Oh well, we have the board of education to thank for that, and then of course the Japanese English teachers (not all as there are exceptions) who are truly a disgrace to this country. I’m still racking my brain trying to understand how someone dares to call himself/herself an English teacher when he or she is not even able to form and produce a basic sentence in English. No wonder that Elementary and Junior High school students find English the most boring subject at school (very few don’t). They even hate it. I did not mention Senior High School students because I never taught any at Public Schools but judging from some of the private senior high school students and University students, I can take a guess. So here’s your first problem:
English teachers who can’t speak English or even write a grammatically sound English sentence. All they know is some grammar rules which they probably don’t know how to use in context.
Now, how do the government and the board of education decide to fix this? Being the competent people they are, they come up with that groundbreaking idea of hiring a native speaker of English to assist the Japanese teacher (hence called ALT, Assistant Language Teacher) in the classroom. At Elementary schools and some Junior High Schools, it is the Japanese teacher who is assisting the “ALT”, not the other way around as it is supposed to be. What is happening, in some cases, depending on how good or bad the ALT is, is that the Japanese teacher is simply taking a 50-min break sitting at the back occasionally contributing in the classroom mainly by restoring discipline when needed, unless the ALT seriously sucks and does not seem to be able to manage the classroom at all, then the Japanese teacher translates or tells the ALT what to do or say, and then the ALT goes ahead and does it. Now, what happens as a result? The students get bored out of their wits! They feel disconnected from the ALT and the language. They don’t want to have anything to do with it because they see their teachers suck at it anyway, why would they care?
Now, the few Japanese teachers who actually happen to have some pride and dignity play a greater role in the classroom by resorting to using old methods such as the grammar translation method and simply expect the ALT to pronounce a sentence here and there, or/and read a passage from a textbook for the sake of granting the students exposure to native-like English (as if there aren’t enough English TV shows and movies for that). Okay, here’s the thing!
The GRAMMAR TRANSLATION method doesn’t work.
If you still don’t know that, I’m sorry, but you must be really stupid. I mean, look at the past 40 years, haven’t you learned anything yet? Can’t you see that despite all the lame and useless textbooks you have been using for years, despite all the ALT’s you are hiring, despite all that, your junior high school students are still not able to greet fluently and confidently. You say “How are you?”, they say “I’m fine” with the most ridiculous accent, and then you say “How’s it going?” or “How are you doing?” or “what have you been up to?”, and they go mute, yet even worse, they come back with “I’m happy, I’m sleepy, I’m tired”. When are you guys going to learn? What a shame? Japanese students are learning English for more than 6 years now and still can’t greet properly, let alone introduce themselves. What a waste of time and money that is!
So what is the solution? The solution is that you train the Japanese teachers and raise the English competency standards. They should be required to be proficient in all areas of the language, not only grammar (which most of them are not good at anyway), that includes pronunciation, as a matter of fact, especially pronunciation because kids learn and pick up the language through sound. Train your teachers. Don’t hire someone to do the job for them. Train them, and if they refuse to be trained, sack them or maybe switch the roles, you’d be better off hiring Japanese ALT’s to help professional and experienced English teachers in the classroom. But to be honest, as it is now, most of the Japanese English teachers wouldn’t be qualified for that either!
Leave a Reply