Teaching Japanese to speak English

At my current Japanese high school I am the only foreign or native teacher. It is my job to instruct the students on how to improve their pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm of English. It is a fact that Japanese people in general don't have many opportunities to use their English abilities. Japan is an island nation and foreigner visitor concentration is mainly in big cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Sapporo. Therefor the motivation level to study spoken English might be lower than in other Asian (mainland) countries. Here in Japan, focus of teaching and studying English is on passing exams with lots of grammatical questions. Acquiring a (more) practical English speaking ability is not considered to be of much importance. Besides teaching spoken English I practice lots of listening exercises with my students so that they are able to understand what is being said in conversations. These listening exercises let students focus on eliciting or being able to catch important keywords in sentences, so that they can almost guess the meaning of what is being said without knowing the meaning of all words. Other exercises ask students to match a sentence they hear with a picture. But most difficult for them is to listen to a longer dialog after which they have to answer a few questions. These questions usually have multiple-choice answers.

I am able to speak three languages and have experienced how useful it is to have these abilities while traveling the globe. Here in Japan I am trying to explain my students the importance of being able to speak English by sharing my experience. Having tried many approaches to get the students to speak English, I found that if there is no pressure, that the students won't really cooperate. I have tried to give them simple interview hand-outs so that they can walk around and interview their classmates, but it is difficult to control the class and almost impossible to check if they're all actually speaking English. Also I have tried whole class activities where I had them line-up and interview each other with a competitive element in it. However, If only a few students refuse to participate, the whole activity just doesn't work properly and very little is learned.

Now the only thing I do is "speaking tests". Students practice short dialogs from a textbook by repeating after me. I explain the meaning of the sentences and proper pronunciation of words. Next is sentence rhythm and intonation. Then the students find a partner they feel comfortable with and practice reading the dialog a few times. The last thing I do is have them repeat on more time after me the whole dialog and then I give them time to memorize their part of the dialog. This is usually only a few sentences and could be done in about twenty minutes if done seriously. The following lesson the whole dialog is review one more time. Most students have practiced at home the day before or in the morning. During the lesson I have all pairs come to me and act out the dialog from memory. I give them points for their pronunciation, rhythm and intonation, and correct memorization. Most student pass the test the first time because if they don't, they have to take it again after school. This they do not like, so most students prepare for the speaking test properly.

I have applied this type of lesson for about a year now and am still very satisfied with the results. Students complained in the beginning but now they are used to it and find ways to make it more amusing for themselves. I stimulate them to use gestures which most of them enjoy very much.

Japanese high school students' behavior

Students’ behavior

Another day at a Japanese high school…

During one of my lessons today, some students seemed to think that they were not a part of the whole class and that rules didn’t apply to them. I usually have the students come to me to take a “speaking test”. This means, that they have to memorize a short dialog from the textbook, and then role-play it in front of me. I give them sufficient time to practice during the first lesson and tell them that they have to do the rest at home or after school in preparation of the second lesson. These two boys today were at the end of the line and were chatting about other stuff and fooling around. When they finally came to me to take the speaking test they couldn’t remember much and were trying to cheat by holding notes in their hands. They failed the test… and will come after school today to re-try.

On top of this, I caught one student using his cell phone during my lesson. In Japanese high schools (as well as junior and elementary schools) students are never allowed to use their cell phone on school ground. In this case I was obligated to take the cell phone away from him and keep it for one week. When I went over to confront him with this news, he wasn’t too happy about handing it to me and actually refused to give it. He put the cell phone in his pocket and started to make up excuses. I’ve been there before and just let him be for the moment. After the class I asked him to follow me to the staffroom where I got his homeroom teacher to talk to him. He soon admitted to using his cell but gave a brilliant excuse. Unfortunately his homeroom teacher wasn’t falling for his excuse and took his phone, then scolded him for a few minutes before returning him to the classroom.

Was I satisfied?

No!

This student’s behavior has been insufficient from the beginning when he entered this school as a first grader and it hasn’t improved much. Now, he’ll be pissed-off with me for taking away his cell phone. Therefore, during the next lesson he’ll probably be even less enthusiastic to participate in learning English. But I had to set an example for the rest of the class otherwise all students will be using their cell phone the next lesson. I’ll probably go to him at the end of this week to have a friendly chat to try and patch things up a bit…