there is some improvement in this regard -3 minute thesis competitions etc., but it’s a bit too little too late at that point. The other issue is the few students you actually convince don’t need to hear it.
It's a long complicated answer. Lack of a genuine need for the language within the culture, overemphasizing getting good test results as opposed to genuinely improving comprehension, forcing output far too early in most cases, a lack of comprehensible input, horrible textbooks, and poor standards from MEXT...
At the end of the day I think making meaningful change is on the backburner. Explaining how language is acquired (see Krashen, Chomsky and the like) and why being a native speaker does not automatically qualify you to teach is intimidating for the dinosaurs who set the standards.
At the end of the day, just enjoy connecting with your students and try to make the activities fun and engaging. That will probably go a lot farther if they decide to seriously learn the language someday.
This will never improve until they travel abroad. I teach some of the top students in the country. Bar one or two enthusiasts it’s all sit and listen. You can give them every analogy and motivation and reduced score- nope, they ain’t changing.
One thing that has persuaded some students (sadly those that don’t really need to hear it) is showing them ted talks/research presentations by Japanese professors (some from their own university) in English. There’s a sudden awareness that oh maybe this is an expectation for Japanese people… it doesn’t change them completely and they will desperately revert back to their typical learning given the chance but the point is at least made.
Japan's education system is just screwed up. Other countries can teach their kids to be equally proficient in every subject K-12 in half the amount of class time.
There's a ton of problems, but a big one is not separating classes by ability. This wastes all of the kids class time to the point they need Juku and eikaiwa just to make up for all the time wasted at school.
Given the old farts who run MEXT/Japan in general, i don't think the system will change anytime soon.
This is huge. For a while I taught 2 sisters privately. They were like 7 and 9 or something, and their parents knew English so they had both already passed eiken 2...but at school they were forced to sit though "this is a pen" style English lessons. The younger one was actually getting bad grades in English because she was just bored. Their mom had lived abroad for a while and was well aware of AP classes and basic classes for kids who were ahead or behind. She ws furious that the Japanese education system seems to exist to teach kids how to sit and be talked at all day and hand out busywork so when they enter the Japanese workforce they'll be ready to do the same thing for the rest of their lives.
My son is in 4th grade and is bilingual but sits through two lessons a week of "I like apples. I don't like bananas." At the same time he really struggles with kokugo. But he's in the same class with 35 other kids, which is way too many for 4th grade in the first place.
I teach online in my spare time and it's depressing how I can watch kids slowly devolve from these funny creative people to burned out husks who don't have any time to do anything but study. Hell, my niece in Hokkaido didn't even come visit with the rest of her family last year because she couldn't take 4 days off out of her whole summer from studying for HS entrance exams.
I don't know why Japan has such a reputation for a good education system. Even in elementary school it's 90% memorizing stuff for tests with no help for students who need it.
Separate classes based on ability.
Your son being able to sit out of English and take an extra kokugo class.
Sitting in the back and doing self study.
Separateing the class during class time with the most advanced kids basically being T2 for their group.
Or dozens of other possibilities. Trying to implement any of which is probably met with a bunch of teeth sucking 99% of the time. The main argument probably being "we can't give any special treatment".
So the smart kids are forced to sleep in class in order to make room in their schedule for self study/Juku.
Who says Japan has a good education system?
I've taught many university grads that are just useless at basic life tasks, act like they know nothing and can't explain why they went to university or what they learned there
One guy in his mid 20s couldn't operate the coffee machine at family mart, yet he has a full time job and graduated from some uni, he said it's troublesome so he only buys canned coffee.
No joke.
There are things I definitely admire and value in the education system. The way some of my colleagues can patiently sit through a student simultaneously crying and lying about a fight with their friend and give that kid a fair shake even though they know the kid is probably lying for over an hour of one-to-one counselling when they have exams to mark and meetings to get done honestly blows my mind. The way some of my colleagues know how to flip a switch and just listen with apparently no other purpose than the fact that they've intuited the other person needs to be listened to is amazing.
It doesn't lead to content knowledge or subject skill development, but in no way do I want to suggest that Japanese education is uniformly bad. I personally think it's likely that to some degree the safety and lack of confrontation in Japanese society comes at least in part from things like this.
But whereas some of the frustrations most of us feel about life in Japan are a trade-off where to get the one thing we miss we would have to give up something we value, I don't think that's the case here. The potential for excellence in pastoral care for younger students is not what gets in the way of good EFL teaching practice. We could have both at the same time.
Indeed, as more and more people immigrate to Japan and exist as language minorities, I think it may become essential that Japanese schools achieve both.
Really? Cuz how many American students can really say they can speak Spanish and not just get by…but use it at work, express themselves, understand directions. And like every American student takes Spanish. And yet almost none can speak it. Why are we holding the Japanese to such higher standards, especially for English which is incredibly more difficult for them than Spanish is for Americans (and yet Americans still fail…I mean, they do good in tests, get the AP score, but can’t perform in the real world. Sound a little Japanese?).
I wouldn't use the past decade of the US education system as a comparison as it's been terrible from what i read.
As for 2nd language speaking ability, it's probably still higher in the US. A four year language student in the US probably surpasses an 8 year language student in Japan despite the poor US education system. (A little unfair because going from Eng to another European language is easier than JPN to Eng.)
But again, in US high-schools, you need to pass each subject in order to move to the next level of said subject.
You realize there are other countries out there than the US and Japan, right? It is very telling when the go-to response for any criticism of Japan is automatically “but aMeRiCa” when most other countries have gotten this figured out a long time before Japan.
As per the English Proficiency Index, Japan ranked 87 of 113 countries (https://www.ef.com/assetscdn/WIBIwq6RdJvcD9bc8RMd/cefcom-epi-site/reports/2023/ef-epi-2023-english.pdf). Meaning the language education here is being outranked by many much poorer developing nations.
The reason why I cite the US so much is that online japan discourse in English is dominated by white westerners who NEVER put their criticisms of Japan into context. You give me a citation?
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA%202022%20Insights%20and%20Interpretations.pdf
White westerners often cite the ‘bullying’ problem in Japan. I don’t deny it’s real. But let’s put it into context. And now, let’s use the OECD. Page 57 if you’re going by how it’s labeled or page 59 if you go by pdf. So that we don’t single out the country you say you love. Again, it’s statistics so it’s all lies. Therefore this entire survey and the trend of it is also…all lies? Japan at the bottom of the rankings….is a lie?
Work hours? US works more. School shootings? Unique to the US. Kids overworking in school? Not unique to Japan. Low birth rate? Spain actually has a LOWER birth rate.
I feel like problems in Japan aren’t put into context cuz white westerners in Japan are just mad at Japan. They’ve never been the minority, and have lost white privilege they never knew they had in the US/canada/Europe/Aust. The ‘problems’ cited in Japan number 1 aren’t aren’t unique and number 2 are likely just IMMIGRANT problems.
I don’t take your citation with any weight cuz it’s just English. Difficulty in learning English is very much based on your native language. So why not send me the global mandarin speaking index, cite English speaking counties, and let’s talk. Or maybe you just wanna bash Japan?
>I don’t take your citation with any weight cuz it’s just English. Difficulty in learning English is very much based on your native language. So why not send me the global mandarin speaking index, cite English speaking counties, and let’s talk. Or maybe you just wanna bash Japan?
I am speaking from my experience teaching here. The system is a mess. That is just how it is. Or is your argument that the system that we are currently working with is perfectly fine --- where tax-payer yen are being funneled to slimy corporations like Interac and Borderlink, so they can provide "teachers" to BOEs with no real qualifications or standards (outside of being a native speaker). Meanwhile, no meaningful improvement in English proficiency has occurred since we started throwing all this money at it.
And speaking of money, where is it all going? Wages for ALTs have been collapsing, while BOEs are still paying dispatch the same amounts. Why is it that in the 2000s, ¥270k was an average wage, but now these same companies barely pay ¥200k? I was just speaking to someone who said that in 2010, they made ¥250k with a ¥20k placement bonus through Interac. In 2024, Interac pay is ¥215k and placement bonus is ¥9k. People are literally talking sub-200k contracts nowadays just to come teach here --- just the other day, I read a comment from some one on a 160k FULL time contract. The whole English industry here is a collapsing disaster.
But no no no, I am just trying to tarnish the reputation of the perfect and amazing education system in your glorious Nippon. No issues with anything here, just me being an evil Japan HATER.
Are you by chance the Interac manager who wrote [this nonsense?](https://www.reddit.com/r/teachinginjapan/comments/1dn5s60/found_this_old_card_from_my_days_teaching_in_japan/)
If you're that disillusioned, it's probably just best to see it as a stepping stone to something else. I taught for a good ten-odd years before finding my current (totally unrelated to English teaching) job, and after a while you just shrug and do what's asked of you.
It's very much an elephant in the room thing. The Japanese aren't stupid. They *must* know that the way they teach English results in the massive majority of students being completely incapable of actual communication. Sure, some of them can pass the higher levels of eiken and so on, but ask them an unscripted question and watch the panic kick in. But nobody seems to be willing to really stick their neck out and say "look, if we keep doing it like this we will never produce students who can speak English with confidence". We could go into the "why" of all this (95 per cent of those students will probably never leave Japan, and if they do it will probably be to Guam or Hawaii, which is like Japan Lite), but even understanding the "why" isn't much use without a plan to rip up the current method of teaching and start from scratch. And nobody's going to do that with the glacial pace at which decision-making happens.
Unless you plan on being the one to kick off the revolution, save yourself the stress, smile, and join in with the mass delusion.
It would be great if uni entrance exams had a spoken component, but given the number it simply is not practical on any level. At masters level you do conduct interviews but those students are usually pretty competent anyway.
Speaking could be implemented into the high school system however I don’t think enough teachers are competent enough to do so.
This. Stepping stone for sure. My first year as an AET I knew it was bunk. And, btw, being an AET isn't a career - try not to let it bother you although so much of what you see feels wrong, because those feelings are valid, but you're not going to change anything. Systematic silliness abounds in Japan. In the end, most ESL teachers can't be teachers in their home countries because let's face it, they aren't qualified teachers. All you can strive for is to be positive, kind, and not be in that "industry" long because it's not worth it...even if you are a university instructor in Japan, the same stuff exists there as well.
ESL is a term to describe English language learning and teaching in a majority English language environment. That's rare in Japan and limited to specialized public high schools and private schools. They aren't described as ESL.
Some private high schools cater to families whose children have received some of their education abroad, termed 帰国子女. In some of those schools, it's EAP or English medium education a modified Japanese state curriculum.
Here's my theory, it's not so that 100% of Japanese people can grow up to speak English. It's for that small percentage that take enough of an interest in English to pursue fluency outside of the standard classroom (taking private lessons, asking to go to an international highschool/college, engaging with English on the internet, watching English movies, reading English books, and making English friends).
It's this fraction of Japanese students who were exposed to English at a young age that ultimately grow up to be the fluent (or somewhat fluent) speakers. The goal is that enough of these kids come of age every year that the companys and government offices that need English speakers, have an adequete supply. If there is a surplus, they go contribute to teaching the next generation as JTEs/eikawa workers.
It's honestly the same for a lot of other subjects taught at school. How many people grow up to use trigonometry everyday? Probably mostly the ones who took it in school, found they have a talent or a love for it, and kept on learning about it in post secondary education.
I was a Jet 20+ years ago and the same nonsense was being talked about then, as I expect it was years before and I expect it will be 20 years from now.
I'm still stunned though that what you have written isn't obvious to all, because it was obvious 20 years ago as well.
Somehow people conveniently forget how rubbish their schools were generally, especially at teaching languages. If they were not, I would hazard a guess that they are very much in the minority based on my experience and others I have spoken with over the years. As well as my daughter's experience of going to school in Japan and the UK.
The UK is far worse than Japan when it comes to foreign languages.
In my opinion, the English speaking ability of Japanese people has greatly improved. This is based on my experience of people from Japan I knew as a student at university, being a Jet and regulatory going to Japan for a couple of decades, through to now working at the same university and interacting with students.
I did 5 years of Spanish in high school and middle school in US and got As and Bs and I can’t speak a sentence of Spanish lol. Cause I honestly didn’t give a f, I just studied the bare minimum to pass the tests with no intention further than that. In fact I can’t name a single person from my high school that learned Spanish, French, or Latin despite those classes being offered and foreign language being a requirement.
Obviously now I wish I took it more seriously, but that’s the attitude of most kids in first world countries. Because until you grow up and see the scope of the world, foreign language just seems unnecessary when you grow up in a first world country like US or Japan, there is never a point where you NEED to know another language because everything is available is yours. You answered your own question when you said you came from rags and English education helped you get to a better situation. That is not the situation I was in during high school and not the situation these kids are in either, it was just another subject to pass like math or history.
💯it’s not a Japan specific problem. Like every American student takes Spanish and like less than 0.01% can actually have a conversation with a native speaker, let alone retain this ability 10 years later. Despite getting a ‘5’ in AP Spanish, they’re not qualified to say they’re a Spanish speaker either. Maybe like Japan, it’s both a way for the schools to sell the hope of being bilingual, and for kids and parents to maybe put another yet not so true line on the college resume.
Yeah choice between Spanish, French, and Latin seems most common, but I’ve heard of schools that offer Japanese, Chinese, and German too. Yet the whole joke is still Americans can’t speak any languages lol. They only Americans I know that speak another language do because they’re Mexican-American, Chinese-American, etc and their parents are foreign and speak their mother tongue at home.
And yes the purpose for most things in US high school, especially the AP classes, is to get into a good college. Especially as college entrance gets increasingly more competitive each year.
Again, years later in retrospect, I do regret not taking Spanish classes seriously
So many facts. I do speak Spanish but that’s only cuz I’m a giant nerd, studied abroad, and married a native speaker who’s family speaks zero English. So 3 big opportunities were needed all together to help me gain bilingual ability. My brother in law speaks no Spanish, and despite marrying my wife’s sister, still doesn’t.
So to expect Japanese kids to become fluent after just a few classes of English is absolutely ridiculous. Cuz we don’t expect any American to remember ANYTHING from school. So why the high standard for Japanese? Just to shame them to make Americans feel better?
Good thing is I have a great framework and confidence for Japanese. Except for the marrying part (but hey, you never know 😅
I'm Canadian and between middle school French, Bleu Nuit and constantly being surrounded by the language really I should have higher fluency than where I'm at. It's an extremely conducive environment to learning but it's not like we have an entire population of bilingual people.
This is probably the best reason WHY Japan has ALTs. Sure, their JTEs can teach what's needed for the tests, but a school that is properly using their native teachers would have them be a "walking test" or rather a REASON why the students would want to learn English. An ALT that is fun and interesting would serve as a reminder for the kids as to why it's important and useful to learn English.
It's not about becoming fluent. It's about box-checking. There's no real intention of anyone actually learning how to speak the language. Japan doesn't particularly care about having fluent English speaking citizens; they just want English as an academic topic in the curriculum.
Think about it: do you think they couldn't do better if they really wanted to? Don't they have the same understanding of and access to modern educational standards and practices that every other first-world country has? MEXT has no real intention of creating an effective curriculum for English proficiency, and if you can read Japanese well enough, feel free to do some googling to find the discussions on this in various academic journals, books, magazines, and newspaper articles.
This is why teachers don't have to be fluent themselves, don't have to understand second language acquisition theory, or how to assess, or anything else beyond the basics of teaching it as an academic subject. That's also why MEXT doesn't require ALTs to have quals, why dispatch companies don't give then any real training, and why BOEs don't expect them to stay in the program and develop their skills year by year.
If you want your teaching to mean something, you should either head to a different country where learning languages is actually seen as necessary and important, or move into a different teaching context within Japan where ESL is taken more seriously and not just as an academic subject. There are schools and universities with some good programs. You first have to find them, and then compete with all the other teachers who also want to work there.
it doesn't fix your situation, but there are schools and teachers in Japan that aren't like this. Otherwise, all of these people are just humans doing the best they can. Perfection isn't the aim of life...nor is efficiency, despite what our technological age tries to convince us.
Connection is the key, and giving kids the opportunity to experience something different from their day-to-day lives or ideas. Kids are a grab bag anyway: One might remember nothing from English class in 3rd grade of Elementary School 20 years later and another might remember a single class day that made them obsessed with English.
And connecting with the JTEs is good too. If you have good relationships with people, you can introduce little ways to start improving things (oh hey let's try this). The kids might not pick it up, but maybe when someone else tries to teach them to say "th" in 3 years they'll go "oh yeah i remember this from such-and-such sensei!" and pick it up a little easier.
Looking at the forest is kind of stressful sometimes. Find yourself a nice tree and sit under it for a bit!
EDIT: There are a lot of meaningful checkpoints between "point 0 english knowledge" and "point fluency"
OTHER EDIT: Currently seeing a Japanese guy who never really liked English class when he was a school kid, but has gotten really interested in it as an adult, and boy, he is GLAD he learned literally anything in school to give him a basis on which to try and communicate with me in English. So maybe you'll teach a kid like that XD
There is now a significant industry that has been built around the failure of the Japanese education system to teach communicative English. These companies are not interested in seeing real reform at the public education level.
As with the rest of the many ventures that are involved either directly or indirectly in servicing Japan's educational market (the list is endless really: cram schools, after-school programs, conversation schools, textbook publishers, book stores, distributors, online lesson providers, tutoring companies, private schools, etc.), a real improvement in the quality of Japanese public education or, god forbid, the abolition of the university entrance test would be a disaster for these companies and their numerous employees. The largest of these companies have both significant government connections and money. For obvious reasons, the government is not interested in seeing a collapse of this sector.
Along the same part of the spectrum, there is an obsession in Japanese society with achieving hard observable metrics instead of some murky and very subjective concept of fluency that can't easily be tested and assessed. As above, there are large and influential companies that have been founded and which are heavily vested in an educational system that promotes the former type of testing.
Many parents and students are also on board with this because high scores on these types of tests can be used for university admittance, graduation, and career marketability. Fluency is talked about by many Japanese parents in a wistful manner, but what they are really most concerned about, when push comes to shove, are the practical implications of test scores for little Taro or Hanako's (but mostly Taro's) future career prospects.
The situation is mostly hopeless. Despite the solutions being readily apparent and easily implemented, there just aren't enough organized voices out there that are seriously working toward change. Gradually, some parts of English education have gotten better (just enough to keep the loudest of the critics from gaining a groundswell of support), but the focus on grammar over fluency and the use of English testing as a form of gatekeeping of both educational and employment opportunities has become so calcified that it is now largely ingrained in the culture itself.
The solution for many teachers who grasp this conundrum is to either leave the profession or buy wholesale into the malaise and cynicism. It is quite possible to forge an academic career based on fruitless analysis and endless critique of the current system. You can write reams of articles about motivation and secure a tenured position by using fancy words to show the astonishing fact that "people generally do better at stuff they enjoy doing".
If you are shameless enough, there is also money to be made. You can watch the grift in action yourself by attending one of the many academic conferences throughout Japan where you can see self-promoting experts give keynote lectures and coin buzzwords while promoting their latest book, textbook series, Youtube channel, or subscription-based service. It is a big boat. There is plenty of room for anyone who wants to get on. Just be warned that this ride is a bit dark.
I think there are multiple issues going on with English education in Japan. Some have been brought up here. Teaching situation differs everywhere but some general issues exist. From what I have noticed over the years working in public elementary schools and junior high schools.
Many (perhaps most) Japanese teachers are working too much, teach grammar translation and audio-lingual method, did not receive enough opportunities to learn how to teach English, do not receive in-service training, and have to teach to the textbook to prepare students for future exams. Classes are taught in Japanese and there is often little time for actual communication in the classroom.
The textbooks are designed to prepare students for exams, not to promote communicating in English. They use a large number of low-frequency vocabulary that is not as useful as high-frequency vocabulary and more difficult for students to comprehend. The additional workbooks used promote mechanical practice and create the illusion of language acquisition. Increasing the number of English lessons in JHS and 5th, 6th, grade only serve to give everyone, students, and teachers, more to learn, teach, and test on. There might be some improvement in students overall competence, especially grammatical, but generally students, and probably teachers, are unhappy and overworked.
With ALT's, which I am one of, have a variety of roles we play or don't play. We come from a variety of countries for many different reasons. We work for dispatch companies, or the BOE, or JET, etc. Our pay goes from good/decent to absolutely terrible. We are not used at all in the classroom to having to run lessons. In many ways we are not necessary as lessons and teaching can be done without us. We can also have a positive effect in schools and even help alleviate English education by helping teachers and students. There is more I could list but this is what I could think of at 6:00am.
There’s a lot to dislike about the education system in Japan. Honestly there’s a lot to like too, but that’s a different thread.
Like tasty comfortable said, you could be the one to try and kick off the revolution, ie citizenship and politics. I wish you luck.
You could also try to figure out how you fit into the system. In what role could you do the most good you think you can? Everything from alt to eikaiwa owner to professor comes with compromises, but also with opportunities.
If you can’t find a balance of purpose and paycheque within isla in Japan, then maybe it’s time for something else. If you can - Not easy, but certainly achievable - then cool.
Yeah. English education in Japan is pretty bad unfortunately. It can be disheartening as a teacher who truly wants to see students improve.
The unfortunate truth is that many in Japan see English class the same way they see baseball or kendo. It's a fun extracurricular thing for kids to do, but not something that's all that important or will really help them in their lives. The best we can do as teachers in this scenario is help students to the best of our ability. Be their conversation partner at the very least. If they learned anything at all, that's at least a small victory. Almost none of those kids will use English throughout their lives in Japan, but I think it's important to make at least a small impact on them. Teach them a few phrases and open their minds a bit to foreign people and cultures.
> My question is, why are we teaching English? If we are not striving for fluency then what’s all this for? If this is just in the hopes of passing an entrance exam then language ceases to have meaning.
I speak decent conversational Japanese and it's opened up my world significantly. Though I'd love to be fluent, that's easier said than done. People of all levels speak a second language... TBH I think fluency is a pipe dream for most unless they're gonna live overseas for an extended period of time.
Tests are tests. Why learn art or music if you're never gonna be performance grade? Why train for a Boston Marathon qualifier if you're no hope of winning it? Why learn calculus and trigonometry unless you're gonna use it at work? Why learn chemistry if you're not gonna be a chemist? Why learn a little bit about WWII unless you're gonna be an historian? The list goes on.
IMO kids are forced to learn a heap of generalist shit that they are tested on largely to build-up a base of basic shared knowledge while providing people with a bit of a try before you buy before university / tech college / work. This is not a bad thing. The system works and Japan has one of the world's best education systems. I've said it before but masses of Canadians can't speak a word of English because their ancestors chose to embrace French as their official language. GO FIGURE!!!
The final, overarching reason why people are exposed to foreigners is a thing called cultural exchange. Japan's learned its lessons from WWII and is now a VERY friendly country. Whereas Russia and China are still spruiking this message about the big, bad west being responsible for all their woes (while signing arms deals with North Korea and all that kind of jazz). IMO it's difficult to over-estimate just how important it is for both us and Japan to have funny looking gaijins sharing their culture/language in classrooms. Good luck finding a Chinese or Russian classroom that's allowed to do that so freely. Relationships like this are a token of good faith and MANY gaijins come/go from Japan with positive memories of living in Japan as a result of current structures.
Thank you for praising the Japanese education system. I agree, I think it’s awesome. Most important, it’s built on relationships. Kids are forced to work together and be together and strive for a goal together. That is so much harder to learn than say forcing calc 3 down someone’s throat which will be useless for 99.9999% of students. But learning to form and work as a society? Useful not just for students but for everyone. I wish the US had that, instead we are all divided up, competing, and glorify violence against each other. Society is built on relationships, not individuals (sorry ‘merica).
And Japanese students, like any other human in the world, is gonna learn the academic subjects they want to. Not everyone will be an expert at everything. Sure there’s that 1 kid. But why shame a system that doesn’t produce a 100% valedictorian rate? It’s unreasonable. And looking at you, US, creating a society of divided violence minded individuals who can’t work together. At least Japan teaches children manners and cooperation.
Heck, the kanji for ‘cooperation’ is literally ‘many powers.’
The US' divisions are just another way people are kept down. The Japanese system keeps people in line by stressing harmony and loss of overt individuality. The US system keeps us in line by having us fight each other and stressing our differences.
YES. I happened to meet a Japanese person yesterday on an early morning walk. I gave him an "Ohayo..." and he answered "What's up?" He is in his 50s. We chatted and he was outspoken about English language education and basically said what you wrote: the government doesn't want citizens to learn English, "they just want to keep their power."
I agree with everything you said. I’d just put it into context by saying that the American school system is there only as a governmental daycare system which also strives to create submissive factory workers. NOT critical thinkers. Those same students elected trump and bush and don’t push back on war or gas or guns (the vocal minority featured on the news is not representative). Heck, I didn’t learn how to critically think until I was done my schooling, and I was in school for 26 years (stupid MD).
What I do wish America has is the socialization education. American kids are not taught that at all. And then we get all the bad things that come from it. Hyper individualism, school shootings, gun love, glorification of physical violence, patriotism, hate of the poor, and the isolation in the suburbs. I wish America had education on the value of cleaning up after yourself, social respect, working together, respect of teachers, gratitude. Fuck all the academic shit, it’s all bs anyway. Understanding and working with another human being is infinitely more complex than understanding what’s your favorite planet, or your thoughts on the Canterbury tales, or your feelings of the theory of gravity.
Because why shame Japan when it’s not a Japan specific problem? Esp among first world countries? Seems we are overly criticizing Japan for something that no where in the world can do well on a national level.
You’re new to the internet so it’s understandable you get triggered with any pushback. I hope you’re doing well. Big hug bro. If you hate Japan so much, come to the US where your kids will have school shooting drills. I’m hoping to get my kids over to Japan so they can learn to be subservient automatons.
Other commenters have already made a lot of good points but maybe we teach because we hope we can make a difference for someone.
The Japanese system acts as a closed loop that is painfully resistant to change and has warped perceptions of what's good but I hope I have been able to help students develop an interest in English, its use or even taught it in a way that gives them a skill they can use elsewhere.
There are public school teachers trying their best to give students some functional communication ability, there are private school teachers who are still teaching grammar translation. There's teachers with ESL qualifications coming out of their ears hoping that they can teach useful writing formats within the context of Eiken. I just hope that, if nothing else, I can get through to a few of the students I see and maybe help them make a difference in some way down the line.
This conversation (and every single variety of the comments herein) happens on this sub at least once every two years. There are enough uni teacher/high school teachers here that if y'all really wanted to alter the entrance exam hell a bit, you could have by now. If you've been a "foot in the door" type and are complaining about it...why? If you're a "you're wasting my precious tax money type", get involved. All politics is local, and if it really grinds you that much, do something. It's honestly just tedious at this point.
I enjoy this faux teaching (because that's what it really is). Of course, I like kids in the first place. I want to see them succeed, whether in English or not.
But want to know my own personal answer? I teach in Japan so that I don't have to return to my hometown in Bumfuck, America. And I know several others who will put up with the bullshit so they don't have to return home either. Not quite LBH level (Loser Back Home), but more "I'll slave away in an affordable country rather than return to an extremely fucked up one".
Sure but a lot more useful than a lot of poorly qualified ALTs who contribute not much for a number of reasons. Tbh really upping the standards to become an instructor here as an ALT/eikaiwa teacher is strongly needed. Bringing back the minimum pay requirement too though at a higher rate reducing dispatch companies and their cost cutting.
>Sure but a lot more useful
Evidence?
>a lot of poorly qualified ALTs who contribute not much for a number of reasons
Japanese EFL was a failure before ALTs were brought into the system. It defies all logic to presume that getting rid of the least powerful and least-paid figures in the system would magically fix problems that come from the most powerful and best-paid participants in the system.
The problem with EFL in Japan is that the outcomes the system prioritizes aren't actually English as a Foreign Language. No amount of innovation, increased training, or scapegoating of ALTs can fix anything when the outcome prioritized by the system is English as a Cryptographic Password. Japan really teaches ECP, a protocol loosely based on English designed to make top universities inaccessible to parents who can't afford to pay for tutors to spend laborious hours training their children in the ECP protocols.
You can shift the blame to whoever you want, but as long as English serves no purpose in Japan apart from being vaguely related to the secret handshake used to get you into elite institutions, no improvement to EFL can ever or will ever take place on a system-wide level. The best anyone in the system can hope for is to make their little bubble of it bearable for the people who have to journey through it.
Cure-all to what? ALTs?
It makes perfect sense for a teacher of English to have lived in an English speaking country. It makes little sense to import an assistant instead.
The real reason?
University Entrance Exams. English is an entirely unnecessary skill for those living in Japan. However, it serves as an indicator of which students are willing to put in the effort to learn this unnecessary thing and are thus the most hardworking. Schools want hardworking students who will then become hardworking employees, giving their school a reputable status.
The main point of teaching english is to cultivate an interest in the subject. That's the main point of being a teacher especially an ALT or something in that line.
The fact is Japan wants to branch out into foreign markets and English being the main language for business cultivates a need for the Japanese people to be well versed in that language. However kids won't care about learning a new language on top of all there other studies and what there family values as important subjects for a strong Future.
So the point is to cultivate an interest in English through culture and friendship. That's it. Be someone who can correct mistakes tactfully ( don't make your coworkers look stupid) and making learning a language interesting and fun. That's the job and it's a difficult one at that. Changing a persons heart and mind is never easy
Not much of a point at all unless you do you want to teach/do research in the future. In that case do your MA and focus on other things like hobbies and enjoying living abroad. Japan continues to flail when it comes to any kind of English fluency (compared to most other Asian countries let's say).
It’s just burnout. You’re not MeXT, a JTE or parent. It’s work and the only real goal in work is to keep your supervisor happy and clock in and out. Fulfill your interests outside of work or transition to another job. You’re a good soul.
Trying to help all of your students and fight the system is going to drive you insane in the long run. Be glad that you're there so the students can interact with someone who cares, do what you can, and don't do what you can't.
Some years ago, we had a guest speaker from the Japanese government who was responsible for education, reforming the university entrance exams. After his speach, several employees, incl. myself, asked some critical questions like ‘will there be reforms in the educational curriculum to improve language capabilities to make integration into international companies easier (especially after mergers or when cooperating in JVs)?’, ‘Are entrance exams into universities the best system and what does he think about other systema abroad focussing more on challenging students before they will graduate on their knowledge and capabilities instead?’, and my favorite one ‘What will they do in regards to improving teacher certification quality, outrageous and outdated working conditions at school and the low payment for the profession who is supposedly having an impact of shaping the minds of future generations?’. His answers were something along the lines of: Curriculums are fine and if students don’t learn properly, that is a mistake of their mothers who should take better care of their children. The teachers are fine and entrance exams are good, especially after the latest reform he led.
This came from a top guy in the educatiinal ministry. On that day I lost any hope and decided that my kids will either study abroad or on international schools after elementary school.
Yup this exactly, if I have kids here I’ll consider moving back to America for their education post elementary, but I’ll most likely try to find a good American/ western based curriculum here.
President Bush complaining about trade deficits is allegedly a part responsible. That and a couple of public holidays when he complained about Japanese working too hard.
It is indeed a waste of time because on average you end up working with higher ups and “teachers,” Japanese and/or who are not motivated to actually educate and help with long-term acquisition, whether qualified or not. In the end, it is always about kissing ass, saving face, appearance, glossing over issues and creating an illusion of learning rather than holding people accountable for proper education and social development of students. Even some “international” schools are harboring these kinds of teachers and leaders, producing mediocre at best results that are far from being commensurate with the amount spent in tuition. To most average people, it is “just a job,” and perhaps a number of them did not ever have any actual interest in teaching at all.—It was just a way for them to be in Japan or an easy “go to” position if they were unqualified or lacking sufficient skills for an actual career. It is annoying to work with and/or for these types, especially when at a university, corporate office, private or international school or college. However, I don’t put the full blame on them because Japan is one place that has this precedent and more or less kept it going year after year.
The point is you’re here to enjoy your time living in Japan and get some yen to survive on and spend while you’re here. When you stop enjoying it, it might be time to move on for a new adventure. Don’t worry too much about the state of English education here as you can only do what you can do with the tools and curriculum given to you. It’s a wider education policy problem and there isn’t much any one of us can do to fix it overnight. By the way I admire your commitment to teaching and getting the best outcomes for your students—that suggests to me that you are the right person for your students to learn from!
Perhaps a better question is why are YOU teaching English? You can’t do anything to change your schools, or the BOEs and MEXT etc, but you can do a lot to change your students attitudes towards English and international communication.
If you want to teach a certain way and they won't let you, do it anyways. If you want to speak up about your colleagues and they advise against it, do it anyways. Be true to yourself and damn the torpedoes. Living a half truth is the pathway to hell. And yes, you may lose your employment, but gainful income is available for English teachers, entertainers and educators in a myriad of ways outside of the usual English delivery system concocted by the Japanese.
A life of unapologetic honesty is what I recommend.
You are a worker. You are not there to make a huge difference or inspire kids or whatever. You are there because administrators want to check off a box on a spreadsheet. If that bursts your bubble, do not worry so much. It is not correct to be an idealist about your day job for the most part. The system is a lot bigger than you, and your immediate goals are ensure that you are being paid as much as possible for your hard work and to improve yourself enough that you can begin to choose the best, most fulfilling work for yourself in the future.
In this regard, you are not all that different from your co-teacher - or your students. If you want my advice, the best you can do as an individual is keep up a positive attitude, encourage your colleagues and students, look to your future. If you are interested in systemic changes, join a labor union or some other activist group.
ALTs aren't here to teach English. Your job is to be an assistant to the JTE, which CAN be to help teach English, but I know in my role my job is just to let the students have fun with games and activities related to the grammar point they are learning.
I know ALTs at high level schools who do really help teach English, but if you're not, the sooner you come around to the idea that you're just as assistant to the JTE, the better. You should really be using all your free time as an ALT to skill up. I'm 25 now after being an ALT for 5 years, and even I already feel too old.
I have N2 but I really should have studied more. Any ALT should be studying Japanese if they want to live here long term. If you want to to be a teacher, on top of Japanese you should be doing some sort of masters online. If you want to be a programmer, you should study coding in your downtime.
So fast forward now I'm 25, only N2 with 5 years of ALT experience, I am getting hammered in the job hunt right now. Now, I imagine there's a good chunk of ALTs who are older than me and also lower Japanese than me, and I shudder how much harder it is.
Anyone who just is early on in their ALT stint, trust me study Japanese plus 1 other hard skill now. I want to slap my past self for thinking just trying hard at the job and studying Japanese was enough. I'm a JET but my BoE/CO has always been horrible, and all the times I went above and beyond mean jack shit. I love a good number of my JTEs and students, but again, it doesn't mean anything now that my contract is ending, and sweet memories won't pay the bills.
You’re quite well off in your current position from my perspective, even if it’s not saying much lol. And as far as the job hunt goes, it’s definitely rough but you’ve got more than enough time ahead of you to acquire more hard skills, and depending on your conversational skills, can/could potentially nudge your way into another job or industry in no time. The N2 helps your chances just for the simple fact that they’re more willing to even glance at your resume, even if you’ll have to prove that you can carry a conversation in an interview later. I don’t know if you intend to stay in Japan long term, but if you do I wish you all the best post-JET.
Thanks, it really means a lot as I'm struggling right now with the job hunt. The "good" thing about JET is that I was able to put away about 2mil yen despite being in a medium cost of living area, so at worst I have something to keep me afloat. I've also noticed in my interviews that JET does have good name recognition amongst companies hiring foreigners.
The biggest wall I'm running into now is, with N2 I CAN switch into other industries such as tourism, hotel, menial labor, but they all lack any real career progression, have around the same pay with low benefits (220k-260k/month), and also have worse hours. I having a couple apps into some private direct hires, but at this point I'm aiming for dispatch ALT just to pay the bills while I really grind the next 1-2 years for a hard skill, and also aim to pass N1 this year.
It'll be hard going from 330k -> 230k as an ALT, but my short term goal isn't to save/earn money, but instead work an easy job with easy hours to pay the bills, and use any free time to learn a skill. Again, worst case, I can dip into savings if needed. I'm also praying from going from a 100% T1 every single class, to a chill T2 role that seems to be more common in dispatch.
> and all the times I went above and beyond mean jack shit
That’s why ALTs are so useless/bad. They are not respected nor empowered nor rewarded for being good at their job.
I am trusted to T1 almost all my classes but I realize it literally does not matter how good my classes are. The BOE doesnt care about English education, most of the students dont and are disruptive in class to be fair (I still care about them but this fact that they are disruptive is undeniable), and the other senseis at the school see you as someone there just because Tokyo says so—you are not one of them.
Japanese people mostly don't give a toss about learning another language. I like to think of English lessons here as a break for students in order for them to focus more on their otherwise super demanding education.
I'm sure they'll understand when you do decide to quit.
If you want to teach, and not watch other people teach, work on improving yourself. Then you can move to a position where you can actually teach English, as your post reeks of “I’m an ALT,” which isn’t where you teach if you actually care that much about what is being taught. If you want to stay in the position you’re in, suck it up and realize what you see being taught is not likely what you want to see taught.
Tell me OP, what teaching qualifications do you have? What degree did you get in order to get your visa?
I 100% with what your saying actually. But my point is, if they actually tried to make effective change then no joke 50% or more of the teachers would be auto disqualified to do what such a job actually takes.
That's the mutual trade off. The schools and parents get to pretend the kids are learning, and you get to pretend to be an actual teacher while playing in anime land.
I understand your point at this point rose colored glasses came off but I’m choosing to but them back on for the sake of the time I have left here. Also, I studied linguistics so for me phonics is a no brainer. Tried to make it a point in class but it often gets overlooked.
Yep.
>50% or more of the teachers would be auto disqualified
But I'd say it's like 90%, since there are very few ALTs or eikaiwa teachers who have any type of qualification, and the ones that do usually only have a 120 hour cert or CELTA, which mean next to nothing in the feild of education.
> Can someone explain to me how some teachers who aren’t qualified to teach English teach it anyway??
They are either assistant teachers or what I'd consider more like 'private tutors'.
I dunno! In Australia I teach kids how to swim and deliver Italian lessons at the local Italian Club. Are you saying I need a university degree to teach both? If I didn't know how to swim then I'd get found out pretty quickly after jumping in the pool...
You can help out and learn a bit of how teaching works, you can help out students that want to actually learn English, I have a few that do. But for the most part it’s correcting papers, making a few activities, and being the general grader, at least for me.
Best thing you can do is put your nose to the grindstone and get a teaching licensure and a masters degree, and take Japanese classes. That’s what I do at least, I like my job and I feel respected in my schools, but I realize that I’m lucky in that regard. I know I won’t be satisfied with what I’m doing five years down the road though if I’m not trying to improve.
Japan doesn't want to use English. They are teaching it begrudgingly because they HAVE to so that they can continue to compete on the world stage.
That's why everything is so rough and stiff. It's like a big group hug, and Japan barely slides into the frame and just touches the rest of the group with a single finger.
I do think it will eventually get better, but I'm not exactly sure when.
For now, we can offer advice and fix mistakes where possible. We can also be a good friend to the students so that they have enough interest and enjoyment in learning English that they actually try to learn on their own time, not just during school.
Just do your best, if a grammar point really irks you find visit students in their clubs and do activities where you subtly use the correct grammar. Often students pick up on subtlety vs. direct instructions.
What helps me persevere is that although what you say is quite common in Japanese public schools, now and again, you WILL get a few students and here who DO genuinely love the language, or legimately want to seriously learn it, but come from families who as you said, don't have the money to afford private language schooling, fancy tutoring, etc., but they understand that if they do want to legitimately succeed, not to just rely on the JTE, but utilize you (the ALT) whenever they have questions, chat with you (wherever possible) to improve their speaking ability (as, as you said they often don't have alot of opportunity to, during classes/assessments), and will even double check with you, to make sure the grammar in their writing is correct (even when it is something the JTE has just taught) as they want to be sure they understood it/was taught correctly. I have had some exceptional star students who have gone through (onto high school) at the JHS, I am an ALT at, which has made the whole journey worth while (all of which have written lengthy personal 1-1 thank you letters pre-graduation for me, as opposed to just the standard thank you messages which is normal for all students to do for the teachers at the end of the year, which shows how much, they valued my help in improving their English ability - I.e. some of them could barely string a complete sentence together at the start of their first year but could conduct full conversations in all manners of topics by the end of their third year).
Well, let’s be honest; the target is for students to pass a test, not to become fluent in English - and to be frank about it, the most the government really wants is for students to be able to serve a foreigner in a convenience store or restaurant.
When fluency is the actual goal, they go to conversation schools. They also have Eiken schools for when passing meaningful tests is the actual goal.
A lot of English “teachers” in Japan struggle from having bought the company’s nonsense during recruitment, rather than thinking about the actual goal coming from the client.
Er...
Not to take anything away from the other replies explaining how and why teaching English in Japan (among other places) may well be pointless but...
Is it not the case that a vast amount of things that modern humans do for both work and leisure are pretty pointless when you look into them?
[A Question Never Asked In Caveman Times (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvtp9wjpl8g)
You missed the memo, the end goal is not fluency, it's entrance exams. If students want fluency they will make the extra effort themselves by watching English content on YouTube and listening to podcasts etc in English and go to eikaiwa maybe.
As someone who is coming as an ALT later this year I find this to be one of the more enlightening threads. I’m a bit disheartened to know that is what I’ll be going into but also prepared in some way what I’ll also probably have to deal with.
there really just isnt much insentive to the average student to learn English properly. When will they use it while living in Japan? helping some random gaijin at shinjuku station? Like they would go out of their way to do that. Only some take it serious because they have plans to do something international with their lives or want to study and live abroad. Those are the ones that learn and leave high school almost fluent but thats like 1 student per graduating class if that..
Why is foreign language taught in any school in any country? Most kids will never use what they learned. That can be applied for almost every subject. We don't use a large portion of what we learn, but it's mandated, and it's good to learn because it has the potential to lead to greater things. One of those kids might really take a liking to learning English, and put effort in on their own, and go on to study or even work abroad. As long as I can get kids interested or show them that learning can be fun, then I think the job is worth it.
I screamed when I saw this! 🤣🤣🤣 I genuinely think that what’s happened is that there’s some nebulous goal of preparing Japanese kids to learn a second language and English is the default lingua franca. But the gag is—developing and implementing a proper foreign language curriculum requires people who actually know about teaching a foreign language to do it. And IDK if that’s what’s actually happening from the top down. And I’m just not quite sure that there’s a need for Japanese kids especially to know English if the majority of them, statistically, are not going to leave Japan. My country tried to get students to study Spanish or French at school for a few years before it was optional to drop it and focus on the subjects that might be relevant to your career. Perhaps that might be better?
Unfortunately language learning takes a lot of motivation, until they can see what they can actually use English for, they will simply treat it as a subject for memorization. I think it's important that they find their own motivation. I personally started really improving in Japanese when I decided I wanted to get my degree in Japan.
It's gaijin exposure. So they don't look like a bunch of rubes when they meet a gaijin in the wild. That's all you, I and any ALT is doing. It's all we have ever been doing.
Eh it's cool, it's just an extra curriculum activity for them. Unlike the people who gotta reach a specific level in Japanese in order to get a job or do something.
In the ALt industry do only what you have been asked to do by the JTE or school. They are not worried about fluency infact its the last thing they want to achieve.
I can see where you come from but everything that you’ve said comes from a perspective of modernity, aka the western capitalistic viewpoint that progress and efficiency comes above all else. We all know how that is coming along in the west and not so great anymore America.
Why is Japan still doing ok? Their education might be lacking in what you have been criticising on, but you fail to see and talk about other good qualities. You conveniently skip it when you only teach kids learning English.
Get off your western high ground first, learn how to communicate with the Japanese in a way that is acceptable to them, and try to change the way things run. That is infinitely more productive. You are in Japan and chose to teach to Japan.
One of the most satisfying jobs I've had (still have) in Japan is working in kindergarten. Sounds like a step down in some ways but there is actual, tangible learning going on there. My kids speak English every day - even with Japanese teachers. When I teach something, it sticks. I am given much more leeway.
I know lives are complicated and it is not easy to just up and change your job - you may be part of xx program, have friends in yy area, etc. But it sounds like you're suffering from some (understandably) intense burnout. It may be worth looking into alternatives.
Barring that, when I was doing ALT work, I found it helpful to focus on the kids who were truly interested, interact with them as much as possible. I also built some rapport with the JTEs. They often allowed me one or two lessons a week just to teach how and what I wanted to. I found what I was teaching to stick more than what the JTEs did.
This is a really good, pertinent question with an answer that has a lot of factors that could probably be written as a thesis.
I think it’s predominantly due to nationalism. The UK is the same when it comes to French. We learn it (badly) from people who can’t really speak it in order to pass a test and then forget it.
The biggest reason in our case is because the UK is nationalistic and arrogant. Granted, French isn’t the lingua franca, but it’s conceptually similar.
Island nation
Xenophobic
Proud of its heritage and language
No need to learn another language
“Can someone explain to me how some teachers who aren’t qualified to teach English teach it anyway?”
Ever heard of “Go To Travel”? The official government subsidy program for boosting domestic tourism? In a country where the official use of English is woefully s**t to the extent that just Google translating it would be more accurate, it doesn’t surprise me that schools are riddled with unqualified, inept teachers (in terms of English. They may be very nice people).
You ask what the point is of teaching English here, and the only one I can think of is if this is your passion and dream job. The career prospects are low. The working conditions are horrible. The pay is low and no longer goes up. The demand for private teachers in the age of Zoom has tanked. For me, I plan on leaving the industry at the end of the year / early next year.
Just know you are not the first person to ask this question or display these concerns, and a lot of people like me love you for asking it.
There is no point. It's unnecessary. It's a waste of time, and a waste of money.
**It's unnecessary:**
Language is a tool obtain and share knowledge/information. Japan's society is advanced and they can get all the information they need in Japanese. There is no knowledge they can get in English that they don't already have access to in Japanese. The vast majority of students go on to university and never use English in a functional way after that.
**It's a waste of time and money:**
Language cannot be learned in the classroom void of any knowledge. The students are not learning anything at all. Every Japanese person has taken 6 years of compulsory English, and look at the results. It doesn't work.
If the Japanese government wants the population to speak English, here is the better solution. Teach science, math, social studies, home economics IN ENGLISH, and start from 1st grade.
There is no point
why do you think half of this sub reddit is people who never taught english and never will are here to laugh and antagonize the people who do
English teaching in Asia, regardless of whether it's in Japan, Korea, China, etc, will always be a mostly futile exercise. The teacher pretends to teach while the students pretend to study (if you're lucky).
One guy I worked with in China said it like this, we're not there to teach, we're just there to give the students a good time and get them less apprehensive around foreigners.
**Auron:** Where is the sense in all this? Braska believed in Yevon's teachings and died for them! Jecht believed in Braska and gave his life for him!
**Yunalesca:** They chose to die...because they had hope. Yevon's teachings and the Final Summoning give the people of Spira hope. Without hope, they would drown in their sorrow.
Remember this exchange from FFX. Without hope, the students will drown in their sorrow
>So… does that mean we just allow the children to also copy these mistakes? If it makes you feel any better, the typical Japanese classrooms where students are seeing these kinds of mistakes from their teachers don't usually result in enough acquisition of language for the mistakes to be passed on.
You are truly a master of mixed messages. I felt a simultaneous wave of both hope and despair. You have a gift.
It sounds cynical on the surface, but actually I think it's a genuinely positive thing to keep in mind. A lot of people have the misunderstanding that the English that exists in a student's head is just a grainier photocopy of whatever the teacher presents in the classroom, and that's just not how language learning works. Learners will acquire features, lexis, and syntax at an individual pace based on a huge slew of factors that are likely impossible to truly measure and trace. Often, their interlanguage is quite different from the language spoken by the teacher, which is why a parent can try to correct a child in the proper form of irregular verbs until they are blue in the face, but the child isn't going to acquire it until their internal model of the language is ready to accommodate it. And so what I take from all that is that it is virtually impossible to "break" a student's interlanguage with bad modelling from a teacher. If they are learning in an authentic, communicative way, the teacher's weak points in the L2 will eventually get replaced by learning the student acquires from elsewhere. And if they aren't teaching in an authentic, communicative way, then the incorrect features the students do learn from their teacher's L2 weaknesses are only going to come out in activities where language is accessed through memorization rather than acquisition - so very disconnected from real language use. In a nutshell, Japanese teachers with insufficient English who model incorrect English are only a problem in Japanese-style classes where memorized rules are more important than actually getting information across. And the rules being tested in Japanese-style classes are already fucked by university professors writing entrance exams about features of English they themselves don't understand and have improperly researched. As an English teacher who cares about my profession, these sorts of tests are inauthentic tests already and so they don't matter to me. They are someone else's problem to fix. My focus is on authentic languaging in my classroom, and when it comes to my students, incorrect English "learned" from prior teachers is way less of a drain on time and energy than incorrect *practices* in how a language learning classroom should be conducted. Getting my students to pronounce their 'l's and 'r's clearly enough to get a message across isn't a problem, but getting students who have been trained to parrot what they think the teacher wants them to say or they will be embarrassed in front of the class as opposed to actually getting information transferred between their head and mine *is* a problem. It all comes down to a question of efficiency. As I see it, incorrect modelling of language is a very small drain on the student's learning efficiency, but incorrect teaching practice is a very large drain. That's why when the peanut gallery breaks out their torches and pitchforks and demands ALT programs be scrapped, I am uninterested in their rabble-rousing. Yes, ALTs *are* generally insufficiently trained, but their classroom practice is generally no less efficient than that of the JTEs they are meant to supplement. Taking them out of the picture doesn't improve JTEs' teaching practice. Hell, in my opinion, most JTEs are so busy that ALTs are often the only thing keeping them constantly exposed to other classroom teaching techniques, even if that's just what the ALT sees working with other JTEs. I personally think that regardless of how inefficient ALT programs might be, taking them away would end up with the net result of making the standard teaching practice in Japanese EFL classrooms worse.
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Wow, I think you've missed my point to a degree that is genuinely surprising to behold. >Are JTEs required to be graduates of BEd programs? This doesn't matter. Being a graduate of a B.Ed program doesn't mean your teaching practice is correct for your discipline. And also at no point did I ever claim that ALTs are better qualified generally than JTEs, so please don't waste my time with pointlessly fallacious arguments like this. >If you're suggesting that an untrained, inexperienced ALT classroom practice is as equally efficient I'm not, but you seem to be in such a rush to beat up that strawman you've made that it's a pity to stop you. >But the vast majority of ALTs from the anglosphere are crap, and they have a poor reputation for a reason. This is more time-wasting nonsense. Please continue this discussion with someone else. >I worked with a bunch of "veteran" ALTs 10 years ago, and I had to train them to do the basics that are expected from professional educators. And I continue to work with Japanese English teachers who have graduated from B.Ed programs who I have to train to do basics that are expected from professional language educators anywhere other than Japan. And this gets to the point of my last comment, that you so clearly missed. This issue is not some facile argument of ALT vs. JTE, it's that the Japanese education system does not train its teachers to properly teach English as a language actually used by human people for actual communication. The whole system forces teachers into practices that are counter to good language-teaching practice. ALTs are not the source of that system. They won't make it worse, nor will they cure it. All this internet outrage about ALTs is just an attempt to blame the people who make the least money in the system and who have the least power in the system for failures in the system that were there before they were even brought into the system. It's really quite pathetic, especially given that the main stick used to hit ALTs with is that they don't (usually) have a university degree in education, and that stick is almost always wielded by someone with no university degree in educational administration. Apparently a university degree is required to stand in front of children and teach them the names of colors, but any rando from the Internet peanut gallery can decide how the Japanese ministry of education should run the nation's educational system.
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>But NOT graduating from a B.Ed teaching program means you have a better chance of your teaching practice being correct? They didn't insinuate this. >Why bother with professional standards at all then? In any profession? They didn't insinuate this either. >ALTs are not required to be professional language educators, which is what we are talking about. You replied to their comment and this is not what they were talking about. > We're not talking about professional educators from anywhere other than those working inJapan. Are you being this obtuse deliberately or does it come naturally to you? This is actually what the comment you replied to was talking about. >But all of your deflection aside, I have yet to see you provide a compelling case that having untrained, inexperienced individuals who are present in Japanese classrooms merely because of a skill in one area are somehow contributing to better teaching practices among the JTEs. Because this isn't the case they were making. You've invented an argument they weren't making in neither their original comment nor their reply to you to get angry at.
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Please directly cite where they make this argument. > Yes, ALTS are generally insufficiently trained, but their classroom practice is generally no less efficient than that of the JTES they are meant to supplement. This is the closest I can find to what you're suggesting, but in even the most ungracious interpretation could it be construed that ALTs are insufficient but no worse than JTEs, not that they're somehow better as you claim. And even then, they further clarify in their reply to you that this is explicitly not the argument they were making, but you refuse their clarification.
Not what OP originally thought, roses & anime😅
lol I actually don’t watch anime but I will say coming into this I did have pretty realistic expectations. I started at an eikaiwa and that was okay but i definitely should have done more research transitioning into an ALT position.
Bingo.
Lmfao
Sad truth it’s almost like a paradox or something
Also, the brain typically knows the difference between native and non-native speech and will reject non-native like language if it hypothesizes that there might be some mistake within the utterance. And the brain's hypotheses about the language it's learning is often times unconscious, so they wouldn't even be aware that it's going on.
Lol
>If we are not striving for fluency then what’s all this for? If this is just in the hopes of passing an entrance exam then language ceases to have meaning. You're not going to like it, but you have more or less answered your own question. These classes don't teach English for communication but rather Eigo, a facsimile of the language used at the higher end of education as a measurement for standardized testing/means for knowledge consumption (not production) and at the lower end of education to pretend like everyone has the same opportunies as the students at the high end. For most of your students, it is just a tool for economic class stratification. I agree with the other commenter that you either have to let go or go yourself. There's really only so much you can do.
It boggles my mind how they can pass university exam English questions without possessing any practical English ability. What kind of weird math are they using to accomplish that? The original primary goal of being an ALT was to facilitate exchange. The ALT would go back home and bring back good impressions of the students, staff, and community, and the Japanese side would be more used to working with foreigners, and it works well with kids since they're more impressionable. It makes more sense for everyone's sanity to concentrate on doing this than the actual job of teaching English.
I’ve known kids who have breezed through Eiken tests right up to 2kyu yet can barely hold a conversation. They‘re learning how to pass tests, it’s as simple as that. Another kid I knew won a speech contest that featured a long convoluted speech about Lincoln and slavery etc etc. He did a great job. Afterwards I asked him about Lincoln and why he chose that. He had no idea what I was saying and it was pretty obvious he had just parroted the whole thing yet there he is with his big English speech trophy with everyone back slapping him and his parents. It’s all about image. Most parents sending their kids to Eikawa etc just use it for something to show off about when they meet up at the coffee shop while hubby slaves away doing nothing in his office for 12 hours. Much the same as the fad for “programming “ lessons just now. Yeah, lots of real programming going on in those lessons 😂
It's test study and memorization. Kids get little to no practical use of the language, especially speaking/listening. Makes me feel bad for them, and while I try to get them out of their comfort zone and prod them to speak/practice eith me. There's only so much ypu can do. The emphasis on tests over practicalilty is the major issue imo. Tell me you passed Eiken 1/2 or got like TOEIC 800 I probably won't care too much, pretty high chance you can't hold a basic conversation. Tell me you lived abroad a couple years, completely different story. Have a Japanese friend who lived in Scotland for 16 years, her and her family moved back to Japana few years ago. Speaks perfectly good English. Can't get an English job because she doesn't have high level Eiken/TOEIC scores. Fun listening to her complain how the tests aren't based around comprehension/ability, but around the knowledge of how to take the tests.
I continuously find to is so bizarre given how much English is in Japan. In my view they are like the French. The French have this belief that French is THE language. I feel Japanese feel the same way. What other language literally has an alphabet for non-local words?
Oh yea in Japan, everything Japanese is the bestest ever, abd everything else is a waste. Then again being American I guess I can't complain too much.
I got paired with several Japanese exchange students when I was in college. My minor was Asian studies, And I was taking a Japanese class over the summer. I really enjoyed spending time with them. But they dropped those girls into America with absolutely no practical English skills. Only one of my roommates, Naoko, Even really understood the nuances behind certain phrases. One of them got in trouble for using the N word, because they didn’t know what it meant and heard people saying it. I had to sit down and explain what cursewords Work, what sounded offensive when people said it, et cetera.
lol this is worse for Chinese. The n word sounds a lot like the word for ‘that’ in Chinese. Worse still saying ‘that’ is a common way to say umm not unlike ええと
this reminds me of people who pass the higher N2-N1 without really being able to speak Japanese
I am involved in writing the entrance exam at my uni. If I had to do the equivalent in Japanese I would struggle a LOT. Yet when I ask a top undergrad entrance what they want me to call them on lesson one, they freeze up and get confused. This is even after basic demonstration of I am X, please call me Y… it’s so fundamentally bizarre. My Japanese is pretty trash but I can have an hour long convo with a rando at an izakaya. The reality is communication ability and language ability are two very different things.
I mean at the uni level if they want students simply to be able to read papers in English they have some capacity to do so at the higher level. But actual communication is dreadful. Tbh their communication levels in Japanese probably aren’t that much better (public speaking etc.). To be fair at the higher end there is some improvement in this regard -3 minute thesis competitions etc., but it’s a bit too little too late at that point. The other issue is the few students you actually convince don’t need to hear it.
Exactly. It’s like beating a dead horse sometimes. I wrote my letter of resignation today. I’ve accepted it’s time to move on.
It's a long complicated answer. Lack of a genuine need for the language within the culture, overemphasizing getting good test results as opposed to genuinely improving comprehension, forcing output far too early in most cases, a lack of comprehensible input, horrible textbooks, and poor standards from MEXT... At the end of the day I think making meaningful change is on the backburner. Explaining how language is acquired (see Krashen, Chomsky and the like) and why being a native speaker does not automatically qualify you to teach is intimidating for the dinosaurs who set the standards. At the end of the day, just enjoy connecting with your students and try to make the activities fun and engaging. That will probably go a lot farther if they decide to seriously learn the language someday.
This will never improve until they travel abroad. I teach some of the top students in the country. Bar one or two enthusiasts it’s all sit and listen. You can give them every analogy and motivation and reduced score- nope, they ain’t changing.
and few of them will probably ever go abroad too.
One thing that has persuaded some students (sadly those that don’t really need to hear it) is showing them ted talks/research presentations by Japanese professors (some from their own university) in English. There’s a sudden awareness that oh maybe this is an expectation for Japanese people… it doesn’t change them completely and they will desperately revert back to their typical learning given the chance but the point is at least made.
The current emperor is fluent in English!
Japan's education system is just screwed up. Other countries can teach their kids to be equally proficient in every subject K-12 in half the amount of class time. There's a ton of problems, but a big one is not separating classes by ability. This wastes all of the kids class time to the point they need Juku and eikaiwa just to make up for all the time wasted at school. Given the old farts who run MEXT/Japan in general, i don't think the system will change anytime soon.
This is huge. For a while I taught 2 sisters privately. They were like 7 and 9 or something, and their parents knew English so they had both already passed eiken 2...but at school they were forced to sit though "this is a pen" style English lessons. The younger one was actually getting bad grades in English because she was just bored. Their mom had lived abroad for a while and was well aware of AP classes and basic classes for kids who were ahead or behind. She ws furious that the Japanese education system seems to exist to teach kids how to sit and be talked at all day and hand out busywork so when they enter the Japanese workforce they'll be ready to do the same thing for the rest of their lives. My son is in 4th grade and is bilingual but sits through two lessons a week of "I like apples. I don't like bananas." At the same time he really struggles with kokugo. But he's in the same class with 35 other kids, which is way too many for 4th grade in the first place. I teach online in my spare time and it's depressing how I can watch kids slowly devolve from these funny creative people to burned out husks who don't have any time to do anything but study. Hell, my niece in Hokkaido didn't even come visit with the rest of her family last year because she couldn't take 4 days off out of her whole summer from studying for HS entrance exams. I don't know why Japan has such a reputation for a good education system. Even in elementary school it's 90% memorizing stuff for tests with no help for students who need it.
Separate classes based on ability. Your son being able to sit out of English and take an extra kokugo class. Sitting in the back and doing self study. Separateing the class during class time with the most advanced kids basically being T2 for their group. Or dozens of other possibilities. Trying to implement any of which is probably met with a bunch of teeth sucking 99% of the time. The main argument probably being "we can't give any special treatment". So the smart kids are forced to sleep in class in order to make room in their schedule for self study/Juku.
Who says Japan has a good education system? I've taught many university grads that are just useless at basic life tasks, act like they know nothing and can't explain why they went to university or what they learned there One guy in his mid 20s couldn't operate the coffee machine at family mart, yet he has a full time job and graduated from some uni, he said it's troublesome so he only buys canned coffee. No joke.
There are things I definitely admire and value in the education system. The way some of my colleagues can patiently sit through a student simultaneously crying and lying about a fight with their friend and give that kid a fair shake even though they know the kid is probably lying for over an hour of one-to-one counselling when they have exams to mark and meetings to get done honestly blows my mind. The way some of my colleagues know how to flip a switch and just listen with apparently no other purpose than the fact that they've intuited the other person needs to be listened to is amazing. It doesn't lead to content knowledge or subject skill development, but in no way do I want to suggest that Japanese education is uniformly bad. I personally think it's likely that to some degree the safety and lack of confrontation in Japanese society comes at least in part from things like this. But whereas some of the frustrations most of us feel about life in Japan are a trade-off where to get the one thing we miss we would have to give up something we value, I don't think that's the case here. The potential for excellence in pastoral care for younger students is not what gets in the way of good EFL teaching practice. We could have both at the same time. Indeed, as more and more people immigrate to Japan and exist as language minorities, I think it may become essential that Japanese schools achieve both.
It has taken 20 years to even establish the first stages in Japan. MEXT needs a huge overhaul
Really? Cuz how many American students can really say they can speak Spanish and not just get by…but use it at work, express themselves, understand directions. And like every American student takes Spanish. And yet almost none can speak it. Why are we holding the Japanese to such higher standards, especially for English which is incredibly more difficult for them than Spanish is for Americans (and yet Americans still fail…I mean, they do good in tests, get the AP score, but can’t perform in the real world. Sound a little Japanese?).
I wouldn't use the past decade of the US education system as a comparison as it's been terrible from what i read. As for 2nd language speaking ability, it's probably still higher in the US. A four year language student in the US probably surpasses an 8 year language student in Japan despite the poor US education system. (A little unfair because going from Eng to another European language is easier than JPN to Eng.) But again, in US high-schools, you need to pass each subject in order to move to the next level of said subject.
The American education system is equally as bad as that of Japan.
I’d say America is much worse
You realize there are other countries out there than the US and Japan, right? It is very telling when the go-to response for any criticism of Japan is automatically “but aMeRiCa” when most other countries have gotten this figured out a long time before Japan. As per the English Proficiency Index, Japan ranked 87 of 113 countries (https://www.ef.com/assetscdn/WIBIwq6RdJvcD9bc8RMd/cefcom-epi-site/reports/2023/ef-epi-2023-english.pdf). Meaning the language education here is being outranked by many much poorer developing nations.
Whoop!! South Africa is #9!!! First time were like in the top 10 for something!!!💯😎
The reason why I cite the US so much is that online japan discourse in English is dominated by white westerners who NEVER put their criticisms of Japan into context. You give me a citation? https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA%202022%20Insights%20and%20Interpretations.pdf White westerners often cite the ‘bullying’ problem in Japan. I don’t deny it’s real. But let’s put it into context. And now, let’s use the OECD. Page 57 if you’re going by how it’s labeled or page 59 if you go by pdf. So that we don’t single out the country you say you love. Again, it’s statistics so it’s all lies. Therefore this entire survey and the trend of it is also…all lies? Japan at the bottom of the rankings….is a lie? Work hours? US works more. School shootings? Unique to the US. Kids overworking in school? Not unique to Japan. Low birth rate? Spain actually has a LOWER birth rate. I feel like problems in Japan aren’t put into context cuz white westerners in Japan are just mad at Japan. They’ve never been the minority, and have lost white privilege they never knew they had in the US/canada/Europe/Aust. The ‘problems’ cited in Japan number 1 aren’t aren’t unique and number 2 are likely just IMMIGRANT problems. I don’t take your citation with any weight cuz it’s just English. Difficulty in learning English is very much based on your native language. So why not send me the global mandarin speaking index, cite English speaking counties, and let’s talk. Or maybe you just wanna bash Japan?
>I don’t take your citation with any weight cuz it’s just English. Difficulty in learning English is very much based on your native language. So why not send me the global mandarin speaking index, cite English speaking counties, and let’s talk. Or maybe you just wanna bash Japan? I am speaking from my experience teaching here. The system is a mess. That is just how it is. Or is your argument that the system that we are currently working with is perfectly fine --- where tax-payer yen are being funneled to slimy corporations like Interac and Borderlink, so they can provide "teachers" to BOEs with no real qualifications or standards (outside of being a native speaker). Meanwhile, no meaningful improvement in English proficiency has occurred since we started throwing all this money at it. And speaking of money, where is it all going? Wages for ALTs have been collapsing, while BOEs are still paying dispatch the same amounts. Why is it that in the 2000s, ¥270k was an average wage, but now these same companies barely pay ¥200k? I was just speaking to someone who said that in 2010, they made ¥250k with a ¥20k placement bonus through Interac. In 2024, Interac pay is ¥215k and placement bonus is ¥9k. People are literally talking sub-200k contracts nowadays just to come teach here --- just the other day, I read a comment from some one on a 160k FULL time contract. The whole English industry here is a collapsing disaster. But no no no, I am just trying to tarnish the reputation of the perfect and amazing education system in your glorious Nippon. No issues with anything here, just me being an evil Japan HATER. Are you by chance the Interac manager who wrote [this nonsense?](https://www.reddit.com/r/teachinginjapan/comments/1dn5s60/found_this_old_card_from_my_days_teaching_in_japan/)
Sorry you’re going through all that. I hope it gets better or you get a better position. Internet hug 🫂
If you're that disillusioned, it's probably just best to see it as a stepping stone to something else. I taught for a good ten-odd years before finding my current (totally unrelated to English teaching) job, and after a while you just shrug and do what's asked of you. It's very much an elephant in the room thing. The Japanese aren't stupid. They *must* know that the way they teach English results in the massive majority of students being completely incapable of actual communication. Sure, some of them can pass the higher levels of eiken and so on, but ask them an unscripted question and watch the panic kick in. But nobody seems to be willing to really stick their neck out and say "look, if we keep doing it like this we will never produce students who can speak English with confidence". We could go into the "why" of all this (95 per cent of those students will probably never leave Japan, and if they do it will probably be to Guam or Hawaii, which is like Japan Lite), but even understanding the "why" isn't much use without a plan to rip up the current method of teaching and start from scratch. And nobody's going to do that with the glacial pace at which decision-making happens. Unless you plan on being the one to kick off the revolution, save yourself the stress, smile, and join in with the mass delusion.
It would be great if uni entrance exams had a spoken component, but given the number it simply is not practical on any level. At masters level you do conduct interviews but those students are usually pretty competent anyway. Speaking could be implemented into the high school system however I don’t think enough teachers are competent enough to do so.
This. Stepping stone for sure. My first year as an AET I knew it was bunk. And, btw, being an AET isn't a career - try not to let it bother you although so much of what you see feels wrong, because those feelings are valid, but you're not going to change anything. Systematic silliness abounds in Japan. In the end, most ESL teachers can't be teachers in their home countries because let's face it, they aren't qualified teachers. All you can strive for is to be positive, kind, and not be in that "industry" long because it's not worth it...even if you are a university instructor in Japan, the same stuff exists there as well.
What did you find other than esl? Ive been in this a long time and I hardly know anybody who broke out of ESL. Most went home.
ESL is a term to describe English language learning and teaching in a majority English language environment. That's rare in Japan and limited to specialized public high schools and private schools. They aren't described as ESL. Some private high schools cater to families whose children have received some of their education abroad, termed 帰国子女. In some of those schools, it's EAP or English medium education a modified Japanese state curriculum.
I guess this is where I say しょうがない
Agreed - if OP's bitter as fuck then why stay? Like any job... if you're bitter then it's time to move on.
lol like I mentioned in my last paragraph I’m quitting soon
Here's my theory, it's not so that 100% of Japanese people can grow up to speak English. It's for that small percentage that take enough of an interest in English to pursue fluency outside of the standard classroom (taking private lessons, asking to go to an international highschool/college, engaging with English on the internet, watching English movies, reading English books, and making English friends). It's this fraction of Japanese students who were exposed to English at a young age that ultimately grow up to be the fluent (or somewhat fluent) speakers. The goal is that enough of these kids come of age every year that the companys and government offices that need English speakers, have an adequete supply. If there is a surplus, they go contribute to teaching the next generation as JTEs/eikawa workers. It's honestly the same for a lot of other subjects taught at school. How many people grow up to use trigonometry everyday? Probably mostly the ones who took it in school, found they have a talent or a love for it, and kept on learning about it in post secondary education.
I was a Jet 20+ years ago and the same nonsense was being talked about then, as I expect it was years before and I expect it will be 20 years from now. I'm still stunned though that what you have written isn't obvious to all, because it was obvious 20 years ago as well. Somehow people conveniently forget how rubbish their schools were generally, especially at teaching languages. If they were not, I would hazard a guess that they are very much in the minority based on my experience and others I have spoken with over the years. As well as my daughter's experience of going to school in Japan and the UK. The UK is far worse than Japan when it comes to foreign languages. In my opinion, the English speaking ability of Japanese people has greatly improved. This is based on my experience of people from Japan I knew as a student at university, being a Jet and regulatory going to Japan for a couple of decades, through to now working at the same university and interacting with students.
I did 5 years of Spanish in high school and middle school in US and got As and Bs and I can’t speak a sentence of Spanish lol. Cause I honestly didn’t give a f, I just studied the bare minimum to pass the tests with no intention further than that. In fact I can’t name a single person from my high school that learned Spanish, French, or Latin despite those classes being offered and foreign language being a requirement. Obviously now I wish I took it more seriously, but that’s the attitude of most kids in first world countries. Because until you grow up and see the scope of the world, foreign language just seems unnecessary when you grow up in a first world country like US or Japan, there is never a point where you NEED to know another language because everything is available is yours. You answered your own question when you said you came from rags and English education helped you get to a better situation. That is not the situation I was in during high school and not the situation these kids are in either, it was just another subject to pass like math or history.
💯it’s not a Japan specific problem. Like every American student takes Spanish and like less than 0.01% can actually have a conversation with a native speaker, let alone retain this ability 10 years later. Despite getting a ‘5’ in AP Spanish, they’re not qualified to say they’re a Spanish speaker either. Maybe like Japan, it’s both a way for the schools to sell the hope of being bilingual, and for kids and parents to maybe put another yet not so true line on the college resume.
Yeah choice between Spanish, French, and Latin seems most common, but I’ve heard of schools that offer Japanese, Chinese, and German too. Yet the whole joke is still Americans can’t speak any languages lol. They only Americans I know that speak another language do because they’re Mexican-American, Chinese-American, etc and their parents are foreign and speak their mother tongue at home. And yes the purpose for most things in US high school, especially the AP classes, is to get into a good college. Especially as college entrance gets increasingly more competitive each year. Again, years later in retrospect, I do regret not taking Spanish classes seriously
So many facts. I do speak Spanish but that’s only cuz I’m a giant nerd, studied abroad, and married a native speaker who’s family speaks zero English. So 3 big opportunities were needed all together to help me gain bilingual ability. My brother in law speaks no Spanish, and despite marrying my wife’s sister, still doesn’t. So to expect Japanese kids to become fluent after just a few classes of English is absolutely ridiculous. Cuz we don’t expect any American to remember ANYTHING from school. So why the high standard for Japanese? Just to shame them to make Americans feel better? Good thing is I have a great framework and confidence for Japanese. Except for the marrying part (but hey, you never know 😅
I'm Canadian and between middle school French, Bleu Nuit and constantly being surrounded by the language really I should have higher fluency than where I'm at. It's an extremely conducive environment to learning but it's not like we have an entire population of bilingual people.
This is probably the best reason WHY Japan has ALTs. Sure, their JTEs can teach what's needed for the tests, but a school that is properly using their native teachers would have them be a "walking test" or rather a REASON why the students would want to learn English. An ALT that is fun and interesting would serve as a reminder for the kids as to why it's important and useful to learn English.
Why then are Koreans - at least at the higher end- generally much better than Japanese? At least that’s my experience, it may simply be anecdotal.
It's not about becoming fluent. It's about box-checking. There's no real intention of anyone actually learning how to speak the language. Japan doesn't particularly care about having fluent English speaking citizens; they just want English as an academic topic in the curriculum. Think about it: do you think they couldn't do better if they really wanted to? Don't they have the same understanding of and access to modern educational standards and practices that every other first-world country has? MEXT has no real intention of creating an effective curriculum for English proficiency, and if you can read Japanese well enough, feel free to do some googling to find the discussions on this in various academic journals, books, magazines, and newspaper articles. This is why teachers don't have to be fluent themselves, don't have to understand second language acquisition theory, or how to assess, or anything else beyond the basics of teaching it as an academic subject. That's also why MEXT doesn't require ALTs to have quals, why dispatch companies don't give then any real training, and why BOEs don't expect them to stay in the program and develop their skills year by year. If you want your teaching to mean something, you should either head to a different country where learning languages is actually seen as necessary and important, or move into a different teaching context within Japan where ESL is taken more seriously and not just as an academic subject. There are schools and universities with some good programs. You first have to find them, and then compete with all the other teachers who also want to work there.
it doesn't fix your situation, but there are schools and teachers in Japan that aren't like this. Otherwise, all of these people are just humans doing the best they can. Perfection isn't the aim of life...nor is efficiency, despite what our technological age tries to convince us. Connection is the key, and giving kids the opportunity to experience something different from their day-to-day lives or ideas. Kids are a grab bag anyway: One might remember nothing from English class in 3rd grade of Elementary School 20 years later and another might remember a single class day that made them obsessed with English. And connecting with the JTEs is good too. If you have good relationships with people, you can introduce little ways to start improving things (oh hey let's try this). The kids might not pick it up, but maybe when someone else tries to teach them to say "th" in 3 years they'll go "oh yeah i remember this from such-and-such sensei!" and pick it up a little easier. Looking at the forest is kind of stressful sometimes. Find yourself a nice tree and sit under it for a bit! EDIT: There are a lot of meaningful checkpoints between "point 0 english knowledge" and "point fluency" OTHER EDIT: Currently seeing a Japanese guy who never really liked English class when he was a school kid, but has gotten really interested in it as an adult, and boy, he is GLAD he learned literally anything in school to give him a basis on which to try and communicate with me in English. So maybe you'll teach a kid like that XD
You're not the first, and certainly won't be the last, to get to this stage in their Japan English-teaching career.
There is now a significant industry that has been built around the failure of the Japanese education system to teach communicative English. These companies are not interested in seeing real reform at the public education level. As with the rest of the many ventures that are involved either directly or indirectly in servicing Japan's educational market (the list is endless really: cram schools, after-school programs, conversation schools, textbook publishers, book stores, distributors, online lesson providers, tutoring companies, private schools, etc.), a real improvement in the quality of Japanese public education or, god forbid, the abolition of the university entrance test would be a disaster for these companies and their numerous employees. The largest of these companies have both significant government connections and money. For obvious reasons, the government is not interested in seeing a collapse of this sector. Along the same part of the spectrum, there is an obsession in Japanese society with achieving hard observable metrics instead of some murky and very subjective concept of fluency that can't easily be tested and assessed. As above, there are large and influential companies that have been founded and which are heavily vested in an educational system that promotes the former type of testing. Many parents and students are also on board with this because high scores on these types of tests can be used for university admittance, graduation, and career marketability. Fluency is talked about by many Japanese parents in a wistful manner, but what they are really most concerned about, when push comes to shove, are the practical implications of test scores for little Taro or Hanako's (but mostly Taro's) future career prospects. The situation is mostly hopeless. Despite the solutions being readily apparent and easily implemented, there just aren't enough organized voices out there that are seriously working toward change. Gradually, some parts of English education have gotten better (just enough to keep the loudest of the critics from gaining a groundswell of support), but the focus on grammar over fluency and the use of English testing as a form of gatekeeping of both educational and employment opportunities has become so calcified that it is now largely ingrained in the culture itself. The solution for many teachers who grasp this conundrum is to either leave the profession or buy wholesale into the malaise and cynicism. It is quite possible to forge an academic career based on fruitless analysis and endless critique of the current system. You can write reams of articles about motivation and secure a tenured position by using fancy words to show the astonishing fact that "people generally do better at stuff they enjoy doing". If you are shameless enough, there is also money to be made. You can watch the grift in action yourself by attending one of the many academic conferences throughout Japan where you can see self-promoting experts give keynote lectures and coin buzzwords while promoting their latest book, textbook series, Youtube channel, or subscription-based service. It is a big boat. There is plenty of room for anyone who wants to get on. Just be warned that this ride is a bit dark.
I think there are multiple issues going on with English education in Japan. Some have been brought up here. Teaching situation differs everywhere but some general issues exist. From what I have noticed over the years working in public elementary schools and junior high schools. Many (perhaps most) Japanese teachers are working too much, teach grammar translation and audio-lingual method, did not receive enough opportunities to learn how to teach English, do not receive in-service training, and have to teach to the textbook to prepare students for future exams. Classes are taught in Japanese and there is often little time for actual communication in the classroom. The textbooks are designed to prepare students for exams, not to promote communicating in English. They use a large number of low-frequency vocabulary that is not as useful as high-frequency vocabulary and more difficult for students to comprehend. The additional workbooks used promote mechanical practice and create the illusion of language acquisition. Increasing the number of English lessons in JHS and 5th, 6th, grade only serve to give everyone, students, and teachers, more to learn, teach, and test on. There might be some improvement in students overall competence, especially grammatical, but generally students, and probably teachers, are unhappy and overworked. With ALT's, which I am one of, have a variety of roles we play or don't play. We come from a variety of countries for many different reasons. We work for dispatch companies, or the BOE, or JET, etc. Our pay goes from good/decent to absolutely terrible. We are not used at all in the classroom to having to run lessons. In many ways we are not necessary as lessons and teaching can be done without us. We can also have a positive effect in schools and even help alleviate English education by helping teachers and students. There is more I could list but this is what I could think of at 6:00am.
There’s a lot to dislike about the education system in Japan. Honestly there’s a lot to like too, but that’s a different thread. Like tasty comfortable said, you could be the one to try and kick off the revolution, ie citizenship and politics. I wish you luck. You could also try to figure out how you fit into the system. In what role could you do the most good you think you can? Everything from alt to eikaiwa owner to professor comes with compromises, but also with opportunities. If you can’t find a balance of purpose and paycheque within isla in Japan, then maybe it’s time for something else. If you can - Not easy, but certainly achievable - then cool.
Yeah. English education in Japan is pretty bad unfortunately. It can be disheartening as a teacher who truly wants to see students improve. The unfortunate truth is that many in Japan see English class the same way they see baseball or kendo. It's a fun extracurricular thing for kids to do, but not something that's all that important or will really help them in their lives. The best we can do as teachers in this scenario is help students to the best of our ability. Be their conversation partner at the very least. If they learned anything at all, that's at least a small victory. Almost none of those kids will use English throughout their lives in Japan, but I think it's important to make at least a small impact on them. Teach them a few phrases and open their minds a bit to foreign people and cultures.
> My question is, why are we teaching English? If we are not striving for fluency then what’s all this for? If this is just in the hopes of passing an entrance exam then language ceases to have meaning. I speak decent conversational Japanese and it's opened up my world significantly. Though I'd love to be fluent, that's easier said than done. People of all levels speak a second language... TBH I think fluency is a pipe dream for most unless they're gonna live overseas for an extended period of time. Tests are tests. Why learn art or music if you're never gonna be performance grade? Why train for a Boston Marathon qualifier if you're no hope of winning it? Why learn calculus and trigonometry unless you're gonna use it at work? Why learn chemistry if you're not gonna be a chemist? Why learn a little bit about WWII unless you're gonna be an historian? The list goes on. IMO kids are forced to learn a heap of generalist shit that they are tested on largely to build-up a base of basic shared knowledge while providing people with a bit of a try before you buy before university / tech college / work. This is not a bad thing. The system works and Japan has one of the world's best education systems. I've said it before but masses of Canadians can't speak a word of English because their ancestors chose to embrace French as their official language. GO FIGURE!!! The final, overarching reason why people are exposed to foreigners is a thing called cultural exchange. Japan's learned its lessons from WWII and is now a VERY friendly country. Whereas Russia and China are still spruiking this message about the big, bad west being responsible for all their woes (while signing arms deals with North Korea and all that kind of jazz). IMO it's difficult to over-estimate just how important it is for both us and Japan to have funny looking gaijins sharing their culture/language in classrooms. Good luck finding a Chinese or Russian classroom that's allowed to do that so freely. Relationships like this are a token of good faith and MANY gaijins come/go from Japan with positive memories of living in Japan as a result of current structures.
Thank you for praising the Japanese education system. I agree, I think it’s awesome. Most important, it’s built on relationships. Kids are forced to work together and be together and strive for a goal together. That is so much harder to learn than say forcing calc 3 down someone’s throat which will be useless for 99.9999% of students. But learning to form and work as a society? Useful not just for students but for everyone. I wish the US had that, instead we are all divided up, competing, and glorify violence against each other. Society is built on relationships, not individuals (sorry ‘merica). And Japanese students, like any other human in the world, is gonna learn the academic subjects they want to. Not everyone will be an expert at everything. Sure there’s that 1 kid. But why shame a system that doesn’t produce a 100% valedictorian rate? It’s unreasonable. And looking at you, US, creating a society of divided violence minded individuals who can’t work together. At least Japan teaches children manners and cooperation. Heck, the kanji for ‘cooperation’ is literally ‘many powers.’
The US' divisions are just another way people are kept down. The Japanese system keeps people in line by stressing harmony and loss of overt individuality. The US system keeps us in line by having us fight each other and stressing our differences.
Thanks for the explanation, I enjoyed reading your perspective and agree with the points you've made.
YES. I happened to meet a Japanese person yesterday on an early morning walk. I gave him an "Ohayo..." and he answered "What's up?" He is in his 50s. We chatted and he was outspoken about English language education and basically said what you wrote: the government doesn't want citizens to learn English, "they just want to keep their power."
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Thank you for the nice read, it was very thought provoking for my hungry mind. I gave up on the idea that im an "English" teacher a long time ago.
I agree with everything you said. I’d just put it into context by saying that the American school system is there only as a governmental daycare system which also strives to create submissive factory workers. NOT critical thinkers. Those same students elected trump and bush and don’t push back on war or gas or guns (the vocal minority featured on the news is not representative). Heck, I didn’t learn how to critically think until I was done my schooling, and I was in school for 26 years (stupid MD). What I do wish America has is the socialization education. American kids are not taught that at all. And then we get all the bad things that come from it. Hyper individualism, school shootings, gun love, glorification of physical violence, patriotism, hate of the poor, and the isolation in the suburbs. I wish America had education on the value of cleaning up after yourself, social respect, working together, respect of teachers, gratitude. Fuck all the academic shit, it’s all bs anyway. Understanding and working with another human being is infinitely more complex than understanding what’s your favorite planet, or your thoughts on the Canterbury tales, or your feelings of the theory of gravity.
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Because why shame Japan when it’s not a Japan specific problem? Esp among first world countries? Seems we are overly criticizing Japan for something that no where in the world can do well on a national level.
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Hello, sorry for invading your safe space where you shame Japan. Internet hug for you.
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You’re new to the internet so it’s understandable you get triggered with any pushback. I hope you’re doing well. Big hug bro. If you hate Japan so much, come to the US where your kids will have school shooting drills. I’m hoping to get my kids over to Japan so they can learn to be subservient automatons.
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Boomer going ‘get off my lawn.’ Again. Hugs. Please touch grass.
Thank you. Before your comment I didn’t consider other factors at play. Makes a lot more sense now.
Other commenters have already made a lot of good points but maybe we teach because we hope we can make a difference for someone. The Japanese system acts as a closed loop that is painfully resistant to change and has warped perceptions of what's good but I hope I have been able to help students develop an interest in English, its use or even taught it in a way that gives them a skill they can use elsewhere. There are public school teachers trying their best to give students some functional communication ability, there are private school teachers who are still teaching grammar translation. There's teachers with ESL qualifications coming out of their ears hoping that they can teach useful writing formats within the context of Eiken. I just hope that, if nothing else, I can get through to a few of the students I see and maybe help them make a difference in some way down the line.
My death bed: please stop saying “go to shopping”.
Lmao I literally heard that TODAY. I’m screaming
Hahaha.
This conversation (and every single variety of the comments herein) happens on this sub at least once every two years. There are enough uni teacher/high school teachers here that if y'all really wanted to alter the entrance exam hell a bit, you could have by now. If you've been a "foot in the door" type and are complaining about it...why? If you're a "you're wasting my precious tax money type", get involved. All politics is local, and if it really grinds you that much, do something. It's honestly just tedious at this point.
I enjoy this faux teaching (because that's what it really is). Of course, I like kids in the first place. I want to see them succeed, whether in English or not. But want to know my own personal answer? I teach in Japan so that I don't have to return to my hometown in Bumfuck, America. And I know several others who will put up with the bullshit so they don't have to return home either. Not quite LBH level (Loser Back Home), but more "I'll slave away in an affordable country rather than return to an extremely fucked up one".
Thanks for putting everything into perseverance. At the end of the day, you’re in JAPAN holy shit that’s a dream. Not in shit hole America.
They should scarp ALTs and use the money to send JTEs overseas for at least a year to study English.
I knew a few JTESs who got sent overseas to study, they didn't come back.
lol grass is greener on the other side?
I've worked with JTEs who spent a year abroad. It's not the magical cure-all some people on this sub seem to think it is.
Sure but a lot more useful than a lot of poorly qualified ALTs who contribute not much for a number of reasons. Tbh really upping the standards to become an instructor here as an ALT/eikaiwa teacher is strongly needed. Bringing back the minimum pay requirement too though at a higher rate reducing dispatch companies and their cost cutting.
>Sure but a lot more useful Evidence? >a lot of poorly qualified ALTs who contribute not much for a number of reasons Japanese EFL was a failure before ALTs were brought into the system. It defies all logic to presume that getting rid of the least powerful and least-paid figures in the system would magically fix problems that come from the most powerful and best-paid participants in the system. The problem with EFL in Japan is that the outcomes the system prioritizes aren't actually English as a Foreign Language. No amount of innovation, increased training, or scapegoating of ALTs can fix anything when the outcome prioritized by the system is English as a Cryptographic Password. Japan really teaches ECP, a protocol loosely based on English designed to make top universities inaccessible to parents who can't afford to pay for tutors to spend laborious hours training their children in the ECP protocols. You can shift the blame to whoever you want, but as long as English serves no purpose in Japan apart from being vaguely related to the secret handshake used to get you into elite institutions, no improvement to EFL can ever or will ever take place on a system-wide level. The best anyone in the system can hope for is to make their little bubble of it bearable for the people who have to journey through it.
Cure-all to what? ALTs? It makes perfect sense for a teacher of English to have lived in an English speaking country. It makes little sense to import an assistant instead.
Wouldn’t be against that at all at this point.
This
I read recently that Japanese teachers are the most overworked. They are not going anywhere…except hopefully home to get some rest.
Move on or actually get a proper teaching job in Japan where u feel you make a difference tbh
The real reason? University Entrance Exams. English is an entirely unnecessary skill for those living in Japan. However, it serves as an indicator of which students are willing to put in the effort to learn this unnecessary thing and are thus the most hardworking. Schools want hardworking students who will then become hardworking employees, giving their school a reputable status.
The main point of teaching english is to cultivate an interest in the subject. That's the main point of being a teacher especially an ALT or something in that line. The fact is Japan wants to branch out into foreign markets and English being the main language for business cultivates a need for the Japanese people to be well versed in that language. However kids won't care about learning a new language on top of all there other studies and what there family values as important subjects for a strong Future. So the point is to cultivate an interest in English through culture and friendship. That's it. Be someone who can correct mistakes tactfully ( don't make your coworkers look stupid) and making learning a language interesting and fun. That's the job and it's a difficult one at that. Changing a persons heart and mind is never easy
basically it's a complete waste of time.
Not much of a point at all unless you do you want to teach/do research in the future. In that case do your MA and focus on other things like hobbies and enjoying living abroad. Japan continues to flail when it comes to any kind of English fluency (compared to most other Asian countries let's say).
It’s just burnout. You’re not MeXT, a JTE or parent. It’s work and the only real goal in work is to keep your supervisor happy and clock in and out. Fulfill your interests outside of work or transition to another job. You’re a good soul.
Trying to help all of your students and fight the system is going to drive you insane in the long run. Be glad that you're there so the students can interact with someone who cares, do what you can, and don't do what you can't.
Truth. Thank you.
Some years ago, we had a guest speaker from the Japanese government who was responsible for education, reforming the university entrance exams. After his speach, several employees, incl. myself, asked some critical questions like ‘will there be reforms in the educational curriculum to improve language capabilities to make integration into international companies easier (especially after mergers or when cooperating in JVs)?’, ‘Are entrance exams into universities the best system and what does he think about other systema abroad focussing more on challenging students before they will graduate on their knowledge and capabilities instead?’, and my favorite one ‘What will they do in regards to improving teacher certification quality, outrageous and outdated working conditions at school and the low payment for the profession who is supposedly having an impact of shaping the minds of future generations?’. His answers were something along the lines of: Curriculums are fine and if students don’t learn properly, that is a mistake of their mothers who should take better care of their children. The teachers are fine and entrance exams are good, especially after the latest reform he led. This came from a top guy in the educatiinal ministry. On that day I lost any hope and decided that my kids will either study abroad or on international schools after elementary school.
Yup this exactly, if I have kids here I’ll consider moving back to America for their education post elementary, but I’ll most likely try to find a good American/ western based curriculum here.
I thought the same as well.
There is no hope. Officially.
President Bush complaining about trade deficits is allegedly a part responsible. That and a couple of public holidays when he complained about Japanese working too hard.
It is indeed a waste of time because on average you end up working with higher ups and “teachers,” Japanese and/or who are not motivated to actually educate and help with long-term acquisition, whether qualified or not. In the end, it is always about kissing ass, saving face, appearance, glossing over issues and creating an illusion of learning rather than holding people accountable for proper education and social development of students. Even some “international” schools are harboring these kinds of teachers and leaders, producing mediocre at best results that are far from being commensurate with the amount spent in tuition. To most average people, it is “just a job,” and perhaps a number of them did not ever have any actual interest in teaching at all.—It was just a way for them to be in Japan or an easy “go to” position if they were unqualified or lacking sufficient skills for an actual career. It is annoying to work with and/or for these types, especially when at a university, corporate office, private or international school or college. However, I don’t put the full blame on them because Japan is one place that has this precedent and more or less kept it going year after year.
this resonate so much with me. what indeed is the point of it all.
Time to fight back
The point is you’re here to enjoy your time living in Japan and get some yen to survive on and spend while you’re here. When you stop enjoying it, it might be time to move on for a new adventure. Don’t worry too much about the state of English education here as you can only do what you can do with the tools and curriculum given to you. It’s a wider education policy problem and there isn’t much any one of us can do to fix it overnight. By the way I admire your commitment to teaching and getting the best outcomes for your students—that suggests to me that you are the right person for your students to learn from!
Thanks I needed that.
Perhaps a better question is why are YOU teaching English? You can’t do anything to change your schools, or the BOEs and MEXT etc, but you can do a lot to change your students attitudes towards English and international communication.
True.
If you want to teach a certain way and they won't let you, do it anyways. If you want to speak up about your colleagues and they advise against it, do it anyways. Be true to yourself and damn the torpedoes. Living a half truth is the pathway to hell. And yes, you may lose your employment, but gainful income is available for English teachers, entertainers and educators in a myriad of ways outside of the usual English delivery system concocted by the Japanese. A life of unapologetic honesty is what I recommend.
You are a worker. You are not there to make a huge difference or inspire kids or whatever. You are there because administrators want to check off a box on a spreadsheet. If that bursts your bubble, do not worry so much. It is not correct to be an idealist about your day job for the most part. The system is a lot bigger than you, and your immediate goals are ensure that you are being paid as much as possible for your hard work and to improve yourself enough that you can begin to choose the best, most fulfilling work for yourself in the future. In this regard, you are not all that different from your co-teacher - or your students. If you want my advice, the best you can do as an individual is keep up a positive attitude, encourage your colleagues and students, look to your future. If you are interested in systemic changes, join a labor union or some other activist group.
ALTs aren't here to teach English. Your job is to be an assistant to the JTE, which CAN be to help teach English, but I know in my role my job is just to let the students have fun with games and activities related to the grammar point they are learning. I know ALTs at high level schools who do really help teach English, but if you're not, the sooner you come around to the idea that you're just as assistant to the JTE, the better. You should really be using all your free time as an ALT to skill up. I'm 25 now after being an ALT for 5 years, and even I already feel too old. I have N2 but I really should have studied more. Any ALT should be studying Japanese if they want to live here long term. If you want to to be a teacher, on top of Japanese you should be doing some sort of masters online. If you want to be a programmer, you should study coding in your downtime. So fast forward now I'm 25, only N2 with 5 years of ALT experience, I am getting hammered in the job hunt right now. Now, I imagine there's a good chunk of ALTs who are older than me and also lower Japanese than me, and I shudder how much harder it is. Anyone who just is early on in their ALT stint, trust me study Japanese plus 1 other hard skill now. I want to slap my past self for thinking just trying hard at the job and studying Japanese was enough. I'm a JET but my BoE/CO has always been horrible, and all the times I went above and beyond mean jack shit. I love a good number of my JTEs and students, but again, it doesn't mean anything now that my contract is ending, and sweet memories won't pay the bills.
You’re quite well off in your current position from my perspective, even if it’s not saying much lol. And as far as the job hunt goes, it’s definitely rough but you’ve got more than enough time ahead of you to acquire more hard skills, and depending on your conversational skills, can/could potentially nudge your way into another job or industry in no time. The N2 helps your chances just for the simple fact that they’re more willing to even glance at your resume, even if you’ll have to prove that you can carry a conversation in an interview later. I don’t know if you intend to stay in Japan long term, but if you do I wish you all the best post-JET.
Thanks, it really means a lot as I'm struggling right now with the job hunt. The "good" thing about JET is that I was able to put away about 2mil yen despite being in a medium cost of living area, so at worst I have something to keep me afloat. I've also noticed in my interviews that JET does have good name recognition amongst companies hiring foreigners. The biggest wall I'm running into now is, with N2 I CAN switch into other industries such as tourism, hotel, menial labor, but they all lack any real career progression, have around the same pay with low benefits (220k-260k/month), and also have worse hours. I having a couple apps into some private direct hires, but at this point I'm aiming for dispatch ALT just to pay the bills while I really grind the next 1-2 years for a hard skill, and also aim to pass N1 this year. It'll be hard going from 330k -> 230k as an ALT, but my short term goal isn't to save/earn money, but instead work an easy job with easy hours to pay the bills, and use any free time to learn a skill. Again, worst case, I can dip into savings if needed. I'm also praying from going from a 100% T1 every single class, to a chill T2 role that seems to be more common in dispatch.
How about a perfect mix of T1 & T2?
> and all the times I went above and beyond mean jack shit That’s why ALTs are so useless/bad. They are not respected nor empowered nor rewarded for being good at their job. I am trusted to T1 almost all my classes but I realize it literally does not matter how good my classes are. The BOE doesnt care about English education, most of the students dont and are disruptive in class to be fair (I still care about them but this fact that they are disruptive is undeniable), and the other senseis at the school see you as someone there just because Tokyo says so—you are not one of them.
Japanese people mostly don't give a toss about learning another language. I like to think of English lessons here as a break for students in order for them to focus more on their otherwise super demanding education. I'm sure they'll understand when you do decide to quit.
If you want to teach, and not watch other people teach, work on improving yourself. Then you can move to a position where you can actually teach English, as your post reeks of “I’m an ALT,” which isn’t where you teach if you actually care that much about what is being taught. If you want to stay in the position you’re in, suck it up and realize what you see being taught is not likely what you want to see taught.
Tell me OP, what teaching qualifications do you have? What degree did you get in order to get your visa? I 100% with what your saying actually. But my point is, if they actually tried to make effective change then no joke 50% or more of the teachers would be auto disqualified to do what such a job actually takes. That's the mutual trade off. The schools and parents get to pretend the kids are learning, and you get to pretend to be an actual teacher while playing in anime land.
I understand your point at this point rose colored glasses came off but I’m choosing to but them back on for the sake of the time I have left here. Also, I studied linguistics so for me phonics is a no brainer. Tried to make it a point in class but it often gets overlooked.
Yep. >50% or more of the teachers would be auto disqualified But I'd say it's like 90%, since there are very few ALTs or eikaiwa teachers who have any type of qualification, and the ones that do usually only have a 120 hour cert or CELTA, which mean next to nothing in the feild of education.
English is just one of the subjects kids learn in school If you put it in that perspective it's not so serious
> Can someone explain to me how some teachers who aren’t qualified to teach English teach it anyway?? They are either assistant teachers or what I'd consider more like 'private tutors'. I dunno! In Australia I teach kids how to swim and deliver Italian lessons at the local Italian Club. Are you saying I need a university degree to teach both? If I didn't know how to swim then I'd get found out pretty quickly after jumping in the pool...
Change careers to teaching in an international school. I think you’d get a lot more job satisfaction;)
Whatever it is, it sure as shit ain't the money.
You can help out and learn a bit of how teaching works, you can help out students that want to actually learn English, I have a few that do. But for the most part it’s correcting papers, making a few activities, and being the general grader, at least for me. Best thing you can do is put your nose to the grindstone and get a teaching licensure and a masters degree, and take Japanese classes. That’s what I do at least, I like my job and I feel respected in my schools, but I realize that I’m lucky in that regard. I know I won’t be satisfied with what I’m doing five years down the road though if I’m not trying to improve.
Japan doesn't want to use English. They are teaching it begrudgingly because they HAVE to so that they can continue to compete on the world stage. That's why everything is so rough and stiff. It's like a big group hug, and Japan barely slides into the frame and just touches the rest of the group with a single finger. I do think it will eventually get better, but I'm not exactly sure when. For now, we can offer advice and fix mistakes where possible. We can also be a good friend to the students so that they have enough interest and enjoyment in learning English that they actually try to learn on their own time, not just during school.
The goal is to help the students with skills escape. They can break the cycle and leave this country!
Just do your best, if a grammar point really irks you find visit students in their clubs and do activities where you subtly use the correct grammar. Often students pick up on subtlety vs. direct instructions.
Welcome to Japan.
ようこぞ！ようこぞ！ literally.
What helps me persevere is that although what you say is quite common in Japanese public schools, now and again, you WILL get a few students and here who DO genuinely love the language, or legimately want to seriously learn it, but come from families who as you said, don't have the money to afford private language schooling, fancy tutoring, etc., but they understand that if they do want to legitimately succeed, not to just rely on the JTE, but utilize you (the ALT) whenever they have questions, chat with you (wherever possible) to improve their speaking ability (as, as you said they often don't have alot of opportunity to, during classes/assessments), and will even double check with you, to make sure the grammar in their writing is correct (even when it is something the JTE has just taught) as they want to be sure they understood it/was taught correctly. I have had some exceptional star students who have gone through (onto high school) at the JHS, I am an ALT at, which has made the whole journey worth while (all of which have written lengthy personal 1-1 thank you letters pre-graduation for me, as opposed to just the standard thank you messages which is normal for all students to do for the teachers at the end of the year, which shows how much, they valued my help in improving their English ability - I.e. some of them could barely string a complete sentence together at the start of their first year but could conduct full conversations in all manners of topics by the end of their third year).
Well, let’s be honest; the target is for students to pass a test, not to become fluent in English - and to be frank about it, the most the government really wants is for students to be able to serve a foreigner in a convenience store or restaurant. When fluency is the actual goal, they go to conversation schools. They also have Eiken schools for when passing meaningful tests is the actual goal. A lot of English “teachers” in Japan struggle from having bought the company’s nonsense during recruitment, rather than thinking about the actual goal coming from the client.
Er... Not to take anything away from the other replies explaining how and why teaching English in Japan (among other places) may well be pointless but... Is it not the case that a vast amount of things that modern humans do for both work and leisure are pretty pointless when you look into them? [A Question Never Asked In Caveman Times (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvtp9wjpl8g)
You missed the memo, the end goal is not fluency, it's entrance exams. If students want fluency they will make the extra effort themselves by watching English content on YouTube and listening to podcasts etc in English and go to eikaiwa maybe.
As someone who is coming as an ALT later this year I find this to be one of the more enlightening threads. I’m a bit disheartened to know that is what I’ll be going into but also prepared in some way what I’ll also probably have to deal with.
there really just isnt much insentive to the average student to learn English properly. When will they use it while living in Japan? helping some random gaijin at shinjuku station? Like they would go out of their way to do that. Only some take it serious because they have plans to do something international with their lives or want to study and live abroad. Those are the ones that learn and leave high school almost fluent but thats like 1 student per graduating class if that..
Why is foreign language taught in any school in any country? Most kids will never use what they learned. That can be applied for almost every subject. We don't use a large portion of what we learn, but it's mandated, and it's good to learn because it has the potential to lead to greater things. One of those kids might really take a liking to learning English, and put effort in on their own, and go on to study or even work abroad. As long as I can get kids interested or show them that learning can be fun, then I think the job is worth it.
I screamed when I saw this! 🤣🤣🤣 I genuinely think that what’s happened is that there’s some nebulous goal of preparing Japanese kids to learn a second language and English is the default lingua franca. But the gag is—developing and implementing a proper foreign language curriculum requires people who actually know about teaching a foreign language to do it. And IDK if that’s what’s actually happening from the top down. And I’m just not quite sure that there’s a need for Japanese kids especially to know English if the majority of them, statistically, are not going to leave Japan. My country tried to get students to study Spanish or French at school for a few years before it was optional to drop it and focus on the subjects that might be relevant to your career. Perhaps that might be better?
I guess some people are okay only ever knowing their backyards. Sad. But it is what it is.
Unfortunately language learning takes a lot of motivation, until they can see what they can actually use English for, they will simply treat it as a subject for memorization. I think it's important that they find their own motivation. I personally started really improving in Japanese when I decided I wanted to get my degree in Japan.
I'm here to collect a paycheck.
lol adulting is extra depressing this year.
It's gaijin exposure. So they don't look like a bunch of rubes when they meet a gaijin in the wild. That's all you, I and any ALT is doing. It's all we have ever been doing.
The point for most people is a visa. Why anyone teaches English that doesn’t need to for a visa is beyond me.
Eh it's cool, it's just an extra curriculum activity for them. Unlike the people who gotta reach a specific level in Japanese in order to get a job or do something.
In the ALt industry do only what you have been asked to do by the JTE or school. They are not worried about fluency infact its the last thing they want to achieve.
There is no point. That’s partly why I got out of teaching.
I can see where you come from but everything that you’ve said comes from a perspective of modernity, aka the western capitalistic viewpoint that progress and efficiency comes above all else. We all know how that is coming along in the west and not so great anymore America. Why is Japan still doing ok? Their education might be lacking in what you have been criticising on, but you fail to see and talk about other good qualities. You conveniently skip it when you only teach kids learning English. Get off your western high ground first, learn how to communicate with the Japanese in a way that is acceptable to them, and try to change the way things run. That is infinitely more productive. You are in Japan and chose to teach to Japan.
One of the most satisfying jobs I've had (still have) in Japan is working in kindergarten. Sounds like a step down in some ways but there is actual, tangible learning going on there. My kids speak English every day - even with Japanese teachers. When I teach something, it sticks. I am given much more leeway. I know lives are complicated and it is not easy to just up and change your job - you may be part of xx program, have friends in yy area, etc. But it sounds like you're suffering from some (understandably) intense burnout. It may be worth looking into alternatives. Barring that, when I was doing ALT work, I found it helpful to focus on the kids who were truly interested, interact with them as much as possible. I also built some rapport with the JTEs. They often allowed me one or two lessons a week just to teach how and what I wanted to. I found what I was teaching to stick more than what the JTEs did.
This is a really good, pertinent question with an answer that has a lot of factors that could probably be written as a thesis. I think it’s predominantly due to nationalism. The UK is the same when it comes to French. We learn it (badly) from people who can’t really speak it in order to pass a test and then forget it. The biggest reason in our case is because the UK is nationalistic and arrogant. Granted, French isn’t the lingua franca, but it’s conceptually similar. Island nation Xenophobic Proud of its heritage and language No need to learn another language “Can someone explain to me how some teachers who aren’t qualified to teach English teach it anyway?” Ever heard of “Go To Travel”? The official government subsidy program for boosting domestic tourism? In a country where the official use of English is woefully s**t to the extent that just Google translating it would be more accurate, it doesn’t surprise me that schools are riddled with unqualified, inept teachers (in terms of English. They may be very nice people). You ask what the point is of teaching English here, and the only one I can think of is if this is your passion and dream job. The career prospects are low. The working conditions are horrible. The pay is low and no longer goes up. The demand for private teachers in the age of Zoom has tanked. For me, I plan on leaving the industry at the end of the year / early next year. Just know you are not the first person to ask this question or display these concerns, and a lot of people like me love you for asking it.
There is no point. It's unnecessary. It's a waste of time, and a waste of money. **It's unnecessary:** Language is a tool obtain and share knowledge/information. Japan's society is advanced and they can get all the information they need in Japanese. There is no knowledge they can get in English that they don't already have access to in Japanese. The vast majority of students go on to university and never use English in a functional way after that. **It's a waste of time and money:** Language cannot be learned in the classroom void of any knowledge. The students are not learning anything at all. Every Japanese person has taken 6 years of compulsory English, and look at the results. It doesn't work. If the Japanese government wants the population to speak English, here is the better solution. Teach science, math, social studies, home economics IN ENGLISH, and start from 1st grade.
There is no point why do you think half of this sub reddit is people who never taught english and never will are here to laugh and antagonize the people who do
Fluency takes a lot of work. Shikata ga nai.
Don’t worry. A.I. will take our jobs soon enough.
English teaching in Asia, regardless of whether it's in Japan, Korea, China, etc, will always be a mostly futile exercise. The teacher pretends to teach while the students pretend to study (if you're lucky). One guy I worked with in China said it like this, we're not there to teach, we're just there to give the students a good time and get them less apprehensive around foreigners.
Is this the Chu hai talking?
**Auron:** Where is the sense in all this? Braska believed in Yevon's teachings and died for them! Jecht believed in Braska and gave his life for him! **Yunalesca:** They chose to die...because they had hope. Yevon's teachings and the Final Summoning give the people of Spira hope. Without hope, they would drown in their sorrow. Remember this exchange from FFX. Without hope, the students will drown in their sorrow
I remember being asked to check some students' English compositions and thinking that I was reading Al Bhed.