Don’t Blame the Teachers:
Marshall R Childs (M) / Yamaya, Chihiro (C)
Ｐａｒｔ １
--- Hello, my name’s David Baca. I’m a resident of Japan for many years and a English teacher since 1977. This afternoon we are going to talk about how English as a foreign language is taught and learned in Japan. To guide us through the maze of practice and assumptions underlying English education is Dr Marshall Childs. Say hello Marshall.
How do you do? Welcome here.
--- Since 2002, Marshall has taught in the intensive English language program here at Temple University Japan. In addition to language teaching, Marshall teaches the humanities, social sciences, and aspects of psychology and linguistics. To top it all, Marshall received a teacher of the year reward at Temple University Japan. He was selected, or rewarded…? Voted by students. That makes it even better…. Several years ago, Marshall and I were colleagues at Temple University, but he probably doesn’t remember me. We passed each other in the hall way. And I learned of his excellent reputation as an English teacher, and as a teacher in general. But I first read Marshall by reading “The Practical Linguist” which was a monthly column published from 1999 to around 2007 by the Daily Yomiuri. I didn’t read all 99 colums but enough to recognize that he was presenting to the reader a journalistic, a kind of, “expose” on what teachers do, the sciences of teaching, and the how of teaching, the art of teaching By the time we come to the end of our discussion, I’m sure you’ll feel the same.
Ms Yamaya Chihiro will interview Marshall and join us later in a three member panel discussion with myself and Endo, Yoshiko. So Ms Yamaya, please tell us a little about what you do in a few minutes, and Ms Endo is the owner and the other teacher at Endo Library and Language Studio in Hachioji. She and I have been colleagues at Endo Studio for about 12 or 13 years. Now, Ms Yamaya, you can please talk to Dr Childs.
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C: Hi, Mr Childs, I’m Chihiro. I’m an English teacher at a public high school in Kanagawa prefecture. I am teaching reading and grammar for third year students. I’d like to ask you some questions.
M: Let me ask you something first. You say you teach reading and grammar for third year high-shool students? Are you prepraring them for entrance tests?
C: Yes, mainly.
M: That is part of the purpose in your high school. I’m interested in that.
C: Now let me ask you. Do you think all Japanese need to speak English perfectly?
M: No, of course not. Many Japanese people hardly need to speak English at all. But they need to recognize whenever they see it which is… But Japanese people mostly don’t speak with native speakers but speak with other people who use English as a second language. And so, the goals should be simply to be understood and to understand, and no standard of native speaker’s skills are necessary at all.
C: I should say that our students want to be good at English but they don’t know their goal. So,what I mean, what should be a goal of high school students?
M:That’s a difficult question in Japan. Very often by the time, they’re high school students the only goal is to pass the entrance exam. There’s no longer any goal of speaking English with people. I think when they begin the first year of Jr. high school, they were very excited about learning English because they have the idea that they might be talking with new people in new ways all over the world. But the education system quickly shows that’s an incorrect assumption and makes them concentrate on the outside aspect of English like grammar, memorizing vocabulary.
C: I think so too. And, in Japanese Jr. high schoosl students, maybe they like English
M: In the beginning..
C： In the beginning, yes, but high school students don’t like English, English textbooks. Or English lessons. I think we should be expressing ourselves in English with easy words. But we have to read very difficult English sentences, because of entrance examinations. Which has priority, reading difficult sentences or expressing themselves with easy words? Which is more important?
M: It’s difficult to give over overall priority. About half of Japanese high school graduate schools college and half do not. The half simply do not need technical English for passing an entrance exam, and they are not interested in itl. They could be very interested in using English to talk with people, but they don’t get vey much encouragement from the classes of high school. Another problem is classes, particularly in high schools, students get into a classroom because of ages, not because of language ability, but its normal to separate students by level of ability, and teach them at their levels, so that they can understand what going on and go to the next level. That’s of course impossible if very high level and very low level students are in the same room.
M: It’s a problem with the design of the system .
C: One of the difficult situations is the textbook, I think. Do you think English textbooks in Japan are boring?
M: Oh yes, of course, even the very good ones are boring because they are textbooks, They can’t have a conversation with you. I think textbooks are very difficult to work with for teachers because they are not alive. I’ve written textbooks but I don’t like them. Even the ones I’ve written, because once you put a word on a page it is no longer active, he can’t smile at you nor frown at you. So, they textbooks are very difficult to work with.
C: How do we use our textbooks? Do you have some suggestions?
M: Do you insist on using textbooks?
C: No, but we have to do.
M: It is required by management? By the bureaucracy and ministry, and prefectural board of education to use textbooks?
C： Uh Uh
M: I wonder what they think students get out of textbooks?
C: It is difficult to say.
M: I really don’t know. Let me tell you what I mean in relation to what was behind your question. You were sort of asking what if we don’t use textbooks, what shall we do? The answer is to create activities for students that interest them as individuals and to get them using English in natural creative way. You can do that. Almost all of the teachers I’ve met in Japan can do that and they are very good at it. But they don’t have time. Ones who have attempted to do it, worked late at night. So one of the qualifications for being a teacher of English in Japan is not to need much sleep. Some of the best teachers that I know seem to wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning, sending me emails and working on lesson plans, of course(they are), trying to work out things interesting to students. The best Japanese teacher I ever met was a junior high-school teacher who insisted on individualizing her lessons for each of her students. And she found clever ways of doing that, but day after day, she was stating up late at night finding things, making materials for them, making sure there was a learning experience for every student. I used to used her as an example of real creativity and real support for teaching and then she had a mental breakdown and had to take an education leave of absence. As you know, there are number of teachers who are taking medical leave of absence is increasing in Japan, because of time pressure, nothing else.
They know what to do. They try to do it as long as they have time, but they just don’t have time. That brings us back to textbooks. If you haven’t had time to prepare, which you haven’t, and your class begins in three minutes, you grab a textbook and run into the classroom and teach it just as said it says. You can’t tailor experience to the students.
C: Also, I read up at night I couldn’t sleep well because We have a lot of work making a lesson plan.
M: In addition to making lesson plans, you have other work to do.
C: I’d like to make lesson plans.It’s kind of fun, concentration to the lessons, but…
M: And you know how. There’s no question about that. If the ministry tries to send you the school for a week every year, justto teach you how. It doesn’t help, you know how and and it just takes another week from your time. So you are really pressed for anytime for anything. When I was teaching in a high school as a part time teacher they let me go home, 6 o’clock or 7 o’clock every evening. But the full time teachers had to stay there very late every night and during the day they were engaged in all kind of activities. They were in club back activities. They were duties helping students to clean the halls ay noon The homeroom teachers seem to involved in getting students to school and running out and catching students who were not in school and bring them back, going to the police station to pick them up. The homeroom teachers have a lot of responsibilities on e wouldn’t think of in other countries. The total effect is that they have no time for anything. So they pick up az textbook and run into class and teach whatever page is due thart day.That’s the function of textbooks, just a last minute emergency for teachers who are too busy.I think teachers in Japan maybe, have a tougher job than anywhere and teaching in Japan of the most difficult jobs in Japan.
And it’s not for people who do not have any energy. It’s not something for people who need sleep. It’s not something for people who can’t bounce back from disappointment. It’s a very difficult job. I used to work for Kato Gakuen school system where they have an English immersion program for students. Of course, in the English immersion program they have to hire native speakers of English, from America, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand and so on. But the problem with hiring teachers is that, even though you explain how difficult the job is here, they don’t believe it. They can’t imagine it. And so, they come to Japan, then they find out that they have to work long hours everyday, that their weekends are not free. If they ever imagine travelling around Japan and sightseeing, they were wrong. In the beginning of the program, most of the teachers left after one year or before one year. And some before that. One man who had a Doctor’s degree, and experience teaching English in two other countries before Japan, came to Japan and began teaching , and after 3 days, he refused to come to school, he refused to get out of bed. It was just so much pressure. Who can imagine this? I’m quite sure that Monbukagakusho can’t imagine the pressures on teachers. If they did, they wouldn’t be putting more pressure on them. If they did, they wouldn’t require recertification of taking more classes, they wouldn’t be trying to teach other teachers communicative English. You know all that?
C: Maybe, someone talks to us. Kind of what you said
We believe that we work everyday, no holiday… Ithink that is a good teacher.
M: Yes, they’re such good people, they really want to teach,and they work so hard, and the system is crushing them down. Their assumptions of people make and the habit of assigning tasks to teachers are simply out of control.By that I mean no one is controlling them. No one is considering the pressures on teachers and no one has the responsibility for making the pressures reasonable enough so that teachers can be healthy and live and teach well.
Ｃ： So, textbook should be good enough to teach or to learn. If we have some good teacher’s manuals for younger teachers, easy to teach or…
M: A Little easier, yeah, if the textbooks can help the teacher enrourage the students to use English,to practice it, to speak it, and to understand it, even if with each other. That would be good. Most textbooks are not quite that brilliant. And the method of using a textbook probably should be to use them as a take off point for discussion in the class. Maybe, discussion among students and small groups. Because if the class is large, 35 people, who wans to speak to the whole class? Nobody. but, in small groups of three students or four students, maybe they coud speak with each other and they could even practice with each other. That is probably a way of using textbooks.
C: We have fourty students in each class. and just like my presentation. Maybe they are bored with English lessons. Of course, I was bored because they are just sitting there --- that is the problem.
M: I don’t think you are fair to yourself. I suspect your presentations are really very good. Good students really listen carefully and learn a lot. and enjoy the presentation then respect you. Of course the poor students don’t know what you are talking about. They got left behind years ago and they don’t have any hope. So they sleep.
C: So I made them read aloud the textbook, but another class’ teacher came into our classroom and said “please be quite”.
M: Oh that’s a shame. So did you stop having them read aloud?
C: No, No, they didn’t
Ｍ: .......Whisper aloud? Ｔhis, excellent teacher that Iwaｓ telling you about had discovered a method of having student s read aloud. And she would get students to read a page and then they would stand facing west, and when they had finished reading the page, they would then face north, and read the page again, and if they finished it they then would face west, and read the page again, and so on. She, the teacher, knew how fast they were and how far they had gotten in reading the page and slower students, maybe, never stopped and finished facing east. But the teacher knew where they were. They were all having reading practice, they were all participating, and everybody had a sense of accomplishment. Excellent technique I thought. That kind of brilliant yet simple innovation is very useful.
C: To me, it is difficult to make them read aloud, of course, with action.
M: I found that if they are being themselves, they are very shy. They don’t like to expose their errors to other people. But if being somebody else, that’s OK. They don’t mind pretending. So if they can pretend they are some character, such as Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse, some character, then, they don’t mind being foolish, they don’t mind reading things, because it’s not themselves, No one needs to be embarrassed about pretending to be somebody else. Everybody can do that it turnsout. So that’s probably a good method for teachers to use.
C: Last question. How can we make good lessons with ALT?
M: That’s very difficult It depends on the ALT, of course, because ALTs are not tested for teaching instincts, and we get good ones and bad ones. It is very difficult to work with the bad onesyou have kind of control them, suggest to them what to do, and the good ones have their own suggestions. One teacher was telling me about having her ALT, “Oh he is wonderful,” she said, he comes in, “he seems to have a new game everyday and students love him. So it’s very useful, she could meet with him, and they would talk together what they were going to do, and how much timeand what the goals of students were and she could work very well. One general rule,for working with ALT, is to spend time with them everyday talking about the lesson just past and planning the next lesson. Most ALTs complain that their lead teachesr don’t talk with them enough. They say that the lead teachers maybe too shy or too busy, probably too busy, and they don’t talk enough and that the ALT has a hard time working without observation. Some ALTs complain that they don’t seem to be a central part of lessons, they just seem to be a side show, an extra, not an important period of time, just entertaining students. That’s wrong of course. They have to be encouraged to be a central part of the points being made in the lessons. That’s the teacher’s job. You didn’t ask to control another teacher, you probably have no training in controlling another teacher., and yet here comes an ALT who doesn’t even speakyour language. and you got to control her or him . So it takes a little bit of thought on how to do that . But ALTs did agree to come, did agree to come to the school and stand in front of the class. So the lead teacher can help the ALT do that job better, they are willing to listen to the others and do their jobs better.
C: So we should help them?
M: When ALTs go home at night, they have a lot of complains. Their complaints are often that they are not used enough or that the teacher doesn’t talk to them or suddenly, something changed and their lessons cut off the middle all kinds o fthings happening that they don’t understand, because they don’t understand the Japanese language, and they don’t understand the Japanese situation and how quickly it can change. So they get confused, puzzled, even angry, So their bad feelings sometimes goes both ways, when it does that’s very unfortunate, an unfortunate outcome. When the good feeling goes both ways, its wonderful for everybody, for teachers and students alike
C: I have to think about it.
M: Yes, it is. It’s not an easy job to work with another person everyday.
C: Thank you so much
M: My pleasure. Thank you for taliking with me. Thank you for being so honest about your own teaching situation. I appreciate that.