Letter of motivation for recontracting. Please address the following:

Effective teaching techniques to upgrade students’practical English communication skills.

Many a thesis has been written on this particular topic. In fact entire 4 year courses are devoted to it in universities around the world. So based on that tiny, insignificant fact alone, I assume that it is the reason it was selected to be the title of the JET Programme re-contracting procedure. After all- what’s better than condensing 4 years of work into a page.

My suggestions are as follows:

• Fire everyone- While one might argue that this is bordering on the side of drastic after having taught in a Japanese school for more than a week one would soon come to realise that no-one can in fact speak English. Let us proceed to define the terminology of “fire” and “everyone” for semantics may lead us into the foray of confusion. By fire I mean relinquish the jobs and occupational status. For sake of this essay “everyone” shall be defined as follows(but not exclusive to): The Japanese Minister of Education (and his staff), The Japanese board of education (all of them- even that cool Azuma guy.). The English teachers (all of them).
• Institute qualification exams- Now some of you may in fact be aware of the sensei exam that many teachers have to take in order to be a certified and authentic teacher. But no matter. If you fail this exam you can still teach. As one of our fellow JET’s JTE so eloquently put it: “I cant English.” . Yes luv. We know. I propose an institution of mandatory high standard, high level exams which if failed will prevent said applicant from teaching the youth of Japan. The new Minister (as according to step A.) and his staff shall also take this exam. As shall every education board across the country. Failure will not result in pay cuts, as some have suggested, but will result in no bloody job as they can clearly not English well enough.
• Fire everyone who did not pick up the last line’s grammatical mistake- This shall be inclusive of all Japanese and Foreigners alike.
• Have them deported to Greenland if they did not find it funny-I believe this is self-explanatory. A good sense of humour is a requisite as a teacher- especially when teaching high-school students that all look like Bon-Jovi. (Or Junior High kids that touch your package.)
• Institute a defined merit system- This shall involve an intricate merit/demerit system. For example when said learner does well in a test he shall be rewarded with 5 merit points. If said learner commits an offence that person in question shall loose a certain amount of merit points eg: 10 for swearing, 10 for late coming, 50 for fondling a teacher, 100 for smoking or having sex at school (and an understandable 150 for having a fag after sex) etc. Once a certain point of merits have been reached the punishment shall be handed down or out depending on your self worth. This shall include but not be exclusive to the use of the cane, the cat o’ nine tails, the paddle and the rubber slipper my mom had.
• Speak English in English class- Whilst certain people (the greater Japanese public) may be up in arms about such a controversial decision the greater universe knows that this particular method might have some higher degree of success. As Dwight Randalf Ginsberg (famous trekkie) once said- “Even Klingon is taught in Klingon mother fscker !”
• Allocate more than just a page to this eensy weensy wil’ pwobwem- Yeah- its small. You don’t reeeaally need English. But if the Japanese nation is serious about its learners like it’s serious about its English …then yeah.

I hope this serves to be informative and I hope someone important will actually bother reading this- and then translating it- to someone slighter more important who will then read it on the way home to his wife….after a long night….at the hostess bar.

Let's stupiding together

The Great English Block- Part 2 (aka. Mr B's suicide)

Oh my frickin frack!!!! What a lesson. Whaaaaat a lesson.
I just taught 3rd year. 3rd year junior high. You'd think.

Today's structure was a revue (of the supposedly already learned) ASK, TELL and SHOW.

We started off with the following:

Can you ask her name ?

This proved to cause problems (amoungst the sea of blank stares) when one student answered "Yes". Technically fantastic English- but not what we were looking for so we had to change it.

The structure then changed to "Please tell/ask/show him/her ...!"

Now....

We spent 20 minutes explaining this to the facking RETARDS (I actually called them retards today- not entirely a good thing, but damn i lost it. I didnt ACTUALLY call em retards - i said AHOYA- which is like idiot.
Not because they didnt understand the English- but because they didnt understand the fucking JAPANESE THAT WAS WRITTEN ON THE BOARD !! GRRRRRRRRRR.

The teacher after writing each word on the board then asked the class what each word meant. Students put up their hands and answered after which she wrote the meaning (IN JAPANESE) next to the English word.

So- I ask one student- "Please ask her name" whilst pointing to a girl next to her.

We spent 10 minutes developing that. I had to overtake the teacher (who was doing a stock standard Japanese teaching approach- ie: give the student the answer and make them repeat) and I broke it down. I was like:
Okay punks- who understands "please show him your pencil case"
No one. (Maybe one). Then i freaked- i was like...listen you bitch ass losers- who understands "please" - hands go up. Who understands "show" - a few hands go up- i called them idiots! (Cause it was on the fucking board in Japanese!!). Next, who understands "him"- hands, "your" -hands....., "pencil case" - hands.
NOW!?!? WHY THE FUCK CANT YOU DO IT!?!?!

*DIES* Im really quite stressed about this.

They knew every single word...but couldnt understand the sentence.. WHY ?!?!?

(I know why....its just damn annoying). Japanese kanji is learned in sets. It literally makes no sense. (Well it does and more so did- but the basics of kanji has been forgotten by many in a drive to streamline its learning to basic rote memorisation). Japanese kanji is not like Chinese. I mean- it is. But- chinese use kanji much like we use the alphabet- stringing together parts of words and sentences- where as japanese use sets of kanji coupled with hiragana. Japanese learn kanji sets. (from the little knowledge i have) Its this learning of sets that prevent them from learning English constituent bits and devolves it into learning sets of language.

I cant remember if I wrote about the "How's the weather, today?" example. Basically- we spent the lesson doing "hows the weather today" and the students could answer perfectly. "its rainy, sunny, windy etc". BUUUUUT

BUT...
When they had to write the meaning of the words in the sentence, there was at LEAST one kid in every class that didnt know the meaning of weather!!!!!!!

*dies again*

What is it with the mental block?

Its 14:56 on a Tuesday afternoon. I've had 5 solo classes today. 2 of them relatively successful- the others not so much. Its been draining like you can't imagine. The amount of energy you need to pour into a class to keep them active in this weather is also quite excessive.

Im happy I succeeded with that at least. Its been a long noted point in my brain that Japanese students suffer from an English mental block.

This expands beyond the classroom to business and daily life when you can approach a Japanese person and request something of them in flawless Japanese only to be told "Im sorry I dont speak English." I think it was this response that was responsible for Allied aggression in WW2 not the bombing of Pearl Harbour as they'd have us think. Ooh- random thought- if we spell harbour with a "u" but the yanks spell it without- what about the case of the PLACE name Pearl Harbor ?! Mmnnn. Random thought...as opposed to Pearl harbour.

So...anyways...the classroom example I can give today is in many classes where I asked students a question- I went up to them and asked them "how much is this?" picking up a random piece of their stationary.

So many of the kids just struggled forever with this concept. hey had no idea. First, most of them said "I cant remember". And I explained to them it was ok to imagine a price, to guess a price, to lie about a price...they didnt have to tell me the truth...do you think that a number could come out of their mouth in either Japanese or English.

Fuck me it was frustrating. The worst thing is when some kid eventually GETS it....and I move on - and the fracking kid sitting RIGHT NEXT TO THEM doesnt understand what to do.

*POP*

Maaaaaan....lateral thinking hey- not a strongsuit here.