Teach English in Meilong Zhen - Shanghai Shi

Problems for learners in japan.Learners of english around the world face different problems when learning english. These problems can in many cases be country or language specific. As a teacher of english in Japan I have been directly exposed to the specific problems a japanese learner of english faces. This short essay will discuss some of these problems. The culture of learning and ideology behind learning dictates learning styles in different countries. Teaching styles are often deep rooted in culture; as a result, teaching styles and beliefs in what teaching styles are most effective can differ. In Japan, the teaching of english has come under criticism for many years as the japanese teaching style differs heavily from that of most TEFL teachers. The ?Engage ? Study ? Activate? method adopted in this online course would, to my knowledge, never be implemented in mainstream english high school lessons. Rather, grammar translation is still the dominant method of teaching throughout junior and high school teaching. The consequences of relying too heavily on this method extend past the school classroom to the image of english and general language learning in Japan. Whilst there are steps being taken to change this through education policy change, I view this narrow view of teaching as a problem for learners. Most importantly, this style places little to no emphasis on communication or speaking. In all regular english classes I have observed, speaking has never been the focus of the class. Only when a native speaker is present in the class are speaking activities encouraged, and even then they are given less weight in value when it comes to school testing or evaluation. What I believe this leads to is a lack of confidence in japanese learners in their ability to communicate in english ? speaking is seen as too difficult and the lack of encouragement from a young age means that this ?fear? perpetuates to learning after high school. Of course, there are exceptions to this general statement ? many japanese learners are extremely good at speaking english, and some schools more progressive in their teaching of english. However, the general lack of emphasis on communication in mainstream compulsory education is a problem for both Japan and learners. For many Asian countries the learning of english brings added problems of learning a new alphabet and pronunciation that is different from their mother tongue. japanese presents many problems which complicate the learning of english. Aside from the obvious difference in use of characters rather than letters, the structure of japanese is vastly different. Sentence structure bears very little semblance to english, for example in a simple japanese sentence the verb consistently appears at the end of the sentence. Additionally, the subject of a sentence is commonly omitted in japanese speech, the listener discerning various aspects of a sentence from context. Further more complex issues include a difference in tenses; the conceptualisation of the ?past? is not as complex in japanese as it is in english. Thus, many students struggle to understand the difference in past tenses simply because they do not conceptualise the past in the same way. Pronunciation is also a big challenge to the japanese learner. The japanese ?alphabet? is based around vowels with all sounds ending in a vowel. In the translation of english words that have been imported from abroad and used in everyday life, the ?english? is modified to fit japanese speech structures. For example, ?Cute? is pronounced ?Kyuuto? (note the ?o? at the end). This is a difficult habit to change in a japanese learner of english. Additionally, the sounds in the english language which make it so complex to pronounce are simply absent from a relatively simple japanese pronunciation system. For example, the ?l? sound in english is absent from japanese, sounding like an english ?r?. Other such differences present a difficulty to learners, who must create new sounds and form words in new ways to be correct in their pronunciation. All countries and languages come with their own challenges in teaching and learning english. These are just a few challenges faced by japanese learners of english, which stem from both the culture around english teaching and the nature of the japanese language structure itself.