Jean Of mArc

In recent posts, I have been noticing a dwindling amount of comments after a post. The last one, about food, hit an all-time low of 0 comments. As a result, I must admit that I am much less motivated to write a new post. However this time, I am going to be asking for advice, so I hope you, dear reader, will respond!

As you know- or if you don’t know I’m about to tell you- my current employment is as an English teacher, and I am very much enjoying this experience. It has its ups and downs, as most things do, but overall it is very rewarding to try and share my language with the students to help improve their foreign communication skills. For my classes, the situation is always different: some teachers prefer to do most of the teaching, asking only for help with pronunciation and to read scripts, while others would like me to come up with activities for the students to do, while others want me to explain concepts in English, which is then translated into Japanese.

The problem with the classroom environment, though, is that there are too many students all at once, so getting them to improve their speaking skills is very difficult. Whenever I get them to speak out-loud to me in class, they are understandably very nervous because of the pressures not only of speaking with peers listening, but of speaking to a native. Whenever I get them to speak to each other, it’s very hard to monitor their pronunciation, grammar, understanding of usage, etc. Also, they could just be speaking in Japanese and I’d never know. Also, no matter how the class is run, the material must either come directly from or be closely related to the textbook material. This limits the possibilities.

However, on Mondays after school, I run an English Club, and I consider it to be such a unique opportunity for the students: it allows them to get a chance to really try to improve their English skills because there are only a few of them, so they can try talking with each other and with me in English. Therefore, when I first started the English Club, I was quite insistent that we try only speaking English with each other. Also, I tried teaching them some common English sayings that are not textbooky: for example “What’s up?” instead of “How are you?” We also did some self-introductions.

I handed out a survey about what they wanted from English club, and the biggest response was that they wanted to watch English movies. Fair enough. However, I also was getting the impression that they were having a very hard time with the English-only instruction that was being given. I tried going slowly and speaking clearly, but I could tell by the puzzled looks that not everything was being understood. When I asked if they understood everything, I just got blank stares, which I took to mean “no”.

So the next week, we were going to watch an English movie. I brought 3 to choose from, and we ended up going with Stardust. In order to help them out, I thought it would be nice to put the English subtitles on too, so in case they missed what was being said, they could at least read it. However, they seemed quite shocked that I wasn’t setting the subtitles to Japanese. However, having watched Japanese shows with English subtitles and barely learning anything from it, I know from experience that if you can see subtitles in your own language, you can more or less ignore the language it is being spoken in. You might learn certain words when said in isolation (for example, if they only say “Let’s go!” and the subtitles says “いくぞ!” then it’ll be pretty clear what it is). However, as a whole, it’s very hard to actually learn a language that way.

Because this was so difficult, I paused the movie and tried to explain things at very regular intervals. However, I think that even a slow, paced explanation in English may have been too much. After the movie, I asked if they would prefer to try and continue working with this method, or just put on Japanese subtitles. The latter got the favour.

So, the next time we had English club, I’m sad to say that the number of attendees was much lower. I guess they found it too difficult. I brought some episodes of Full House (which my predecessor recommend that they liked) for them to watch. It was kind of funny watching them again because I used to watch it as a kid and it was strange to see it all over again. However this time there were Japanese subtitles. They had no problem understanding what was going on, of course, but I don’t feel like it was useful in improving English understanding.

I decided that the least I could do was make up a list of expressions that I heard in the show and give an explanation of how to use them. So I gave that to them the next week, and then we played some card games. However, they were very quiet games, because most of my attempts to initiate some English conversations were met with mostly silence, and there was very little chatting going on between them.

This past week, I tried something different: I booked the kitchen so that we could try baking some chocolate chip cookies together. I brought all the ingredients, but sadly, all the members had to back out that day, so we will be trying that again next week.

Anyway, I have to admit I’m at a bit of a loss. I feel like I know what to do for classes and such, but I can’t seem to find the balance between actually helping them learn some English while not making it too difficult for them.

I was talking to some other ALTs, and they have faced similar situations as well. One ALT, named Mark, is planning on sending me some ideas that I can try out. However, I want your advice too! What do you think I should do about this? Should I just choose non-language-related things, which end up being mostly silent, or should they be English-related, but then it’s very difficult and people don’t want to come? I don’t know.

And if your advice is to try and find out what THEY want, I’ve already tried that… but I’m not really getting much response about it. In general I find that if you suggest an idea, students are willing to go with it, but it’s because you are the teacher and they are the students and they think they should do what it is the teacher wants. How they actually feel about it is a bit of a mystery, even when you ask about it…

Anyway, this is by no means a complaint, but rather a request for some advice about how to find the balance between actually learning some useful English, while not making things too difficult. Many ALTs say that English Club should be relaxing and fun, but I find that even the “fun” things aren’t getting an enthusiastic response. So, I’m a at a bit of a loss. What do you think?

When I first arrived in Hirosaki, the students were on summer vacation. As mentioned before, summer vacation here is very different than it is back in Canada:

1. It is only for the month of August, not July and August.
2. It takes place 3 months after school has already started (the school years here are from April to March).
3. During summer vacation, students and teachers still attend school, but there are no classes. Instead, students do club activities, and teachers prepare lessons and such for the coming year.

It was good to come in at this time because it allowed me, too, to get used to the school and prepare some lessons before I stepped up in front of the students for my first class.

Now, I understand that there is some confusion about what my job is. I am an ALT, which stands for Assistant Language Teacher. From my understanding, schools in Japan (are required to?) have foreign teachers come in to help the students learn English. They are considered a valuable asset because they have native pronounciation, use natural speech, and are already experts in the language, just by speaking it every day. However, we often don’t know the grammatical reasons behind something, we just know if it is right or not. It’s kind of like a musician who can play anything by ear, but doesn’t know musical theory. However, the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) is well-versed in English grammatical points, and in the proper way to teach to the Japanese students.

Together, these two forces combine to create *fanfare* TEAM  TEACHING!!! In this model, the JTE teaches the students about the grammical points and structures in a way in which the Japanese students can clearly understand, while the ALT speaks in native English, pronounces works, prepares some activities, and sometimes confuses the students by speaking too fast.

So, as you may have guessed, I am the ALT at Hirosaki Senior High School. I teach 5 classes a week, with a visit school on Wednesday, though I haven’t actually started doing visit schools yet.

Anyway, all this is to say that this past week was my first week of teaching in the Japanese classroom. Here is a bit of a run-down about what I prepared:

• It is customary for the ALT to spend the first class on a self-introduction. However, I didn’t want to bore the students by simply saying “I am Canadian. I like drums. I’m not a sumo wrestler.” I wanted to try and engage the students a bit by getting them to guess what is and isn’t true about me. So, I divide the students into 6 groups, and for each group, I have a list of 3 facts, for example “I’m a skier”, “I’m a soccer player” or “I’m a cheerleader”. In their groups, they must discuss which one they think is true AND WHY. The “why” part is to get them saying more than just want is already right in front of them.
• In another class, the topic is on movies right now. So for one activity, we get the students to discuss, in pairs, about their favourite movie with their partner (What kind of movie is it? What’s it called? What do you like about it?). Then afterwards, I thought it would be a good idea to set up a video-store-like scenario in which I am the clerk at the entrance, and the JTE is the check-out clerk. Yes, in real life they are often the same person, but we had to do this for 30 students! So, I handed out video membership cards, and on the back was a little “mission”, such as “rent a comedy movie”. We got the students to exit the class, and then they’d come in, in pairs, with a phrase list of things they could say and might hear from me. I would say “Welcome to Video World, how may I help you?” and the students could say something like “We’re looking for a comedy movie.” I would say “Are you looking for any movie in particular?” to which they could reply “No we’d just like to browse.” and I would direct them to the comedy movies. I had covers of different English movies pinned to some boards, so they had to take the proper kind of movie, and proceed to rent out the movie from the JTE.

So, this past week was my first week actually teaching! And every class was different, both in its reception of the activities, and in its general atmosphere. But in general, the students responded well to the activities, enjoyed guessing the facts (they thought some of the facts were really funny) and then getting some experience that would be similar to real-life in an English-speaking country.

The real test came on Thursday…

I was in the middle of giving a lesson, and while I was teaching the JTE left the room. I wasn’t sure why, but I went on with the lesson as usual. A bit later, he returned, but sat at the back of the class. I assumed that he was evaluating me or something, since it was my first lesson with him. We went ahead and did the movie store activity, which went over pretty well (the teacher later told me that some students came and told him that they enjoyed the activity quite a bit!). Afterwards, the teacher informed me that he wasn’t feeling well, and asked me if I would teach all his classes that afternoon by myself!!

So, of course I said yes, but I had no idea what to do with them! What was I suppsed to teach them? I asked my supervisor and he said that I should just prepare a lesson about anything, it didn’t matter what the subject was. So, I quickly made up a quick lesson plan, taking some ideas from other JETs, as some things I’ve been meaning to teach them:

• First, we started off with a game where the students were divided into 2 teams (left and right) and each team had 3 minutes to write down as many English words on the board as they could. The trick is that they could only have one person up there at a time, each person could only write one word at a time, and the word they write had to BEGIN with the same letter as the LAST letter of the previous word.
• Second, I handed out some sheets with various ways of saying “Hello”, “How are you?”, “What are you doing?” and how to express your state. The students learn greetings from a textbook, so all they know is “Hello,” “How are you?” and “I’m fine, thank you.” If I go up to them and say “Hey, how’s it going?” they just get a terrified look on their face and then run to their friends for cover. So I wanted to teach them ways to say Hello: “Hi”, “Hey”, “Yo”, “Good day”. Don’t worry, I was clear on which ones were casual and which were normal. Then, “How’s it going?”, “How are things?”, “How’s life?” , “How’ve you been?”, and “What’s up?” Finally, I gave them a big sheet with many many different things they could say other than “I’m fine thank you.” I’ve since enforced a no-textbook-greeting rule on the students, since they have the tools now.
• Then we played Pictionary, which was good for me to test out which words the students did or didn’t know. They had never played it before, but they seemed to get into it. The hardest part was getting them to yell out the answer instead of raising their hand first. I kept telling them “Don’t raise your hand, just yell it out!” but I guess that can be a challenge when you’re not used to it.
• Finally, we practiced pronounciation of “r”s and “l”s, since that is very trickly for Japanese students. We also played a recognition game, in which there is a maze and I would say words that sound the same except for the r or the l (for example “collect” vs “correct”, “row” vs “low”, etc) If they heard the words collectly (I mean, “correctly”), they would get to the end of the maze.
• And then I was depending on the bell to ring, which it eventually did.

Overall the reception for this class was very good, and one of the classes especially seemed to like the games. This also gave me a chance to get more comfortable teaching and being in front of the students, and it was great to be able to jump outside the textbook and let them have fun while learning too.

I am continuing with the learning adventure tomorrow with the following new classes!

• In one class, there will be a debate. The scenario is that I can’t decide if I should rent a DVD or go to the movie theatre. One side of the class must come up with reasons why a DVD is a better idea, while the other side must argue why going to the movie theatre is obviously better. For each UNIQUE point that each side can come up with, they get one point. Whichever side has the most points makes the decision for me!
• Also, tomorrow one of my JTEs wants me to talk about Canadian television! I have to show them pictures and explain the shows as a comprehension exercise. They have to tell me some things about the shows after I have talked to them about it. I plan on talking about The Raccoons, Mr. Dressup, Corner Gas, and Road to Avonlea. That seemed like a good mix to me.

I’m really enjoying coming up and execution different ideas. Because it is a language, really any activity done IN THAT LANGUAGE is educational, so it gives a lot of creative lee-way.

Next time I’ll talk about… something else!