There is a certain teacher who I have to teach with at a junior high school. If you are a foreign English teacher and you teach in public schools in Japan most of the time you will have a Japanese English teacher who teaches with you. Some teachers are good about balancing the load between the two teachers and some teachers rarely use the foreign English teachers to their full ability. At one of the schools I attend there is a teacher who literally has no idea what to do with me. Her English is at a decent level but her class structure is not very good and I’m being kind when I say that. She mumbles and trails off while speaking and myself as a native English speaker I have trouble trying to figure out what she is trying to say. I can’t imagine what it would be like being a 13 year old kid trying to understand what she is trying to say with her low volume and unwillingness to say anything of consequence. She likes to end sentences with “ya, know?” And I have a definite answer for her. I DON’T know what you are trying to say and I’m sure 99.99% of the students don’t either.
The Japanese language and culture has a unique feature where no one likes to say anything directly. Everyone implies what needs to be said so they don’t have to bother anyone. Basically if the person you are talking to doesn’t understand what you are implying then they must not feel the same way. In that case many Japanese people will just let it go. When you try to apply these concepts to English everyone sounds unnatural and the listener constantly feels like they have to say something like “what’s your point?” or “Why are you telling me this?” As an English teacher I think that being able to use the language in a natural manner is as important as being grammatically correct. Anyways, today this teacher wanted me to evaluate the students’ English. They are junior high school first graders. Their assignment was to introduce someone that they look up to. It would go something like this. Look at this picture? Do you know this person? This is Michael Jordan. He is a basketball player. If you are able to say something like that you should get an A. I however felt that the assignments were a bit too simple and I thought that something of that nature should only be worth a B score. The first reason is I don’t like how the assignment was designed. I am asked “do you know this person?” And am only allowed to answer how the script is written. So even if I know the person I have to say I don’t. Which just basically means that I am not needed for the assignment. It is a one sided conversation where all I say is no I don’t. I don’t think you need a native speaker of English to hang out in a classroom for 50 minutes only to say “No I don’t” 30 times. I know that this teacher is just following what is in the textbook however I feel like if you want to stimulate your students you should make almost all of your activities interactive. If you don’t you are just speaking by yourself and of course that isn’t communication. That is just a recitation. Many of the students did their presentation and I would ask them one follow up question and some of them were able to answer but most of them were not. I just wanted to give the students a chance to actually communicate but I feel like I would be criticized because I was deviating from the textbook. In a recent test to measure the level of English of students in the prefecture where I live, over half of the junior high school students were not able to have a simple conversation in English. These are students who have been studying English for 7 years now and they still can’t have a basic conversation. It’s not because the students don’t have the ability either. They aren’t given the chance to practice. For example, after I evaluated the students today there were 15 minutes left in class. Rather than trying to think of an activity for the students practice speaking the teacher told the students to study for a test. I think that being able to improvise and make fun activities on the spot is an important ability for teachers. This teacher constantly complains about the level of students in the class but her classes are so boring and unclear that many of the students have lost any interest they had in English. It’s embarrassing to be a part of. With languages it’s hard to say what deserves a perfect score. If someone writes an essay that meets all the requirements that doesn’t mean they get an A. With language classes an assignment must be better than average to receive a high score. If a student’s assignment excels far beyond the rest of the class it should be recognized with a high score. If a student is average I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting a B. There is nothing wrong with getting a B on an assignment but there definitely is something wrong when a student who is miles ahead of other students is getting zero recognition.
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At the schools that I teach at, all of the students were given tablets with a keyboard about a year ago. The teachers are doing their best to implement the tablets into their classes but it's a double edged sword, especially in English class. Many of the students use google translate when they need to write something and the Japanese teachers don't seem to realize or care. Obviously this means the students don't get a chance to improve their writing skills. One of the benefits of having a tablet with a keyboard is learning how to type but since many of the students don't have access to a computer at their home they have never learned to type. Also, they aren’t taught how to type at school, meaning that when they do have to write in English they search for one letter at a time using the "hunt-and-peck" method. I feel bad for the students because they should be learning how to type. Being able to effectively use a keyboard in the 21st century is an immeasurable beneficial skill. I actually looked up online to see what percent of Japanese people can type without looking at the keyboard and it was only 30% according to pcacademy.com. By the way typing without looking at the keyboard is called touch typing or blind touch. I’m not sure which saying is more commonly used or which is older but according to a coworker Blind Touch is much more commonly used. I can’t say for certain but most likely that research was done in a metropolitan area, so most likely if you were to go into a more rural area like where I live, Iwate, the percentage would be much lower.
In the past I would be given handwritten assignments from the students and check their writing. I think when you are at a basic level of your second language, handwriting is the most mentally stimulating way to practice the language. If the assignments are handwritten it means that even if they use google translate in order to finish the project they must write it themselves, rather than just copying and pasting from google. Also writing by hand in general makes one become slow and deliberate in terms of choosing which words they would like to use. I’m a firm believer that when you are learning anything new the last thing you should be, is in a hurry. I would rather a student write three sentences with actual creativity and intent than just spewing back a bunch of randomly translated sentences from google. Disconnection. The schools have the ability to add me to Microsoft Teams groups so that I could check the students' writing but they don’t. I don’t know why either. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t know how to or if they would rather not have to go through the trouble of doing so. I’m the only native speaker of English at my school and while the Japanese English teachers do have good skills there will always be times when a native speaker will catch something strange that most Japanese English teachers would not. For example a sentence may be grammatically correct but it could be phrased in a way that native speaker would never do. I asked one of the teachers at a junior high school if he would mind adding me to a Microsoft Teams account so I could check the students' writing and he said “there is no need”. I honestly got a bit frustrated and asked him “Why do you think so?”. His response was “just writing in English is good practice and they don’t need to be corrected.” While his opinion does make sense the unfortunate truth is that many of the students aren’t even writing themselves. They are simply using google translate. I’m not a fan of setting the bar low for students. I don’t care how low the level of the students is, that should never determine your standards for the class. There are always going to be gifted and intelligent students in your class and depriving them from more meaningful and interactive classes because you think that just writing is enough is a weak excuse. Let’s put that idea into practice in another class, for example math. What if I just let students do a bunch of math problems and I never checked their work because I said “just doing math is enough”. People would look at me like I am out of mind. People act like all languages are fluid things that don’t need to be perfect and communication is the only thing that really matters and for the most part they are right but I don’t want people to think that there are no rules for a language because there definitely are. Just because someone will probably understand you even if you make a grammatical mistake doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put in the effort to learn the correct grammar. The only thing I think about when a teacher makes a comment like “they’ll probably understand you” is, “you’re too lazy to teach this grammar correctly.” When I am speaking in Japanese and I get corrected about my word usage or grammar I’m always interested and I don’t take it personally because I know that I am not a native speaker and getting advice from native speakers for free is an invaluable experience. If a Japanese teacher of English doesn’ share that same level of enthusiasm about English it could mean a few things. The first is, they have topped out on their English ability and don’t feel they need to improve anymore. The second would be, they are OK with students speaking incorrectly. The last would be, the teachers don’t think students actually need to learn English. All three interpretations of the teacher’s laziness are problematic. I’m sure there are many effective ways of using technology in the classroom but right now there is a gap. Perhaps the textbooks should be completely changed into digital documents that are completely interactive. Perhaps having an AI companion similar to the Microsoft paper-clip from Windows 1997 will be a welcome addition to the future of English education but I get the feeling that having an experienced educated person at the front of the classroom will always be part of the educational experience and will always be the preferred way to become educated. For example, currently I am trying to become a better guitar player and there are several ways to get lessons online right now but having a one-on-one teacher is still the preferred method to get lessons because getting feedback from your individual performance is the quickest way to improve. There are several ways to learn how to program online also but for most people the options become overwhelming and wind up never truly learning what they need to become able to use it effectively. For the time being the tablets that my students are using have become glorified smartphones. They are useful for simple tasks but in many ways they simply get in the way of having a genuine experience. In a time when everyone is concerned with how much time children are spending in front of screens, why do we feel they need to give them more screen time in school? Shouldn’t we be focused on real experiences? Technology is definitely our friend but not if we don’t use it in a way where we can monitor its pros and cons. Sometimes when I have free time at work I'll just start looking on auction sites even though I don't need anything and I want to say that again. I don't need anything. I have a lot of hobbies and I have more than enough stuff to do them. I have 5 bicycles, every game system I want, several guitars and tube amplifiers and tons of records. As a human we only have one set of hands and that means you can only do one thing at a time. So why do I need so much stuff? The answer is, I don't. I just have impulses that make me feel like I need more stuff. For example today I was just thinking about the fact that I don't have a North American PS3 which for a very small list of reasons could be useful for me.
I live in Japan and that means DVDs from North America do not work in a standard DVD player. I do have a DVD player that I bought in America a very long time ago but it's so old that it only has a composite out. You might be asking "Robert who still watches DVDs?" and the answer would be "I do." Have you ever tried to Stream anything by Wes Anderson? He does not exist on Netflix or Amazon prime in the least. Have you ever tried to watch the original terminator? You'll be able to find the later sequels with Christian Bale but not the original movie that started the series. Those are just some of the reasons I still have physical DVDs and a few blu-ray discs. Having a North American PS3 would mean that I could watch movies from North America in HD with an HDMI cable; something that I currently cannot do. Other than that it would mean I could play North American PS1 games on an HD TV. However I have only about 2 or three North American PS1 games. Because I've been living in Japan for over a decade now, most of my collection is in Japanese. Also buying old PS1 games in Japanese is much cheaper than North American games. The only PS1 game I have bought in the last 5 years is metal gear solid. I bought that game about a year ago and still haven't played it. Mostly because I have the HD collections for PS3 and if you didn't already know, the PS3 is region free. So that means the only reason I would need to have a PS3 is for PS1 games of which I have two and I have played neither of them since I bought them. Of course DVDs would be nice but blu rays are cheap now too and obviously higher resolution so there is no reason not to buy them. I feel like whenever I need to buy something I should be writing an essay to convince myself of why I don't need whatever it is I just became obsessed with. Buyer's remorse is real. Have you ever just clicked on an item and instantly felt like you did something stupid. Sometimes I think back to the line from Fight Club when Tyler Durden says "The things you own end up owning you". If you buy something and regret it you have two choices. The first choice is to keep it because you don’t want to admit to yourself that you bought something stupid. The second choice is to take a loss and get rid of something you don’t need which is obviously the more admirable path but most people don’t do it. I know it's cool to hate on Fight Club these days but I still feel like there are still a few insightful lines from that movie. Also I had a chance to meet the author Chuck Palahniuk when I was about 19 years old in San Francisco and he was one of the nicest guys I've ever met and I feel like discrediting someone's classic work just because people for some reason relate it to toxic masculinity. I don't even know why people think that. It's troublesome how the entire left wing of people seem to take certain people's opinions as fact and don't decide anything for themselves. Anyways, let's get back to the PS3. Do I want a PS3? Yes, I do. However I feel like I have so many games that I haven't finished yet and there are so many new games that I should be playing that I shouldn't waste money on another PS3. I already own 4. What I should be doing is getting rid of my PS3 slim and my PS3 phat that doesn't play PS2 games because I do already own the original PS3 that plays PS 1,2 and 3 games. However 1 and 2 aren't region free leaving this itching sensation in the back of my head that I do need the USA version even though it costs almost as much as a PS5. Then I just think about the fact that I have a PS5 and the only game that I have played on it is Death Stranding Director's Cut which of course is originally a PS4 game. Shouldn’t I just buy another PS5 game? Shouldn’t I be playing CyberPunk 2077 finally after years of thinking about that game instead of grasping on to memories of PS2 games I played 20 years ago. I think it’s important to differentiate your feelings about wanting to play something or just collecting stuff because it reminds you of yourself when you were younger because believe or not, no matter how many games you buy you’re never going back to 2002. |