Teaching English

By the time the students reach Senshu University Junior High school they have already been exposed to English in a variety of ways. Most students study English in their elementary schools and even if they haven't, English can be seen everywhere from t-shirts, to signs, to advertisements. For example, at the top of a menu in a restaurant it might have "Drinks" for the title, and then go on and list the drinks all in Japanese. In a coffee shop it might even say "coffee shop" instead of using the Japanese word "cohe." Concerning verbal English, kids might hear an English translation on a train or listen to American music. Avril Lavigne, the Foo Fighters, and Evanescense are just a few artists that many kids in Japan are familiar with.

The junior high is consisted of 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. 7th graders are put in classes of up to 42 students in a classroom. 8th and 9th grade classes are split up into groups of approximately 20. Each classroom has a native English speaking teacher, a Japanese "team teacher" who speaks English fluently, and when available, an intern (currently me and Carly). Usually it's the native English speaker who does the majority of the lesson planning and teaching. So I'm sure you're asking how exactly we teach Japanese students English? Well, first of all, you should understand that the kids take an English grammar class as well as a separate English conversation class. The conversation classes are the ones I help out with. The grammar classes are actually all taught in Japanese by Japanese teachers (doesn't make much sense does it?). In the conversation classes, which I'll be describing here, all of the instruction is given in English and the Japanese team teacher is there to translate in Japanese when necessary. Each student comes to our conversation classes twice a week, 50 minutes each. The purpose of the oral conversation classes (OC) are for the students to become comfortable speaking aloud in English.

Usually at the the beginning of a class we will start with a little warm-up to get the students ready to learn. For example, this week in the 8th grade classes we worked on the differences between F and V. After a demonstration of how to position your mouth correctly to pronounce the sounds, the teacher read aloud words like "vine" and "fox" and the students had to write down the letter they heard. After the warm-up the native English speaking teacher, team teacher, and intern will model the day's activity and then the students will break up into pairs and practice speaking with their partner. In the 9th grade classes, since they are getting ready to go to Nebraska this summer, we have what is called "bio-data questions." Each day we give them a new question for them to learn. For example, a question might be simply, "What do you like to do for fun?" or "Where were you born?" The questions continue to get harder as the school year goes on. Each day the kids will practice asking their questions to one another. Usually all of that will take up the majority of the class period. At the end if there is time we may review with the kids.

We do a variety of activities to keep the students awake and on task. This week we taught the 9th graders about American money. We did a short quiz as a group to review and then the kids did a fun game to help them practice the values. One thing that I noticed about Japanese kids is that everything is decided by "janken" (rock, paper, scissors). For example, when playing a game all of the kids will janken to decide who goes first. If there are any disputes, then a quick rock, paper, scissors game will quickly dissolve it.

Like I mentioned, the majority of the teaching is done by the native English speaking teacher. The intern and Japanese team teacher are basically there to assist. We walk around and check the kids' work and make sure they all understand the material. We might also pass out the papers or write answers on the board for the class. During the demonstration of the speaking activity the team teacher and intern are important to help the native English speaking teacher model the proper way to say the words and complete the activity.

Of course as interns we also get to do all of the "dirty work" or behind the scenes stuff. This year the school got brand new projectors for the teachers. This is great because then they don't have to write everything out on the board, but can just show the worksheet to the class using the projector or prepare materials for a powerpoint and teach using that. Of course this means a lot of things need to be scanned and it's the interns job to do most of that! We also do a lot of organizing, sorting, cutting, and laminating throughout the day.

Some students playing connect 4 before class.

One of the classrooms.