Teach English in Sanchahe Zhen - Shangluo Shi

In this task, I will be talking about my personal experience of teaching languages (both English and Spanish) to Japanese people, in Japan. Japanese is known to be a very difficult, challenging language, with 3 different alphabets and a very unique grammar structure. Besides the special characteristics that separates the Japanese language from other languages such as English, Japan itself has also a very special culture around teaching and learning. This means that in Japan there is a very special profile of student, and a certain expectation of how to teach and how things should be learned, including a new language. Let me begin by mentioning briefly some of the strengths or advantages I have found in Japanese students and their way of learning. Japanese students are extremely respectful and polite, usually regardless of their age. They usually study hard and they seem to be motivated, regardless of background, language level or environment. I can say they have been educated to study and work hard to achieve their goals, no matter if that goal is imposed (such as learning English for business purposes) or self-chosen. On the other hand, there are some weaknesses or difficulties I have found in most of my students. The first one and more obvious one is the excess os respect. Because Japanese people are very conscious and respectful of others, and especially of the higher ranks and strong figures such as boss, teacher, etc... they are reluctant to speak up and communicate their needs, problems, doubts, etc. They might get lost during a lesson or feel frustration, but never mention it even when asked. This is aggravated because of another aspect: the shyness. Japanese people are shy, and they will not speak in public if they can avoid it. More than that, they will always be reluctant of speaking in a language they don't control, such as English, because that will make them look "weak" or make a "bad impression" in the eyes of the teacher or of the other students. This is problematic because the teacher needs to find a good balance between being understanding, mild and supportive, and being firm, engage them and try to make them participate as much as possible. Also, the teacher needs to be very alert and very sensitive to what's going on with each student to assess any change in the needs or goals of each individual and try to solve any trouble or issue that remains silent. Moreover, because of the specialty of Japanese language, Japanese people have difficulties with certain aspects of the English language. They tend to have troubles with the pronunciation and spelling. Being Japanese and open language (and by this I mean, you tend to use open sounds and very open mouth when speaking, same as Spanish), and English a more "closed" one, Japanese students will find some sounds difficult to read and pronounce. The same applies for reading. When you read Japanese, you read literally what is written. When you read English, some sounds are totally different from what is written. This creates confusion and mistakes especially in the beginning. Then we have the very special, problematic sounds that I have found only among Japanese students. The best example is the pronunciation of "r" and "l". I haven't found many Japanese able to tell the difference between the two letters, and most of them will keep having troubles with the pronunciation and differentiation of the two letters until very late in their learning stages. Of course, there are plenty of other areas where they tend to have troubles, such as modal and auxiliary verbs, tense conjugation (Japanese verb system is very simple) or sentence construction (Japanese usually place the verb at the end of the sentence). It will be important for any teacher who wants to teach to Japanese people to have an idea of how Japanese language looks like and how Japanese people tend to learn and expect to be taught, so that they can prepare themselves and understand why some mistakes are make again and again, and how to approach a lesson and/or a student, how to be supportive but not scary, in brief, how to teach English as a foreign language in the very special and unique cultural context of "Japanese learners".