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To begin with, I would like to outline the main differences between the western education system in contrast to the Japanese education system. In general, Japan is a very conformist country as the Japanese way of thinking could be expressed as group thinking in contrast to the western way of individual thinking. From early childhood on Japanese people are taught that the group is much more important than the individual itself. So it is vital for Japanese people not to step out of line, blend in with everybody and everything and therefore being a valuable member of the Japanese society. The three most common problems teaching Japanese students are as follows: 1. General lack of confidence A lot of Japanese students struggle with talking freely during classes and they rather try to answer questions in short and simple sentences because of their lack of confidence and their fear to make mistakes and thus ‚failing‘ in front of other people. Japanese people in general already feel intimidated just by the fact that their fellow students are strangers and therefore they feel the need of being very polite and not causing confusion or creating an unpleasant atmosphere. 2. Grammatical differences Another important topic are the differences between English and Japanese grammar. Generally speaking, the Japanese grammar is much more contextual in contrast to English grammar. English grammar has a clear structure and the word order of sentences is somewhat predictable. However, especially in spoken Japanese no real word order exists. One would rather need to guess what part of the sentence is a subject or an object and sometimes subjects or objects are completely omitted. It can be very challenging for foreigners to understand the meaning of a sentence while Japanese people have mastered the ability relating subjects and objects to each other even when they are completely left out. Furthermore, a lot of English grammar counterparts simply do not exist in Japanese. As a result, Japanese students struggle with articles, prepositions and pronouns. In addition, tenses also can be very challenging because the general concept of tenses is a lot easier in the Japanese language. For instance, Japanese people use the present simple tense for both present and future tenses. 3. Pronunciation and phonetics One of the main problems Japanese students encounter is the correct pronunciation of the ‘th’. In addition to that, Japanese students usually struggle with the letters ‘r’ and ‘l’ because both of them are the same in Japanese. Possible solutions to the problems stated above include: First, it is vital to create a relaxed atmosphere in order to release the pressure that the students usually encounter in new situations. Second, it is important to make clear that Japanese ‘laws’ and customs do not apply during classes in order to get the students to think and speak in English. Finally, grammar and correct pronunciation needs to be drilled a lot until the students eventually understand the grammatical structure and become good at using the right pronunciation. In conclusion, teachers need to be aware of the cultural and linguistic differences and adjust their teaching style according to the needs of the Japanese students.
