Teaching English in Japan

In a follow-up to my recent article on life in Japan, I decided to write about teaching English in Japan, again through the JET Programme. I worked in Japan for one year from 1999-2000 teaching English as an Assistant English Teacher (or AET) in two different public junior high schools and made monthly visits to public elementary schools.

The most shocking thing that I learned when I began teaching was that even those in their third year of English could not actually speak any English (that's to say nothing of the Japanese English teachers, many of whose English was elementary at best!). On my first day teaching (in a level 3 class!) I announced to the class, "Hello, my name is Alana. Please open your books to page 2." I was greeted by blank stares. I repeated myself a few times, to no avail.

Finally, the Japanese teacher who taught in tandem with me, asked, "Alana-san, may I?" Thinking he was going to translate my words into Japanese, I said sure. He looked at the class and said, "Haro, my namu izu Arana-san. Pureasu open yoru booksu to paigi two." I realized I had my work cut out for me!!

It was not long before I realized, unfortunately, that the Japanese education system (meaning teachers and administrators) did not really intend to teach conversational English. Most students and teachers were only concerned with teaching for rote memorization exams. Japanese teachers could do this far better than native English speakers as they knew the tests and could speak English that the Japanese students could understand. They never could figure out my accent!

Unfortunately I fell into the trap, as many JET's do, of being merely an auxiliary teacher whose lessons were "just for fun." My lessons usually consisted of trivia games or teaching about holidays. Most of the teachers and students were not interested in learning pronunciation or common usage.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy my time or feel that I did do some good. Many of the students were very friendly and interested in meeting a "white girl" and I'm sure learned a lot about my culture simply by chatting with me after class.

I would encourage anyone thinking about teaching in Japan not to come to it with too high expectations. You're not going to change the world here, but at least you can expose some young Japanese to a culture they have only (hopefully) read about in books. And, more importantly, you can try to improve the English of the Japanese teachers, and hope that they will pass it on to the students.

BY: Alana