School
1. Principal
2. School Office
3. Teachers’ Room
4. Health Room
5. School Library
6. Entrance
7. Vending machines
8. Drinking fountain
9. Stairs
10. Schedule
11. Report Card
12. Mid-term exam
13. Final exam
(don`t let school interfere with your education)
Education = surprise + memory
May 2022.
School 1. Principal 2. School Office 3. Teachers’ Room 4. Health Room 5. School Library 6. Entrance 7. Vending machines 8. Drinking fountain 9. Stairs 10. Schedule 11. Report Card 12. Mid-term exam 13. Final exam
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May 2022.
Weather A: It’s really hot today. B: Yes. There’s no rain since last month. Maybe we will have a drought this year. A: How is tomorrow’s weather? B: It will be sunny and hot. A: What is tomorrow’s temperature? B: The weather forecast says it will be 36 degrees. A: Really? Sunday, May 1, 2022.
Classroom Nonsense When the Japanese school year starts every April, I have another opportunity to meet a new groups of freshman students. It’s fun to meet freshmen. They’re nervous and excited. They’re meeting the foreign teacher for the first time and don’t know what to expect. I quickly put them at ease when they learn that I can speak Japanese, that I know a lot about them, their school and their schoolwork. If they have questions and concerns, they can tell me in Japanese and I can satisfy them. No worries. English class is Super Happy Fun Time. First, I greet them. Then, I confirm their seating with the seating plan I have. If I haven’t been given a seating plan, then my first order of business is to make one. It’s my first chance to speak to them individually. After that, I have to introduce myself and then ask if they have questions. Sometimes they do have questions, sometimes not. They used to have many more questions when I was younger. But now that I’m older they react to me and treat me differently than they did in the old days. My self-introduction has changed over time. It used to be long and detailed. I provided truthful information that satisfied most of the interrogative pronouns, but overwhelmed them with information. Over time, I’ve edited and pared down my self-introduction. My quickest, briefest introduction is to point my finger to my face and say in a comic voice, “This is me!” It’s a joke from a Season 3 episode of the American sitcom M*A*S*H called “Officer of the Day,” delivered by actor Richard Lee-Sung. These days, what’s more important to me is a good story. So, I mix up truth and fiction for the kids, and they seem to like the show. The classroom is a performance space more than a temple to the Truth. This isn’t the place for Truth. If it’s truth you want, there’s a library down the hall, and there are churches you can attend. Or not. We pretend to try to teach children that honesty is moral and appropriate, and yet some of the most celebrated (and successful) people in our societies are professional liars: novelists, actors, politicians, and preachers. The classroom is a performance space, not a sanctuary. This isn’t the place for Truth. First of all, I tell them that I’m 109 years old. If they try to trick me and ask me when my birthday is I’ve already done the calculation and say I was born in 1913, during the Taisho Period (1912 - 1926). (Since I know Japanese history better than they do at this stage, this fib gives me a chance to introduce all the periods of modern Japanese history - the Meiji Period 1867 - 1912, the Taisho Period, the Showa Period, 1926 – 1989, the Heisei Period, 1989 – 2019, and now the Reiwa Period.) I alter my imaginary birthdate accordingly each year, to maintain the 109-year story. I tell them that my birthday is Smarch 32 (a 13th month), and that only Canada has a thirteenth month called “Smarch.” It’s a Homer Simpson joke I like to repeat. I tell them that when I was a boy, I had a pet dog that could say “I love you” in English. It’s another Homer Simpson joke. Then I imitate Homer Simpson’s voice to demonstrate the dog speaking. When students ask about my age, I know they are fishing to learn if I’m older or younger than their own parents. The fact is that I’m older than their parents, but I don’t see why I need to confirm it to them. When I originally came to Japan and high school girls asked me my age, I knew they had two things in mind. 1) they wanted to know where I was in relation to their own parents, and 2) because I was much younger in those days, they wanted to know if I fell within the scope of their sexual radar, or not. If students ask me why I have Band-Aids on three fingers of my right hand, I tell them that in Junior High School I had a bad accident and cut those fingers off. They were reattached with surgery, leaving scars that the Band-Aids are hiding. I tell them that I have three pets (which is true: a white cat, a black cat and a brown rabbit). Then I tell them my pets’ names: the white cat’s name is White Cat; the black cat’s name is Black Cat; and the brown rabbit’s name is Brown Cat. None of that’s true, but watching their reactions is fun. Why did I come to Japan? I’ve got a lot of made-up answers to that. The one I use the most is to say that I ran away from serious girl trouble, and so I sought to get as far away from my hometown as possible without getting close to it again from the opposite direction. Therefore, I could have gone as far as South Africa, which is the real diametrically opposite place on the globe from Guelph, Ontario. But I discovered that Japan is a good place to live - a land of the living (quoting the Egyptian excavator Sallah, played by actor John Rhys-Davies in the 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, describing the virtues of Cairo) - so here I settled. If they ask me how I met my wife, I tell them that she attacked me in a supermarket. I have a convincing tale to describe it. I tell them I don’t like thunder, that I’m afraid of it, and I have an interesting story ready to explain it. Meh. I tell them that I wear a beard to hide a scar given to me by a former girlfriend. My story is that a girl accidently cut my chin with a glass fake diamond ring and that I needed stitches. Therefore, I sport a beard to hide it. I make it sound like a violent attack while reassuring them that it was an accident. My favorite color is black. I wear it all the time so that students think I wear the same clothes every day. I do not. I change my clothes every day, but everything is always black. But I insist that my favorite color is yellow and that I only wear black as a camouflage device. Because I’m hiding. If they want to know my favorite food, I invariably say chicken. School is my workplace. I have to be there for long hours, so it’s important for me to keep myself entertained. My first rule of work is that I have to enjoy myself. Sunday, May 1, 2022.
Teaching Essay My ideas about teaching English in Japan used to be harder, more rigid and stringent, more academic, and a lot more complex and structured than what they are today. That’s the kind of person I was as a younger man. My ideas were more fixed. I was more certain about myself. But over time my thinking about it has softened. I think it’s a natural effect of age and experience. At first, I was very rigid. I had an idealistic and grand overview of education in general, of language education as well as the place of language in the curriculum and in life, etc. I described ridiculously detailed plans to affect the classic listening-speaking-reading-writing plan. That path might have been foolish. Then, I thought hard about Team Teaching, and how best to work with Japanese teachers in the classroom for mutual goals. That path might have been foolish. After that, I concentrated on topics and themes that I thought were important. Important for communication. I dove headlong into curriculum development and the creation of my own materials. I wrote my own textbooks and tried to tailor them to my Japanese students. I pursued a path between my ideas of what was both important and useful, and my ideas of what the students were able to accomplish. But much of that might have been foolish. So, then, I focused more enthusiastically on the idea of language function and practicality. My idea was that student motivation would spring from recognizing the use of the language I was giving and modelling and the functions they were/might be called on to use. There was the language they needed for English classes at school, and after that the language they might possibly need in their lives. I worked hard to trim and streamline my teaching to what I thought were their practical needs. But that might have been foolish. Today, I am thinking more about the English I already hear around me in Japan. When are Japanese using English and how are they using it? I hear and read English instructions everywhere in this country, and I think this is their unique language, not my language. Japan is well-established as an English-using society. Maybe even a multi-lingual one. I don’t think I have to condition my high school students to speak like a foreigner. We have to continue to cultivate the language salad that already exists here. So, I am like a language farmer, or a language manager. I am happy to hear them speak to their best ability. At this point in my career, my role is more to model and nudge students in a direction than to instruct them in a classic sense. Sunday, January 30, 2022.
PREPOSITIONS Where? 1) I live in Tokyo. 2) My book is on the table. 3) The cat is under the bed. 4) The lamp is next to the TV. 5) The bus stop is near my house. 6) The school library is between the health room and the music room. When? 1) My birthday is in February. 2) I was born on February 10th. 3) I get up at 6:00 a.m. 4) My English class is on Monday. 5) Yesterday I slept for seven hours. 6) I have lived in Tokyo since 1998. Thursday, November 4, 2021.
Vocabulary through conversation Bilingualism means different things to different people. I consider myself bilingual in Japanese because I use the language (every day) to live here successfully. Nevertheless, it will take only a few seconds for native Japanese to recognize my language shortcomings. I don’t think that disqualifies my claim to bilingualism, but … My Japanese vocabulary is only a few thousand words - which is enough. What is worse than vocabulary shortcomings is often grammar shortcoming. If I sat down at a table and tried to think of all the Japanese words and phrases I know and make a list of them, I might not do very well. In that scenario, I would probably underperform my true ability. That’s because sitting and compiling a list of vocabulary is such an unnatural, artificial, and maybe even useless exercise. (Maybe it also indicates that I am a poor test-taker.) It is when I’m speaking that my vocabulary manifests itself. Sitting at a table, I might have great difficulty recalling a word/words that I already know. But the act of speaking seems to open the gates of my neurons to let the words flow from my brain to my lips. It’s interesting. When I am in the midst of a conversation and I need a word that I might not have thought of for months, I somehow manage to drag it up from the well of my brain. The need conjures the vocabulary, like magic. To learn a new language requires practical use. Students cannot/will not retain new vocabulary if they don’t use it. I am a student of Japanese myself, so as a teacher, I always try to present language to my students that, potentially, has some practical value to them. It absolutely has to be that way if they are going to remember the words. I’m not talking about how important it is to use a language in order benefit from it (which is true). I’m talking about how using a language enables you to use it more … and more. Thursday, September 30, 2021.
Online teaching The week of September 20th is called “Silver Week” in Japan. It balances Golden Week in early May. Golden Week is the culmination of a handful of national public holidays in such close proximity that the entire week is given up as a holiday. In September, we had Autumnal Equinox Day (“shubun no hi”) on Monday, September 20th. Then on Thursday 23rd we had Respect for the Elderly Day (“keiro no hi”). During Silver Week this year, many (not all) public high schools closed classes and went to online classes for the first time during this coronavirus pandemic. The reason is that throughout September the country was coming out of the 5th wave of the Covid-19 infection. Daily infection numbers declined quickly and steadily. The Tokyo Board of Education decided - finally - to go to online lessons as a strategy to further crush down the infection numbers - most of which have involved younger people throughout the summer. I had a couple days of high school teaching during the week. What I did was go to school and stand in front of a computer in an empty classroom and talk to the computer’s camera while students tuned in from home, either on their home computers or else on their smart phones. At first, I felt awkward and stupid. But I got the hang of it. The students were all given prints of my teaching materials for the day in advance. I had to prepare the lesson a week in advance for that purpose. There were some students at school - literally one or two in each class. They had no computer or smart phone and had no choice but to attend classes in a mostly empty school. Teaching online was also tiring - not the same kind of fatigue as teaching a class of living students, but tiring nonetheless. Since students weren’t there to speak to me, answer my questions, or to interact with, I just lectured for the duration of the day. Also, I could not see the students on the computer in the classroom. I could see who was logged in and watching, but I could not see their faces or hear their voices. I knew they could see and hear me, though, because a little window in the corner of the computer screen showed me what they were seeing. I could tell if my head was outside the camera frame, or if what I wrote on the board was within their field of vision or not. Stuff like that. Thursday, September 16, 2021.
School Schedule A: What do you have period three? B: I have biology. It’s interesting, but a bit hard. A: Who is your biology teacher? B: It’s Mr. Kikuchi. A: What are you studying now? B: Now I’m studying DNA. A: That sounds interesting. What time does period three start? B: It starts at 10:40. Oh! The bell is ringing! See you at lunch time! A: OK! See you later! Tuesday, June 1, 2021.
English I can’t stand I know that there are many kinds of English. Different accents and dialects, different vocabularies that sometimes make one native English speaker’s English nearly unintelligible to another native English speaker. And, I know that language evolves. I know that a dictionary is less a firm rule about the proper meaning of words than a mere record of how language is used. I know these things. But it still irks me when I think people don’t know what they’re saying. I hate it when people misspell "Oh" as "O," which is not even a word. Canada's national anthem, for example, is "Oh, Canada," not "O, Canada." I hate it when people say “Why not?” when what they mean is “Why?” When they say “How come?” or “What for?” when, once more, what they mean is “Why?”, or when they say “Why?” when what they really mean is “How?” When people say “You know,” when in fact I don’t know. When they say “multiple,” when what they mean is “many.” (This one really gets me.) I hate it when people say “tiredness” when what they mean is “fatigue.” And when people say “quote” when what they mean is “quotation.” When they say “literally” to emphasize their point when what they really mean is “figuratively” or “metaphorically.” When they say “gotten” when what they mean is “got.” When people talk about “reaching out” to me like a zombie trying to eat my face when what they mean is “contact” or call me. When people ask me, “Are you okay?” when I am obviously not okay. When people say “Yeah, no.” Which is it for God’s sake, yes or no?! When people say “hung” when what they mean is “hanged,” or when they say “suppose to” rather than “supposed to.” When Americans say “y’all / yall” instead of “you” (plural). When people I don’t know, or who are not my friends, call me by my first name in the mistaken belief that using my Christian name is a sign of amity. When some British English speakers pronounce “h” as “haitch.” And again, when some British English speakers drop the “t” in the middle of words, so that a word like “battle” comes out as “ba’le.” Or, when many American English speakers drop or soften their “ds,” so that a word like “mind” comes out as “mine,” “band” becomes “ban,” and “badminton” becomes “ba’minton.” When Americans pronounce “your” as “yer,” and “again” as “agen,” and when Canadians mimic the mispronunciation because they watch too much American TV. I hate it when people say “tats” instead of “tattoos.” And more. Tuesday, June 1, 2021.
Talking to Japanese students When I first came to Tokyo as an English teacher, I probably unwittingly talked too fast and used language that went far above my teenaged students’ heads. I’m fairly sure I did. Since then, I have learned to slow my speech down and use much simpler vocabulary. It’s second nature to me now. When I visit Canada on vacation, some people think I speak strangely (repeating myself and speaking very slowly) and ask where I’m from? Now, when I meet new, young foreign English teachers here, I can quickly identify what I think are mistakes they make and language they use that I know our teenage students completely don’t get. And not only the students, but I suspect that many Japanese English teachers also don’t get many of the things that I hear new, young teachers say. Most important of all is not to make jokes. Jokes are heavily culture-specific and definitely don’t translate well. Don’t joke. I don’t like contractions, especially future tense contractions with “will” - words like “I’ll,” “he’ll,” “it’ll” and “we’ll” and I tend to avoid them. To many Japanese students “it’ll” is almost like a tongue twister. And I absolutely despise and avoid contractions like “gonna,” “coulda,” “woulda,” and “hafta.” I knew a British English teacher who insisted on teaching his high school students to speak like that, saying that it was “real” English that every native speaker uses. I countered that I thought it was stupid, poorly-educated and lower-class gutter English, and that I never spoke like that. Instead, I enunciate clearly enough so that “What do you … ,” for example, NEVER comes out as “waddaya.” Maybe I sound pedantic to other native English speakers. I speak in a way that might sound to a native English speaker like I have a speech impediment. Here’s what I sound like: First, I count the students, “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19, 20.” Then, even though the Japanese teacher in the room might have already called the role in Japanese, I call their names on my seating chart (“zasekihyo”) to reconfirm that they are all there and that they are all sitting in the proper place. Sometimes, calling their names and making eye contact is all the personal interaction I might have with a student during the allotted time, so calling the role is important to me. Then I say, “Good morning. Good morning. Today … today … today is Tuesday. Tuesday. Today is Tuesday, June 1st. Tuesday, June 1st. Today is Tuesday, June 1, 2021. Repeat after me. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. June 1, 2021.” One day in May, I met a little four-year old girl, a private student of another teacher at a language school where I work part-time. I like children, and I like to talk to them even if they are not my students. I have several very young students myself. This girl had just ended her lesson in an adjacent room and was helping her teacher clean up by returning some crayons and marker pens to my room, where I was relaxing and preparing for a later class. I said: “Hello! Hello! Your T-shirt is pink! It’s pink! It’s a pink T-shirt. Pink! Look! Minnie Mouse. That’s Minnie Mouse! It’s a pink, Minnie Mouse T-shirt!” This particular girl loves Minnie Mouse, and she is proud of her cute T-shirt. She seemed happy that I commented on it. This kind of speech is deliberate and calculated. I talk this way 1) to slow myself down so I don’t overwhelm Japanese students with blah-blah-blah-blah-blah; and, 2) I want to repeat myself as much as possible in order to give the students ample time to hear my voice, to hear my words, to identify words they have already studied, to hear me form sentences, and to integrate my words in their heads. Many Japanese students don’t like English. I know because I ask them and they tell me so. I have witnessed other foreign teachers teaching. Sometimes, I sharply disagree with some of the things I see them doing - like that British guy I mentioned - and I sometimes think their manner of presenting themselves in front of class is poor, hasty and unorganised. I watch the students to try to gauge their reactions. Teaching a class is a performance. I have to be in control: I have to control myself, then control the students, then control the content. As a teacher, I am kind of like a professional observer of teenage behaviour. I have spent years re-writing lessons to strip out non-utilitarian words, unnecessary words, and overly-difficult words based on what I have discovered works. Many Japanese students don’t like English. I know because I ask them and they tell me so. One of the most important things for me is to keep the language I teach potentially practical for their lives. If the language is not useful, they won’t use it and they won’t even imagine using it. If students don’t have a need for language, then they won’t remember it let alone use it. So, I have spent years crafting my lessons around Japanese teenagers’ lives and environment. I concern myself largely with language function - meaning what language is used in different situations - as well as with functional language - meaning what works in class. The biggest problem to address is the common notion among Japanese students that they don’t need a second language. They believe they can live their lives just fine in Japan, without a second language and without ever going abroad (which is quite the opposite of the prevailing notion in the 1980s when Japan was still booming like crazy). |
AuthorI am a permanent foreign resident in Japan. I have no plan. I don't know what I'm doing. Archives
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