My wife the English teacher
My wife has decided to volunteer at my daughter’s elementary school as an assistant in the English classes they have once a week. I knew it was a bad idea to have her help out, since English education here is not exactly the model of our tax dollars well spent, and I knew it would frustrate her.
The lessons are taught by a Japanese teacher rather than a native English speaker, although there is a separate English lesson another day that has a native gaijin — maybe it’s to instill in the kids a sense that “English” and “English conversation” are separate and should never be confused.
As with all English classes here, the lesson began with the ubiquitous “How are you? Fine, thanks, and you?” (My daughter likes to throw a wrench into the works there, saying, “Actually, I’ve got a headache, so I don’t feel fine at all” just to see the looks on the teacher’s face.)
For the first half of the class, the students listened to an audio tape that taught English phonetics (ba-NA-na, not BA-na-na).
Things went pretty smoothly until the teacher started having the students repeat “I can skating! I can skiing!” My wife desperately wanted to correct the teacher’s erroneous English, but could never do so in front of the students, and in the end, she wasn’t even able to bring the issue up with after the class was over.
Exactly. An English class in Japan is a kind of celemony to learn one of the most important rules to survive in Japan, “Don’t do anything to disgrace your teacher or boss”, rather than the actual skills of English. I admit all of what you said as a native japanese who’s done all courses till senior high. I’ve been thinking that almost all of Japanese people try to speak their English by translating their idea made in Japanese. But I don’t think that’s the way as it should be. How can they do it in such a complex way with their poor ability? The translation step is the main cause of their lack of fluency. So they should think in English from the very beginning and tell it. I believe English teachers should teach or help their students to do it. But, this may be surprisingly enough for you, I found this way by myself when I was preparing for the entrance exams of the universities after I had “learned” English for 6 years!
Actually I have to say that my real teachers of speaking English are the DVDs of American sitcoms like “Seinfeld” or “Sex and the City” or Hollywood movies like 007. I am afraid that my way of speaking English is rather female or not like Stanford in SATC and I wonder if I would be able to let me get other kinds of drinks than a dry martini shaken not stirred.
September 28th, 2007 at 12:04 pmI hope they won’t tell your daughter(or your wife) ” Don’t disturb our Engrish crass ! “.
Most English teachers in Japan were brought up in the conventional English education system that would emphasize reading and grammar for the entrance exam. That’s why native English speakers are in charge of ” English conversation class ” which is separated from ” English class “.
September 28th, 2007 at 2:43 pmAs a new English teacher in Japan, I’d like to remind everyone that this was an elementary school class. IMHO, English at the elementary school level can bend/break the normal rules of grammar in order to serve a grander purpose: exposing children to foreign concepts, languages, and people. Given the types of questions I hear at school (”Do they have rice in America? Where did you learn English?) it’s obvious that these kids desperately need a glimpse at the rest of the world.
While I know it seems silly/frustrating to have a non-native, non-fluent teacher instructing others in a foreign language, I think back to the extremely limited foreign language education I received in elementary school. I don’t remember who taught me and how they did it because I was too young but I still remember how fascinated I was by the notion that different people spoke different languages than my own. I’d like to think that planted a seed of curiosity that eventually led me to my present position. At the very least, I never asked a Japanese person if they have pizza in Japan.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:44 pm[...] This story of teaching English in Japan should be familiar to Korean English teachers.- This Japanese killer [...]
September 30th, 2007 at 10:11 am