Archive for the ‘Japanese education’ Category

The latest rumour has it that there is a meeting of all the bigwigs this morning. Until that news comes out (and it may take a while as Nova have yet to make a single official press statement about anything), here are the latest news sources and some of the more interesting older ones:

A very detailed article from the Japan Times, with predictions from a business journalist

The New Zealand and Canadian press catch up with the original story of unpaid wages

Shortly after the Japanese press had decided to cover the story:
www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070922TDY02008.html

…but which, strangely, had been covered in the Australian newspaper “the Age” first:
Or not so strangely if you know how the Japanese press will only swarm all over a story once someone else has taken the risk of covering it first…

Which is why this savaging of the Nova business plan from a Japanese business magazine is such a shocker (English translation from Let’s Japan, the main Nova breakdown news source in English- good job!)

No, not a story about CELTA-qualified 23 year olds spreading good teaching around the world. According to the BBC, the best education is to be had in Finland:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/documentary_archive/6991288.stm

As ever, it is very difficult if not impossible to take something like this from one country and transplant it to another. In fact, my theory on this one is that the thing that sets successful education systems apart is simply a belief in that system. The Finns have an education system that most people there believe matches the country and is something to be proud of. Therefore the best people want to be teachers and the parents, students and education authorities trust those teachers. That was the case in Japan when it also used to come near the top of educational surveys, and then the doubt set in and it all began to fall apart…

“Democracy” works in strange ways here in East Asia:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2162843,00.html

Yesterday’s Asahi Shimbun took the occasion of Angela Merkel’s visit to tell the Japanese government they could learn a lot from Germany. They are talking about green issues, which is one area we could all learn from Germany in, but really despite the impeccable trains and outrageous modern architecture (the Yurikamomo line just coming out of Shimbashi station through Shiodome has to be the closest thing to being in sci-fi I have ever experienced) Japan is far behind Europe and America is so many ways:

• Working mothers
• Rights for gays
• Rights for minorities
• Education (in terms of creativity, top universities, English language skills per classroom hour, equivalence of a Japanese degree and a foreign one, attracting foreign students, bullying, kids dropping out and staying home,  vocational training- you name it. In fact, virtually everything except maths and literacy- and the second one is taught in such as way that kids can read but desperately don’t want to and end up as salarymen reading manga or watching TV on the mobile phones)
• Use of the internet and the standard of most websites (almost all searches in Japanese come up with a blog as the first result- because no one ever listens to them and they can never say their true feelings if they don’t blog perhaps??)
• Software companies
• Connecting homes to the central sewage system
• Burying cables
• Preserving old buildings
• Dealing with immigration
• Pension reform
• Teaching children about green issues
• Parks
• Using the waterfront
• etc etc.

Some of these are explainable by local conditions (e.g. there are less internet sites because most people search for info through their mobile phones), but others are things that the Japanese are going to have to sort out sooner or later.

Even the apparent advantages like lack of youth crime, immigrant riots, abandoned factories and urban squalor are just because the Japanese haven’t got to the stage of even starting to deal with them yet. As much as the post-colonial apathy of the UK hardly makes for the happiest of lifestyles now, the fact that solutions are being attempted for those problems gives some hope that things will be sorted out and the country will move onto the next stage.

For better or worse, Japan is still living as if they are in a 1950’s USA fantasyland of Dad works hard, Mum makes lunch for him, kids study for a better future. When things do indeed work out like that it is better than Dad takes drugs, Mum walks the streets, kids joyride, but the average Neo-Tokyo sci fi anime shows that I am not the only one who thinks Japan is going to have to deal with those problems sooner or later, and it is not going to be any easier for them than for anywhere else.

In the meantime though, when I don’t make the mistake of thinking about it too much, this semi-futuristic Japan is much more liveable than that Neo-London distopia back home…

After getting illuminating, intellectually piercing responses to this question on Rave Spelling’s ESL Au Lait Japan forum like “because no one cares” (Only possible response- okay, so why does no one care!) from self-proclaimed well-qualified and experienced “real teachers” before they started throwing around personal insults and got the topic locked, I have no choice but tackle this point on my own. Here are three ideas below:

• Because the managers from most schools haven’t gone through the Cambridge teaching qualifications system themselves, they are unlikely to demand a CELTA of their teachers. For example, if you see your CELTA or DELTA as a proof of your own professionalism you are more likely to demand the same of your teachers or see the value of it on their CV. It is noticeable that chains of schools with overwhelmingly British management are more likely to ask for CELTA, and this seems to me the man reason why.
• In a similar way, because no schools in Japan sell TEFL teacher training courses like the CELTA (because of reasons like the cost of living here making it cheaper for people to do one in Thailand or at home), they don’t need to demand it of their teachers to boost the status of their own training courses.
• In Japanese companies there is a tradition of taking on new graduates without specific qualifications for their job in order to train them into the company’s own way of doing business while they are still young and impressionable, and being trained in someone else’s way of doing things might even be seen as a negative. In government and other Japanese-owned schools it seems possible that that attitude stretches also to the English teachers. In a similar way, you can see from the link below that MBAs are much less popular in Japan than in Europe or the USA.

www.referenceforbusiness.com/encyclopedia/Int-Jun/Japanese-Management-Techniques.html 

More ideas please from my TEFLtastic tribe:

Why are adults quite happy to been seen in public reading manga comics?

First of all, the vast majority of Japanese adults would in fact be highly embarrased to be caught reading a manga, let alone a pornographic one, in public. The salarymen you seeing reading dodgy comics and magazines on trains are the same who slurp their pasta, spit on the ground etc. in ways that well mannered Japanese never would. Manga does remain more popular amongst adults than in other countries, though. Amongst the salaryman population, this is because they hardly have the energy to read anything more demanding, especially as reading difficult kanji can put a strain on even strong readers. There is also no social pressure to spend your free time productively and an acceptance of reading manga etc. for nostalgic reasons.

See http://japanexplained.wordpress.com for much more of the same

Another example of foreigners who come over to Japan and can’t be bothered making an effort because it’s just Japan, as also seen with many British and American rock bands (e.g. Supergrass- in it (Japan) for the money indeed!)

Rants aside, here is the next part of my serious attempt at examining why there might be so many bad teachers in Japan. Having already examined why worse teachers might come out to Japan, now it’s time to examine:

Why do good teachers leave Japan?

Note that this is now the new, improved version of this post, organised by categories and with the proviso (as demanded by the punters on Rave’s ESL Au Lait) that it is possible that some bad teachers leave for some of the same reasons:

Personal Reasons

• Women often leave because of the lack of dating opportunities
• Those that don’t have this problem still find they lack female friends due to female friends leaving
• Lack of progress with learning the language and/ or making Japanese friends makes people want to try somewhere “easier”
• The lack of a summer break like most schools in Europe take means, strangely, that people are likely to think their time is up after a year and leave at the same time as all their friends do- usually at the end of a one year contract
• The difficulty of meeting new people, especially in big cities
• Wanting to be accepted as a local but realizing it will never happen
• Not wanting your children to go to a Japanese school or university

Career Advancement and Personal Development

• Many Japanese institutions have a visible or glass ceiling at how far non-Japanese can climb up the ladder, meaning people leave after reaching a certain level or don’t bother sticking around to get promoted because they know it can only lead so far
• Lack of opportunities to take further qualifications in Japan, e.g. even people in Tokyo who want to do a DELTA must do so by distance learning, inconceivable of in any other capital city I know, there are no CELTA courses available, and the local MA in TESOL courses often demand some level of Japanese and/ or don’t have a good reputation abroad
• A lack of people, even DoSs, with a DELTA who can help you when you take a distance course
• The lack of opportunity to become a trainer on such courses
• Workshops you can go to are often aimed at a very basic level of teaching knowledge and therefore unlikely to be of interest to experienced and qualified teachers
• The lack of a clear, obvious career path into other, better schools etc. University jobs, for example, are usually not advertised, the well respected chains like Bell and IH they people sometimes move up to elsewhere do not exist, and the British Council is shrinking its operations.
• One of the steps forward in terms of pay can be to take an Assistant Language Teacher job, but as this means teaching with another teacher it often doesn’t feel like a step forward in terms of your career
• You can earn and/ or save more elsewhere
• The lack of opportunity to teach exam classes other than TOEIC or to become an examiner (for example, the British Council in Tokyo is not accepting applications for IELTS examiners)

The other staff

• The negativity of the other teachers
• A feeling that “If all these people can do this job without complaints and/ or and get paid the same, maybe I should be doing something else”
• Managers who are younger and/ or have less experience and qualifications

 Not feeling at the centre of the “TEFL world”

• The materials used by schools are often 5 or more years behind those used in Europe
• Because Japan is not a big market for the UK and US ELT publishers, work like pre-publication testing is not often available

The students

• The fact that the students don’t seem so seriously interested in learning the language and so make limited progress- only studying half an hour a week, using company classes as a chance to relax because they are overworked, not doing homework or anything else in English outside class etc. etc.
• If students are happy just to be entertained you don’t feel like you are being pushed to improve

The materials and other resources

• The lack of teaching technology such as Interactive Whiteboards, or even sometimes OHPs and photocopiers
• The lack of quality of the locally produced textbooks etc. that you sometimes have to use
• The idea that even while your ability to teach Japanese students is improving, your ability to teach other nationalities is possibily getting worse

Not matching your training

• A lack of groups of 8 to 12 students that people are usually trained to teach on their CELTA etc.
• Very few classes with even one student who doesn’t have Japanese as a first language
• A lack of flaps
• A lack of preparation time or rest time between lessons
• A lack of a range of levels
• Having to teach a mix of ages

Miscellaneous

• The difficulties of working in a Japanese office
• Good teachers leaving becomes self perpetuating- because some good teachers leave the other good teachers don’t want to stay

Standard of living

• The chance to live in a more beautiful city elsewhere
• The chance to afford a bigger and/ or otherwise better flat outside Japan
• Being able to afford the time and money to fly home more often from other countries
• Lower tax and medical insurance in some places
• Not wanting to pay into the Japanese national pension system
• No high interest local accounts to pay your savings into
• The falling yen
• The difficulties in getting mortages (especially joint ones), credit cards etc.
• Because wages have been static at best for years, people who might have wanted to stay in teaching end up applying for management jobs to keep their wages climbing and then drop out completely due to the difficulties of being a manager and/ or not really wanting to be one in the first place
• The expense of exploring further afield in Japan and flying to elsewhere in Asia
• Although it is also experienced by most Japanese, the commuting, long hours, cramped accomodation etc. can be avoided by moving to another country
• Lack of provision for working mothers

If anyone has any suggestions on anything else I can add, please let me know. I should also point out that it isn’t as bad as the list above could make it appear- I am, after all, still here teaching in a big chain of language schools after 4 years!

According to this Daily Yomiuri article, 40% of new Japanese university students surveyed only reached the English level expected of 15 year olds! There is hope, though, and it comes from the fact that the university mentioned realises they have a crisis on their hands and has been forced to employ someone who can teach rather than just someone with a string of letters after their name. And she really does seem to know her public, because low level Japanese adult learners do love miming. They really can’t get enough of it, which is why I have a miming worksheets bonanza tried and tested in Japan over the years for you here:

 http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-air-travel-mimes-collocations/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-body-idioms-mimes-pictionary/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-food-and-drink-mimes-present-continuous-culture/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-medical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-noises-mimes-linking-words/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-technical-english-mimes/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheet-travel-english-mimes-past-continuous/

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets-business-english-sounds-and-mimes-present-continuous-present-simple/

So many uses for TPR, so little time…

There are only five possible reasons why there are more bad English teachers in Japan than elsewhere, and as is usually the case when there are several explanations it is probably a combination of all of them. The possible reasons are:

1. Worse teachers come to Japan
2. The good teachers leave Japan
3. The worst teachers stay in Japan
4. People who are bad teachers and stay in Japan continue teaching instead of getting another job
5. People actually get worse at teaching due to being in Japan

I’ll deal with number one here and the rest will have to wait until it’s less hot and my brain starts working.

Why do worse teachers come to Japan?

1. People who go to European countries and Latin America often do it because of an interest in learning languages and so are more likely to be suitable language teachers. This is rarely the case in Japan.
2. Conversely, people who are interested in things like Japanese language and cultural things like haiku and calligraphy can tend to be over-intellectual and have problems talking to teenagers who are ignorant of their own high culture and have few ideas about their country or the world.
3. People who decide to completely escape from everything by going halfway across the world and are quite happy to not see their friends and family for years to do so are likely to be more emotionally unstable and have less social skills than people who pop back home once a month or so on Easyjet. Such people are likely to be a strain on their DoS, for teaching and other reasons.
4. Ditto for people who come to Japan due to an overwhelming interest in otaku things like anime, female J pop duos or Japanese bullet trains. They often do not have the best social skills and this can be a problem when teaching, especially in one to one classes.
5. Ditto for people who come to Japan because they can’t get a girlfriend back home.
6. The dating opportunities for men and lack of dating opportunities for women etc. means teachers are overwhelmingly male. Men are not generally as serious about their teaching as women, or at least there is a macho culture of not showing interest that can start to really have a negative effect.
7. The lack of well respected chains like Bell and International House puts professional teachers off applying for jobs in Japan
8. The low standards many language schools have (not even a CELTA or equivalent needed) puts professional teachers off, even when they are offered increased pay for qualifications and experience, because it makes the school look unprofessional
9. The way the schools in Japan recruit from abroad is more likely to attract people who had no previous interest in teaching than the types of advertising etc. used by chains in other countries

Wow, that was a longer list than I expected. Looks like it might be a while till I get down to talking about the effect of the expression “English conversation school ” in number 5 in the first list (sorry Katie!)

After training, recruiting, observing and chatting with English teachers and students in Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Italy, the UK (meaning teachers and students from everywhere) and spending 4 years in Japan, I have come to the conclusion that the average level of teaching ability of native English speaking teachers is lower in Japan than almost anywhere. Evidence:

• The lack of materials written by teachers based in Japan published by international publishers, compared to say teachers based in Spain
• Lack of progress and high drop out rate of Japanese students
• My language school in London had a system of taking ten points off the written test score of only Japanese students before they placed them in classes, as they had a special lack of ability to turn theoretical knowledge into a practical ability to read, write, listen and speak. Other nationalities lacked some of these skills, but rarely all four!
• Classes I have taken over in other countries have often known the basics of how to do pairwork, classroom language in English, the phonemic script, word and sentence stress, listening and reading micro-skills, and/ or understanding unstressed forms. That is rarely the case in Japan.
• When I have done teacher training INSET workshops in other countries I have always had to add an original twist, such as “How to use songs in new ways” about not always doing gap fills. When I tried that in Japan, I always had to go back to absolute basics- using songs at all is the original twist!
• The comparative lack of interest in learning Japanese, shows a lack of understanding of what the students are going through trying to learn a language and means the teacher can give no advice to students on how a language can be learnt well
• Student comments such as “You are the first teacher in this school to use the phonemic script, I haven’t seen that since high school”.
• Lots of other subjective feedback and feelings

Am I wrong? Do you know other countries where it is just as bad? And if it is true, why is it so? (Have just realised that is my original question which I haven’t answered at all, coming up in Part Two…)

Originally inspired by this post on My So Called Japanese Life blog.