Teach English in Majia Zhen - Baoji Shi

After working as an assistant language teacher(ALT) in Japanese elementary schools for three years, I have come to know some of the problems Japanese learners of English are facing. Three of the problems I noticed would be discussed below. First problem is certainly the lack of similar sounds in Japanese language itself. This should be quite obvious. As it is the case for many learners in other countries, and for many other languages. There are many ways of pronunciations used in English language that are absent in Japanese, and hence, many Japanese learners find it difficult to produce certain sounds in English. For example, the "th" sounds. Words with "th" have always been hard for English learners, and to an extend, even for native English speaking children. There is just no sounds in Japanese language that require them to put your tongue between their teeth to produce normally. As substitutions, it is very common for them to say "za" for the word "the," and "some-si-ngu" for the word "something," because they think "za" and "si," the two sounds that exist in Japanese, are the closest, or similar, to the English sounds they hear. But these examples are already good, as they are substitutions close enough to the original English sounds. I have heard many of my students and other Japanese speakers say "fa-do" for the word "father," and "baa-john" for the word "version." The second thing I have noticed is about the Japanese language itself--katagana. Japanese use katagana to represent borrowed words or words in other languages as Japanese words. These foreign words are eventually the official Japanese words. In a sense, it is a good thing, as they naturally know many French, Italian, English words and words from other countries without even knowing. However, with the reason mentioned above, the sounds are just substitutions, not exact. For native (and non-Japanese) English speakers, it is almost impossible to know the sound "Makudohnaludoh" is the fast food chain "Mcdonalds" that everyone knows. In fact, there is a very famous song published in 2017 that brings this very topic up. It can be easily looked up with the keywords "Tokyo bon 2020" on youtube. For my students, it is very hard to change the pronunciation of words like Mcdonalds. They have known it their way for a long time. Changing what one knows is often way harder than learning something one does not know. Last but not least, the third problem I have found is about the environment. I had a chance to talk casually to my students with the help of translators that I have learned how some (young) learners think about learning English. They do not feel the need to learn English, and some of them think they know how to speak English already-the katagana way. They live in Japan, one of the top countries in the world. Hence, it might be natural for them to feel self satisfied and sufficient, leading to a lack of motivation to learn English. At the same time, the country is filled with Japanese English that, it is almost impossible for them to learn and use English the right way. Their parents, the street signs, the Japanese textbooks they use, are all using katagana. Saying "Mcdonalds" rather than "Makudohnaludoh" would instead create a communication problem among themselves. The ones who only learned the Japanese katagana English do not know they are the same word. In the above, I discussed about what I have learned to be the problems of Japanese learners of English. These are not only problems for them; I face the same problems because I am to teach them English. I hope that with more experiences I can eventually come up with something that could help them learn English easier, even when they are living in a country with katagana English.