There's a growing pile of unused worksheets on my desk. As much as I don't want to waste paper, I have to dispose of them soon. Sorry Mother Nature but these worksheets are all going to the shredder. I made them hoping to use them in my classes. They were left unanswered because apparently, there's no more time to do them. This is what one of my Japanese teacher said, at least. After asking me to make worksheets and photocopy them, she told me that "Sorry, there's no more time."
Because I'm a foreigner and I'm just an assistant teacher, I smiled politely and told her it was okay. It wasn't, of course. More than the effort of doing the worksheets, I hate wasting anything. I hate wasting paper. And I hate wasting paper just because someone (the teacher I work with) wasted a lot of time in class doing unrelated things to English.
I'd perfectly understand her "Sorry, there's no more time," if it was true. Fact is, we spent a lot of nonsense things in her classes that we end up rushing in the last minutes of the class. She wasn't the first Japanese teacher that's like this. Half of the Japanese teachers I've worked with so far are wasting so much time during English time. It's no wonder the students are not learning as much as they can.
It's no secret that Japan ranked the lowest in English proficiency in Asia. Before I came here, I thought maybe it wasn't that bad. But it is. I teach junior high school students but I can't carry a conversation for more than 10 minutes. My Japanese would run out and their English would run out too. There are even some students who still struggle with basic questions such as "What's your name?," "What's your class?," and "Where do you live?" etc., etc. These are junior high school.
There are a lot of factors why the Japanese can't speak English as well as their Asian neighbors. For the sake of this entry, I'll focus on how teachers spend English time in the classroom. Some Japanese teachers of English are really good. They maximize the time with lots of speaking and listening activities. They teach more than what's in the textbook (cause their textbook really sucks!) and they demand more from the students. These kind of teachers are not that common, sadly. The most common are teachers who need to learn how to use English time more effectively. They waste a lot of time and waste a lot of worksheets.
Classroom (Mis)Management
Here are the common time-wasters in an English class in Japan:
1. Singing songs over and over again
Singing English songs is a fun way to expose students to the language. We're currently hitting high notes with "Let It Go." The problem is some teachers make English class as music class. They'd spend about 10-15 minutes singing the same song. This is to think that they'd usually sing the same song for one month. Also, the teachers don't even demand students to "really sing." Most students would just look at their song sheets and sing quietly to themselves I can barely hear them. The only voices I can hear are the teacher's and mine. I don't know why we bother to sing.
2. Reading the same short passage over and over again
Not only do we sing songs repeatedly but we also read the same short and simple passage.
Here's a sample reading passage from a third year JHS English texbook:
Imagine reading that passage for 20 minutes or more. Just reading it orally. I tell you, it's so boring and almost insulting. That's what some teachers do here. Not only do students need to read it repeatedly, they also have to memorize it. I don't know for what purpose they can use it.
3. Chatting and joking with the students
I'm sure this not only happens in Japanese classrooms. A lot of teachers all over the world spend considerable amount of time chatting and joking with their students. There's no problem with that except when 40 minutes class time out of 50 was spent on that. This happens, though. In my previous school, there's a teacher who likes to look cool with his students. He'd just chat the whole time. Even the students know it's story time when it's his class. The teacher who asked me to do the worksheets also likes to chat the time away.
4. Complicating grammar
English grammar is complicated as it is. So many rules and so many exceptions to the rules. In Japan, however, grammar looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. They use a lot of symbols that I don't even remember using in Math classes.
Here's an example:
The longer the sentences, the more symbols there would be. By the way, this is based on a 2nd year JHS lesson. You see, teachers spend so much time on one specific grammar point that students miss other grammar points. To give you an idea, the grammar point in the lesson above is the use of "his." They'd probably study the use of "his" for a week before moving on to the use of "her" for one week too. Then they'd proceed with "we" for a week and "they" for another week. That's a whole month just studying 4 subjective pronouns when they could just study all of them and more within a week or less.
The growing pile of worksheets on my desk is not just a pile of papers. It's a story of how some teachers waste a lot of time in class. It's understandable if it happens once or twice but if it happens pretty regularly, something is amiss. Sad thing is, I can't really do anything about this. Maybe I should stop making worksheets. Cause there might be no time and Mother Nature would soon get me for wasting paper.
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| credit: http://simonandersonfitness.co.uk/are-you-an-ask-hole/ |
Because I'm a foreigner and I'm just an assistant teacher, I smiled politely and told her it was okay. It wasn't, of course. More than the effort of doing the worksheets, I hate wasting anything. I hate wasting paper. And I hate wasting paper just because someone (the teacher I work with) wasted a lot of time in class doing unrelated things to English.
I'd perfectly understand her "Sorry, there's no more time," if it was true. Fact is, we spent a lot of nonsense things in her classes that we end up rushing in the last minutes of the class. She wasn't the first Japanese teacher that's like this. Half of the Japanese teachers I've worked with so far are wasting so much time during English time. It's no wonder the students are not learning as much as they can.
It's no secret that Japan ranked the lowest in English proficiency in Asia. Before I came here, I thought maybe it wasn't that bad. But it is. I teach junior high school students but I can't carry a conversation for more than 10 minutes. My Japanese would run out and their English would run out too. There are even some students who still struggle with basic questions such as "What's your name?," "What's your class?," and "Where do you live?" etc., etc. These are junior high school.
There are a lot of factors why the Japanese can't speak English as well as their Asian neighbors. For the sake of this entry, I'll focus on how teachers spend English time in the classroom. Some Japanese teachers of English are really good. They maximize the time with lots of speaking and listening activities. They teach more than what's in the textbook (cause their textbook really sucks!) and they demand more from the students. These kind of teachers are not that common, sadly. The most common are teachers who need to learn how to use English time more effectively. They waste a lot of time and waste a lot of worksheets.
Classroom (Mis)Management
Here are the common time-wasters in an English class in Japan:
1. Singing songs over and over again
Singing English songs is a fun way to expose students to the language. We're currently hitting high notes with "Let It Go." The problem is some teachers make English class as music class. They'd spend about 10-15 minutes singing the same song. This is to think that they'd usually sing the same song for one month. Also, the teachers don't even demand students to "really sing." Most students would just look at their song sheets and sing quietly to themselves I can barely hear them. The only voices I can hear are the teacher's and mine. I don't know why we bother to sing.
2. Reading the same short passage over and over again
Not only do we sing songs repeatedly but we also read the same short and simple passage.
Here's a sample reading passage from a third year JHS English texbook:
 |
| English textbook in Japan for 3rd year JHS |
Imagine reading that passage for 20 minutes or more. Just reading it orally. I tell you, it's so boring and almost insulting. That's what some teachers do here. Not only do students need to read it repeatedly, they also have to memorize it. I don't know for what purpose they can use it.
3. Chatting and joking with the students
I'm sure this not only happens in Japanese classrooms. A lot of teachers all over the world spend considerable amount of time chatting and joking with their students. There's no problem with that except when 40 minutes class time out of 50 was spent on that. This happens, though. In my previous school, there's a teacher who likes to look cool with his students. He'd just chat the whole time. Even the students know it's story time when it's his class. The teacher who asked me to do the worksheets also likes to chat the time away.
4. Complicating grammar
English grammar is complicated as it is. So many rules and so many exceptions to the rules. In Japan, however, grammar looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. They use a lot of symbols that I don't even remember using in Math classes.
Here's an example:
 |
credit: http://japaneseruleof7.com/teach-english/ |
The growing pile of worksheets on my desk is not just a pile of papers. It's a story of how some teachers waste a lot of time in class. It's understandable if it happens once or twice but if it happens pretty regularly, something is amiss. Sad thing is, I can't really do anything about this. Maybe I should stop making worksheets. Cause there might be no time and Mother Nature would soon get me for wasting paper.
