Why do we study English like that?
Posted by: kirin on 
Jul 30th, 2010 | 
Filed under: Rambling, Something Weird...
It looks like some Japanese people like to spend summer vacation for study. They take it a good opportunity to learn English. It’s unlike vacation or holiday…though^ ^;
Every time I see these ads, I’m just amazed at Japanese workers who work 9-5 + over time Monday – Friday and study during weekends and holidays, too! At the same time I wonder if that works out, because it’s a lot more effective to practice a foreign language everyday even only 15 minutes than do it intensively at one period of time as suggested in the ads.
English conversation schools like this have been popular for decades. When I was graduating from university, I thought of working for one of these schools as an assistant teacher or something. But I was so bad at job interviews because I was just too honest to reply their questions “properly” at any kind of jobs until I was finally hired by a company that was dying to get someone who can communicate with their employees overseas.
This was the part of job interview at an English conversation school that I still remember today.
Interviewer:
“Let’s say your student wants to have his TOEIC test score increased by 100 pointes in a week. How would you advise him?”
Me:
“From my experience, I’m afraid it’s nearly impossible. I could help as much as possible, but it’s all up to your efforts after all… :p ”
***Most of Japanese companies pay attention to the TOEIC test score to judge the English skills of the person.
I remember other candidates were saying something like this.
“Let’s do our best to make that possible! You are not alone, I can support you! You can do that as long as you have me!” I learned this was what I was supposed to say, and I knew I failed right at the moment. The all 4 or 5 interviewers there apparently looked totally disappointed and unhappy right after I spoke. lol
Anyway, I guess that was the only one English conversation school I thought of working for because anyhow I was not sure if any English schools would be still needed by the society 10-15 years later from that time. There were many schools already then, I imagined there will be small population who come to these schools to improve speaking and listening ability of English by the time I become an experienced teacher. And what happens next will be this. I may have less chances to get jobs at English conversation schools but at the same time I cannot go any other industry because my experience will be limited to teaching English.
I started working for an exporting company instead. Time has passed and I knew my prediction went wrong. In spite of many English conversation schools, private teaching opportunities at reasonable prices and language exchange opportunities found more casually, besides English education at school started to weigh more on speaking and listening compared with our time, Japanese people do not stop commuting to these schools even today. I suspect these schools even try to cheat us so we should not be able to improve our English skills forever. lol (Please don’t get offended if you are the workers for these schools, I’m just joking.)
I wonder what if they write a blog in English. It costs next to nothing. We can write and read on the blogs, while we can listen and speak on Youtube. If we can make English speaking friends online, we could even skype for free.
But I think most of Japanese people are so scared of making mistakes every time I find books like the followings.
We cannot be perfect after all. In addition to that, native English speakers are not the only people who use English for communication. But I guess there are so many factors around us in Japan that threaten us blaming our imperfect knowledge on English. That’s why it’s possible that Japanese people are waiting to be perfect enough to blog in English, and to be perfect they may prefer being a student at those English shcools for years to come.
What do you think? I’m very much curious how you guys, especially native English speakers actually feel against wrong English spoken by non-natives. (Just like me! lol But from my personal experiences, I didn’t have any big troubles so far.) I suppose we can understand each other better unless we finish the conversation with 1 sentence! lol Let me hear your thoughts, opinions or suggestions to the Japanese who are so scared of speaking English for such a long time.
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I think I keep this style for decades.