Rethinking Education

I do not have a degree in education.  The following is just my opinions based on some of my experience in the classroom.

Despite learning English from a very young age, most adults in Japan are completely unable to communicate in English.  This could partially be explained by lack of practice, as surely people in rural Japan don’t have occasion to break out their English conversation skills often.  But a far more likely explanation is that they simply did not learn it when they were being taught it in school.  I’ve written before about how some students leave their tests almost entirely blank with no penalty.  And since there is no penalty for failing it seems that a majority of students, who are simply not interested in English, never learn the material at all.

The Japanese government has seen these problems and is trying to change things.  During my time in Japan, English education for elementary students in the fifth and sixth grade became mandatory.  Many elementary schools already had some English lessons, but they were often only once a month and there was no set curriculum.  Now they are every week and there is a textbook to work out of.

I will say now that we’ve seen some great improvement the past few years.  The students are coming into junior high with a bit more confidence about English and are more familiar with how the language sounds.  But there is a huge stumbling block as well.

Elementary English does not introduce writing at all.  Reading is only really hinted at in the sixth grader’s alphabet lessons, but phonics isn’t covered.  Only the letter names and shapes are introduced.  Elementary English focuses on listening and speaking. 

The biggest problem with this is that when the students come into junior high they are immediately bombarded with having to learn to write and spell.  These are not easy tasks (I still struggle with spelling).  And they have to master writing before they can move on to anything else. 

On top of all of this, the speaking and listening skills they honed in elementary school are hardly used at all.  Now the focus is on grammar points and memorizing new words.  The focus is on the test (which has only one small listening section, and no speaking evaluation at all).  So any confidence the students had is slowly drained away as they realize that English class is nothing like what they had before where we played fun communication games and there were no tests or grades at all.  And so the students struggle.  Some students do keep their enthusiasm, and some do take to the new lessons well.  But the classroom moral starts to sink so that by their second year many are back to where we were prior to introducing elementary English lessons. 

If Japan is serious about wanting to improve English education there need to be some changes.  Junior high schools cannot teach the students the way they always have.  The students are coming into junior high with much more English than before, but no changes have been made to accommodate them.  Students must be given a chance to use their spoken communication skills in class more often.  I’d like to believe that the reason speaking and listening are focused on in elementary school is because those are the skills the students are most likely to use in a real world situation (and not because they are easier). 

While reading and writing are important too, the junior high curriculum should really encourage students to communicate verbally.  Communicating doesn’t always mean being 100% correct on grammar.  It means knowing enough about a target language to make your ideas known.  Students should know that it’s okay to make mistakes when trying to communicate.  All they really know is that making mistakes on tests is bad.  So if they don’t know something they do not try.  And when you don’t try, communication is impossible.

But until the test becomes less important than learning to communicate, things will not improve.  Teachers will continue to teach English by having the students memorize the textbook.  Teachers will continue to talk for 90% of English class.  Teachers will continue to teach to the test.  Students will continue to be unable to express their own ideas in English.  It’s a bit of a sad state, and one that I really do hope improves.