The Problem with People

So I have to perform an open class ballet.  It's obviously not the dancing kind; but it requires jumping through a thousand proverbial hoops.

I was in a couple of practice classes today (as a foreigner I am incapable in everything I do, so half a dozen practice classes must be performed in order to reach acceptable standards) that entailed me being told to do something, then being told off for doing it.  Luckily I only have to perform this charade with one teacher.

Unluckily that particular teacher is a bag of nerves and emotion, who is struggling to contain it all.  If I hear of a murder-suicide spree at the weekend, I will know the perpetrator before the name is announced.

I am supposed to lead the class in English.  I have no problem with that, except the class has never been conducted in English before.  The kids are therefore bemused whenever I say something, because they've barely heard me speak up to this point.  The whole class is a lie, from the English speaking in class (which is nothing more than rote repetition in a normal class) through to my involvement in the teaching.  I am normally asked to stand still and do nothing, reciting a line on occasion.  The kind of job a robot will do in five years, and I'm certain robots are already doing my job in the private education sector.  Pointless doesn't cover it.

I have no problem being pointless, my work-related stress levels are somewhere below those of a pharmaceutical opiate tester - but I do object to the lies this particular teacher is feeding to those involved.  She knows I have no involvement in class, the students know, I know, yet she insists that we try to make it look like we're equals.

We're not.  On any level.

Couple this with a severe hormone imbalance, and the two practice classes were disastrous.

Considering how little this means to me, I feel she has a lot of work to do.  Have fun with that, woman who needlessly kept me for four hours unpaid overtime in the past two weeks.

Also of note - I am working in comprehensive schools.  Three of them.  My lesson plans were written by a man who thinks 'thru,' is the correct spelling for 'through.'

Needless to say, I end up re-writing most of the plans.  Perfect, my lessons are not.  An adventure into the unknown worlds of English teaching; they most certainly are.

Oh, and the kiwis to be fifty points clear of the japanese team come full time.

Of Japanese Education, and Other Things

So I though I'd pretend to do some work today, and scan some stuff into the computer.  Of course it was a ruse, nothing constructive was being accomplished, I was merely scanning in some pages to illustrate a point I'm about to make.

Previously, with ridiculous textbooks, I've felt uncomfortable freely using examples in case someone sues me for defamation or libel or something; the textbooks we use are common across Japan however, and I'm sure an entire nation could care less about one man blogging about them.  Therefore, without further ado:  The problems of language teaching in Japan; part two.

So you'll have to forgive the horrible expressions, crappy cartoons and generally poor layout.  They've modelled this after a Japanese comic book (they're massively popular here) and it was made in 2000.  That aside, what you may immediately notice is that everything has the Japanese pronunciation written next to it.  This is the best page I could find in the whole book, that is to say, this page has the least transliteration.  Most pages have more, with detailed descriptions in Japanese for everything.

For the average student who could care less about English, I'm not necessarily against the idea.  The point being that these students will never speak with an Englishman, or Australian, or american ever again.  Leaving school means leaving English interaction.  Essentially, English is a means of testing.  Including the Japanese pronunciations would, at first, appear fine.

However, Japanese has fewer sounds than English, and all their sounds are accompanied with vowels.  Think about this for a moment.  There is no 'm.'  It has to be accompanied with a vowel.  'M,' becomes one of, 'ma, me, mi, mu or mo.'  That means when learning the letters of the alphabet, no one can initially pronounce the consonants correctly.  This would be fine if the students learnt English in isolation, something along the lines of 'this is how it is, if you don't initially learn English along with Japanese sounds, you'll be fine.'  Of course they don't.  I just had a lesson - teaching the kids English sounds, where the Japanese teacher was approximating the sounds into Japanese.  Some of the sounds were reaching three katakana letters in length, just for a single syllable/sound!  Incredibly stupid.

The particularly annoying thing was the insistence of the teacher and student to pronounce everything incorrectly, after I had just corrected them.  Learning 'm,' instead of 'mu,' took a solid minute, only for the teacher to write up 'mu,' in Japanese on the board, and all the kids to immediately embed 'mu,' in their brains - and there it will stay.  Incorrect for all eternity.

On a side note, the chair I'm currently sitting in, while scanning these pictures looks like this starship.  Geek, right?

So basically there is no hope for these kids to ever learn English - they will forever learn Japlish.

To be fair, I can't think of a single teacher I've met who pretends that they teach English.  They all realise the errors, flaws, mistakes, misconceptions and lies perpetrated by their education system.  Afterall, the teachers I work with have been through the system themselves, and have studied English to a level most of these kids won't.  I would be surprised if a single student in this school went on to study English at university.  There must be four hundred and fifty kids in this school.

So ultimately I have to illustrate my frustrations with another page.  I decided I wouldn't pick a page meant for students, as these things are always full of holes.  Instead, how about some spiel aimed at the teachers themselves, in English.  To preface this, it was obviously written by a fluent speaker, and isn't a typical, crazed translation likening life to falling cherry blossoms, and the transience of youth to a flowing river.

Ok so blogspot won't upload the picture.  Maybe I'll try at home.

To be continued.

Update:

This is the page I tried to upload earlier.

Check out the heading 'Human Education.'

Perhaps I was wrong about the wishy-washy Japanese style of writing; it can be, and is translated directly into English.

'English language teaching should contribute to character building and world peace.'

What the.

The words flow like rivers among an ocean of rocky precipices, deftly dodging...  Ok I can't keep this up.  This nonsense has no place in an English language teaching manual, especially one designed for a syllabus whereby the sole aim is to get kids through tests.

And they still haven't taught the kids how to run properly, but now they're making them jump the hurdles.  Literally.  They're running up to the hurdles, stopping, jumping over them, and carrying on.

Ever wondered why you've never seen a single Japanese sprinter/hurdler/sportsman/athelete?  (Except for sumo, where the native Japanese competitors are beaten by south pacific islanders all the time anyway.)