Archive for the ‘Phonemic script’ Category

“No children, you are not seeing things. This, my little friends, is a schwa!” (more…)

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.

This is the one simple recipe that teachers all over Japan are using to raise the level of their students’ English:

• Take one copy of the Japan Times that you were going to read anyway
• Cut out one topical and/ or cultural article that might interest your students
• Photocopy
• Make up some comprehension and discussion questions, either before or on the spot
• Explain the 20 or 30 pieces of vocabulary you think they don’t understand while they tap away at their electronic dictionaries at the same time
• Send them home happy that they have ’learnt’ said vocab and read a real newspaper article
• Repeat next week

And really, the punters do love it- because they get the impression of having done something authentic and difficult. However, due to the fact that there are no real comprehension or vocabulary questions and that they can talk about the article using as easy language as they like, they haven’t actually been pushed at all. Just like watching an educational programme on NHK television, the illusion of learning is complete and the actual learning is almost zero. Evidence for the prosecution:

• Students who study this way get no practice of day to day functional questions and linked speech, and so whatever their level they will need to ask a native speaker to repeat social chit chat questions several times before they can reply
• Students almost never use the vocabulary in the texts in that or subsequent lessons, and even less in the rest of their lives
• Such as lesson covers almost none of the language and skills needed to move up to the next level as described in the Common European Framework
• Any approach that is being used a lot in Japan obviously isn’t working, or the Japanese wouldn’t have such a low level of English

Maybe these joker teachers don’t care. Maybe they are just looking for a justification to read the newspaper (I’ve found mine- start a blog!). I do care, and for a perfectly selfish reason. I am sick and tired of getting a student or class of students in Japan that I have to teach pairwork, phonemic script, linked speech pronunciation, basic chit chat and functional language questions, basics of telephoning and emailing, classroom language questions etc. etc. from absolute scratch. And there is only one solution. I hereby ban the use of authentic newspaper articles in class in Japan- no exceptions! And that includes Breaking News English!

Rant over