Archive for the ‘Teaching English in Japan’ Category

This is just gossip, so perhaps you can tell me (by comment or email) which ones you have heard or think to be true:

- The TOEIC was originally set up by specific request of the Japanese government who wanted to promote communicative English in a population of salarymen that they were convinced only knew grammar (although to be honest they don’t seem to know that very well either). Someone balked at the cost and/ or complication of a really communicative test, i.e. one that included writing and speaking for all candidates, and so this is the test that we got. Same thing happened in 2006 with the “new” (aka “blink and you’ll miss the changes”) TOEIC. Have you ever met a student who improved their communicative English by studying for TOEIC? Have you ever met a student who didn’t suffer from the opposite effect due to studying for TOEIC? Me neither

- ETS was forced to change the test due to the number of complaints of people with perfect TOEIC scores who were employed and then found to be incapable of using the language in business communication. However, all the changes that really would have changed that disappeared due to bureaucracy within ETS and/ or companies who were unwilling to pay for what they said they wanted

- ETS lets local agents set the price of the institutional TOEIC (ones that are done in company etc), and they charge whatever they can get away with. The Koreans are lucky enough to have a government that has introduced the competing TEPS test, making TOEIC IP in Korea much cheaper than in Japan. Ditto in places like France, where this is the reason why the TOEIC IP is popular but individuals taking the TOEIC is very rare indeed

- Although the new test includes Australians and Brits, they aren’t allowed to say anything that isn’t also correct in American English

- The format of the TOEIC was actually decided by the CIA in order to stop the Japanese and Koreans getting too good at English and so totally beating the Americans in business

I have reasons to believe that one of the rumours above is false. Comments on which ones you don’t believe or know for a fact to be fiction below please

The main parts of the experience of my return trip should be no surprise for anyone who hasn’t been home for a while. There has been the pleasure of being able to communicate freely being quickly overwhelmed by the annoyance of not being able to concentrate on your book on the bus because you can’t stop yourself listening in to other people’s conversations. Then there’s the usual noticing everything that is new for the first two days and then feeling like nothing has changed by the time it’s time to leave. There have also been the things specific to the UK like enjoying the politeness and then slowly coming to the conclusion that that factor hasn’t just declined since “my day” but also since you were there six months before. The odd thing this time is that I haven’t actually been back in the UK, but instead back in Japan visiting the in-laws. The feeling, however, has been almost identical to being “really” back home. Nice to know that something about travelling can still surprise me…

Their spokesman said “With IELTS increasingly taking over from TOEFL, BULATS eating away at TOEIC, Eiken expanding in Japan and the Korean government introducing its own English language exams, we were worried that the level of English teaching in Asia might improve. We hope this new exam will redress the balance.”

Original story here.

Were the Nazis grammar nazis?- Downfall of Grammar (genius!)

Will Smith tries to cope with Japanese English

Grammar of the F word

Japanese computer program (?) teaches vocabulary in context

trailer for the documentary Mad About English

The most creative ever attempt to count to 100 in English gets no reward

Trying to teach the French English pronunciation (this would actually make a great intro to a real teacher training session on teaching pron)

complilation of Engrish signs (mainly from the classic www.Engrish.com, but easier to watch as a video)

Quite a good remix of the classic I Have A Bad Case of Diarrhea dance

More Bad Grammar- The Way I Are parody

And there is also lots of useful stuff to show you how to teach English, but you can easily find that stuff for yourself with a search on Youtube I’m sure. Otherwise, have a look at my links page for some more serious vids for TEFLers or TED.com for TEFLers and linguists.

And (more likely) if you are just looking for more Youtube silliness instead, have a look at my previous time wasting with Youtube:

East Asians learning English

Language on Youtube

Bondage as a common TEFL advertising theme from Gaba in Japan and EF in China, from More on Weirdo Language School Ads- The Atlantic

“Spaced learning” (nothing to do with drugs, despite the name) and other new teaching methods that are “producing dramatic results“ according to the Telegraph

More failed pop stars hitting TEFL, to join my mate’s possibly true story of training (and failing) the ex lead singer from The Christians?

“Teaching abroad was the right decision for Paul McCartney. Following a part-time 10-month TESOL course, McCartney left his “soul-destroying” job… to move to Shanghai”

Come on Paul, I know you’ve never had a decent solo record, but you were in the Beatles! (from TEFL: A World of Teaching Opportunities in The Telegraph, bizarrely home to less capitalistic stories on our fair profession than The Guardian)

Maybe he wants to join:

“teachers I knew [who] often came to work with visible lesions and sores because they frequented brothels”

from Sex, Drugs and ESL, a piece of journalism as serious as you would expect with such a title, from In These Times

Moving onto other bodily fluids:

The Elements of Bile- 50 years and the 500th attack on The Elements of Style by Strunk and White (also of Charlotte’s Web fame, which is something I’ve just found out 50 years after everyone else, it seems)

Also:

Dual immersion kindergarten not teaching other subjects as well as they could? (and with a lesson for CLIL??)

EFL publisher Pearson buys Wall Street English China

And if that ain’t enough for you, Karenne over at Kalinago English has her own links to 8 great articles on the ELT blogosphere this week.

It’s an age old question, and the Japan Times has had their 250th attempt at answering the question here and Mike Guest has written what must be his own 79th attempt here. Obviously, being humans, 250 people writing on a subject means at least 250 different opinions. Here anyway are my personal favourite theories- maybe not the most important reasons, but certainly among the most neglected explanations:

1. The world’s worst self study materials

My father in law has given up on English after buying a book specifically marketed as for beginners that includes ten pages of English proverbs- who can blame him??

2. They don’t need it

In fact, spending time abroad studying English could permanently set back a Japanese employee’s career due to everything they do being taken as proof that they are no longer properly Japanese (in a similar way to everything you could possibly do in a mental hospital being proof that you are really insane). Same thing for going to Harvard instead of Tokyo University. And anyway, all projects are given to whoever has the right level of seniority and who happens to be handy, leaving the translation to be done by someone with a Pre-Intermediate level of English because telling their boss that the person at the next desk is near native wouldn’t be showing the right kind of can-do spirit.

3. Articles like this one and that Japan Times one telling the Japanese that they can’t speak good English and giving them excuses for it

Lucky I don’t still have any readers in Japan! To be honest, Japanese English isn’t that bad (hence the title of this post not being what you are probably remembering it as- take another look!) Most Japanese are more comprehensible than the French (even in writing), less shy than the Finns and better listeners than the Spanish, and that seems good enough to me.

As I’ve worked for the school in these two links I can tell you that the changes in technology certainly haven’t improved on the usual TEFL blacklisting accuracy (although they can’t be much worse than Sandy’s recent accusations of a TEFL school’s links to terrorism, with no evidence at all), but the TEFL news nerd in me found the fact that they exist quite interesting anyway, and here they are:

Wiki on Japanese Eikaiwa (English conversation) school Shane, with wikis on GEOS, Aeon and ECC on the same site

Yahoo Answers question and answer on the same school

Will be interested to see what Yahoo does with an obviously one sided answer, but as I said in my previous post we need all the help we can get. Hope they do better than the short lived anti-TEFL-scam Facebook group.

Was the original, overlong title of my not so original, overlong guest piece for Lindsay Clandfield of Six Things fame. Go and have a look at it now.

I said now!

No, this post is not the ultimate ego trip or a sign of a split personality (or at least not just those things)- Troy from The Blog with the Longest Name in Spain sent me a few questions a couple of weeks ago and then picked out the best bits of my answers to put in a real article for a real publication on real paper he was writing for, and thought I may as well use the rejected bits here on the internet where anything is okay:

“How would you consider Asian learners different from other learners that you have taught?

Japanese and Korean students are just as different as Germans and Italians, so if we bring in Singapore Chinese, Malaysians, Burmese refugees in Thailand etc you can see that it is difficult to make generalisations even if we just talk about East and Southeast Asia and ignore Central and South Asia. And then there are differences of age, class, gender… However, in my classes in Japan, Korea and Thailand and from teaching Chinese students in the UK I would say they are less willing to speak out in front of the whole class, have more of an idea that they are lacking in fluency (although reading and understanding natural connected speech are often actually more important weaknesses when taking IELTS etc), are less likely to interrupt each other, pause longer before speaking (also a factor with Finnish students), expect the class to cover the whole book in the order in which it is on the page, and read all the instructions on the page even when you have just told them what to do. On the positive side, they have less interference from false friends and grammatical forms that seem the same, and actually listen to each other even without being told to (unlike Spanish students!) There are also plenty of hard working students and ones that are obsessed with foreign culture.

What has been the biggest culture difference that you have encountered in the classroom?

My classic moment was teaching in a language school in London, where a Japanese girl almost died from shock when Alessandro, the obligatory loud and lively Italian student in a group of mainly Asians, did his impression of a trumpeter summoning the hoards with his nose and handkerchief. He was completely oblivious to effect he was having.

Another was finally sending out a student who spoke Chinese and got a “red card” for the third time in that one class, only to be as gobsmacked as the other students when he gave a five minute speech on how Columbians (about half the class) hate Chinese. This nationalist paranoia is hidden better in Thailand and restricted to a certain segment in Japan, but is an undercurrent that since then I have always found it worth keeping an antenna out for.

In kids’ classes in Japan, there are two moments that stick in my mind, One is pointing at my chest to get them to understand and repeat “teacher” and being perturbed when I got repeated choruses of “T shirt” (Japanese point at their noses when saying “me”, so they thought I was pointing at my clothing) . The other was having the kids turn to the other teacher in amazement and say in Japanese “He is drinking water!” (you will rarely see a Japanese teacher drink even a glass or water in class, and certainly not straight from a plastic bottle)- to which, to his credit, he replied “Ningen kara” (“Because he is a human”). One thing not one teacher has ever got used to in Japanese kindergarten classes in the “kanchou”- kids sticking their index fingers out from their combined fists and seeking to stick it up the arses of off-guard teachers and students. I still fail to see how this is funny however young you are or whatever country you come from! I wrote a post on my JapanExplained blog on my faux pas in Japan- http://japanexplained.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/the-big-list-of-my-japanese-faux-pas/

What’s the biggest misperception of TEFL?

That it is easy. Another is that it will give you useful skills for the job market when you go home. It might, but very few people catch up with the salaries of the people who graduated at the same time and just stayed at home to climb the corporate ladder.

What is the best/worst thing about teaching in Asia?

The worst thing is being 13 hours and 500 pounds away from home (the UK) and needing to factor in a 9 hour time difference to even make a phone call. This also means family and friends visit for 10 days (a strain by the end!) or not at all.

The best thing is being constantly surprised. At the beginning this is mainly things like being surprised by the taste of food you had to pick from appearance only (biting into what turns out to be a curry donut is a pleasant surprise for many in Japan), cultural differences where you thought things were universal, and views of the city and countryside where nothing seems familiar. As you stay longer that turns into surprise at how much you have changed (bowing on the phone even when you go home) and how quickly Asian countries, especially cities, change.

If you could only offer one piece of advice, what would you tell someone before accepting a job in Asia?

If you mean before accepting a particular job you have been offered, I could give you a list of a hundred things you should look out for. The best thing to do is to apply for as many jobs as you can and watch out for schools that miss out info that most of the others have included.

What cultural differences should you keep in mind when planning your classes?

I wrote an article on 15 cultural differences in the classroom (http://edition.tefl.net/articles/cultural-differences/), and ended up having to write an extra article with another whole 15 and two specific articles on Japan (http://edition.tefl.net/articles/cultural-differences-japanese/) because I’d hardly scratched the surface of the topic with the first one. The most important three things you can research are what their teachers do in their usual school classes (e.g. making them stand up and chorus hello, useful for discipline and getting their attention in Thailand, or brushing their teeth after lunch in Japan), body language, and taboo topics.”

Oh I do love talking about myself! Anyone else want to interview me? Quick. before I start asking random people in the street…