TEFL Richlands Washington

Putting the ‘L' back in english As a non-native english speaker, I thought that english in japan was taught the same way it was in canada. When I started my work as an assistant english teacher in the country 3 years ago, I quickly saw what a misconception it was. english education is slowly becoming important in the japanese school system, but the Roman alphabet is such a big part of the english language that having to learn it alongside the new language represents an additional challenge. Also, english has infiltrated the japanese language in a slightly different way than it has for french or other Indo-European languages and some bad habits are harder to get rid of. In japan, the school system puts a great emphasis on testing. It unfortunately means that students are encouraged to learn english in order to pass tests without necessarily being able to use it in everyday life. This unfortunately produces many english teachers who know the grammar but are unable to use it, which leads to classes being taught entirely in japanese. Not only do the students get very limited exposure to english, but learning from a teacher who can't speak the language also greatly affects the overall motivation of the students, who struggle to see why they should even try. Before April 2011, english education started at the junior high school level, but now, it is compulsory starting in the 5th grade of elementary school. However, the current curriculum at the elementary school level revolves around games and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) insists that writing and grammar be taught later as to not scare the young learners away. This only delays the inevitable as the step between elementary school and junior high school english is too high. The japanese language is written using 3 different systems: 2 syllabaries (hiragana, for native japanese, and katakana, for foreign words) and chinese characters (kanji). japanese children only learn the Roman alphabet (romaji) in the 4th grade in order to transcribe japanese for people who do not know the japanese writing systems. When they start learning english, the japanese learners' knowledge of the Roman alphabet is limited only to the characters and sounds already existing in their first language. Moreover, the method they learn, Nihon-shiki romanization, does not follow english phonology, unlike Hepburn romanization. Thus, in order to write english properly, japanese speakers have to unlearn what they are familiar with and start using a whole different set of rules. Phonics is not a method of teaching japanese speakers are familiar with and its learning is made even more difficult by the way english words are treated in the japanese language. Indeed, as it is the case in most languages nowadays, english has infiltrated japanese, but since japanese uses exclusively syllabic pronunciations, the pronunciation of english words is first adapted: ‘icecream' became ‘aisukuriimu', ‘sweater' became ‘suetaa' and so on. Without knowing it, japanese students already know many english words, but are unable to recognize them by their native pronunciation. They have a hard time removing themselves from the katakana-ization of english, which is made even harder by the several letters that don't exist in the japanese language such as ‘L' and ‘V'. The inner mechanic of japanese is also very different from english in terms of structure and learning through translation often leads to interesting sentences. These issues are so well-known that popular culture has come up with the term ‘Engrish' to refer to the erroneous use of english (in oral or written form) in japan, or other Asian countries. From a linguistic point of view, english and japanese are so different from each other that it tend to represent a greater challenge than for speakers of Indo-European languages. From an academic point of view, the reform of english education in japan (still on-going) is needed in order to give the learners a better exposure to the language and a stronger desire to learn it.