Students...

When I ask students questions about English in English in the class Oral English, a class composed of students that have all had at least 6 years of English classroom experience, you might expect that they would sometimes, occasionally answer in...English.


Sadly, very very sadly, this has not been the case very often in my classes. I usually have to ask every time I talk directly to an one student or small group of students woking together to speak English. It seems, that in most classrooms for English, talking about English, hearing about English, reading about English, etc...is done in Japanese. Why? Well...that's just how it is here with most still, unfortunately. A book I read about a teacher that came to a town of about the same size here in Japan 20 years ago had almost identical experiences. There was hardly a word of English past the "Goodu mo-nin. ahm fine sank you ando you?" Now, well...the students seem to have similar expectations. They are plenty happy to belt that old phrase out even today, 20 years later, regardless of who the student is, how motivated they are, and whether or not they even want to be in the room. They all seem pleased to utter it even.

It gets a little worse. Some students refuse to utter one word of English. They will turn to their buddy for a translation of what I am saying, even when they are all words that they COULD understand if they were trying. Some student are literally just too lazy to even try. A pack of boys will designate someone to interupt me or just start translating line by line what I am saying (which is of course easy, since I am using super-low level English, stuff that they all truly know and have learned and relearned for over half a decade, and which they were all tested on to get out of Jr. High and High School both. They simply refuse. When I ask them what the name of the class is, they even say it in the Japanese form, not the English form. I repeat it every time in the English form "Oral English" and they usually sit waiting like there is some kind of a punch line. There is no punchline. They are here to speaking English, listen to English, write down what they are saying and hearing from the other students presentations, and to just get in there and "do English" in any way we can get them to.

I've heard from my superiors that English department staff meetings are almost all essentially the same way. Even though almost every last person knows around as much English as they do Japanese, have giant vocabularies, and medium-to-very high level of speaking abilities, if any question is posed at the staff meeting in English (mostly only by foreigners) that the Japanese immediately start talking about it in Japanese. They won't say a word about it in English generally until the discussion is over. Even if the question presented is one ABOUT English. Everything is done in Japanese. Oh, and if all the people in the staff meeting are Japanese, they will not once use English in the entire departmental meeting, as I have been told, quite seriously by superior teacher.

I have problems figuring out how anyone learns any English at all since few ever seem to participate in the language besides a few very small English speaking clubs! I don't want that to be the reason why some of my students don't seem to understand me, and I still don't think it is the reason that they don't. But I know that participation in learning is not really...expected.

Well, on the lighter side, my classes seems to be falling in love with me, toppling at a rate of about 2-4 students per day. There are some good students with no motivation, and there are soem with a little motivation and almost no skills. They don't overlap often with my classes. But as I've mentioned, they basically put me in Screen English, and then 3 of the "problem-child" classes. Wish me luck! And yes, I'd like some cheese with all this whine. Thank goodness Grandma sent me cheez-its!


OH! I forgot! They gave me a new office. It's really long (deep) from door to window. I decided to take liberty with the extra desks and chairs...so now any students walking in and trying to use it as a study lounge against my will shall be faced with this intimidating structure, with me siloutted against the bright day and my lookout point across the mountainside in the "Chairman" seat of the tables: