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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.

We hardly like to start discussion or to state one’s opinion in public. Our classrooms are usually very quiet, students are so passive they wait until they are asked to answer the questions from the teachers. Teachers have to feel as if they were the only ones who keep speaking from the beginning to the end. (Yes, it’s way too far from something interactive! Sometimes I feel sorry for the teachers, but if I say something, I will be looked at by every student there.) You can imagine this, when a teacher asks a question, nobody even raises hand to say something. Most of all the students keep quiet, or even sleeping! (lol) Thus the teacher sometimes asks her students to answer her questions one by one; for example, the person at the left line at the first low for the first question, then next question to the person who sits next to the first one, and next, and next…

This is quite opposite to the classrooms in the U.S for example. I only have 1 year experience of studying at a college in California when I was a university student in Japan. I was sort of an exchange student from the Japanese university at that time. I had to take classes at the American college and transfer the credits to the Japanese university to cover the credits for the second semester of sophomore and the first semester of junior. It was very hard for me to show participation to the class besides my poor English. I could not even get what the assignment was at that time. There was another Japanese student in my first ESL class who I guess saved me from failing the class, honestly. (But this was only ESL, English class after 2 ESL classes was the hardest one ever! At that time my English improved well enough to understand what the homework was of course, but I was the only foreigner among Americans in the class…I had to rewrite every essay 5 or 6 times having been helped by some volunteer tutors but I got only C almost all the time! The assignments that I had then were to read bulky English books everyday and night to prepare for the discussion and to write an essay. That actually took me entire afternoon, evening and night and I often ended up having so shocked at the next morning at the class to learn the theme was something sarcastic, which was totally different from how I read it, for example. I could hardly participate in that class but it was lucky my credit was transferred (even if it was C after all) and I went back to a lazy Japanese university student again. I remember this English class was a nightmare at that time that kept torturing me and how much I wished I could have changed it to ESL again. Ugh…such a hard and stressful experience I don’t even want to recall now!)

It was only about 1 year that I attended classes in the U.S but I have to say that I felt Japanese classes were boring when I came back to my junior in Japan. It’s basically that nobody states a word unless nominated to speak out. Yeah, that’s basically how Japanese people are educated. I don’t know when this started but I’m sure when we were elementary school kids, we were more active enough at least to raise hand to say something to the teacher and to the classmates. But as we get older we started to feel embarrassed and finally everybody stopped that, I guess.

This is the background of our education. Our education allows us to be passive like this. (And we can still graduate from university, really.) There’s no speech class, either. We are not used to speak in public, nor debate with others. I think that’s one of the reasons we don’t like to debate or even to leave a single comment to a blog. I have to tell you this also but Japanese people are not as active as you guys who feel no barrier at leaving comments on someone’s blogs for example. But I think it’s still easier on internet because we can pretend to be anyone anonymous, compared with the real life. (So that’s also one of the reasons we don’t like to be ourselves with some personal info. and activities being casually seen by the general public. As a Japanese I can understand well how twitter is well-received by the Japanese while facebook isn’t that much. BTW I opened my facebook account because I received some invitations from friends, but I’m not very active there, besides the name Kirin is a nickname I like to use online. I don’t even know how to use it well.)

In real life, many Japanese people hide what we truly think, which maybe another reason to avoid debating or starting discussion with others. (I guess I am more open though) We’d rather want to stay away from them. We may not even know how to distinguish debate and personal attack. That’s how most Japanese people are. My eyes can even be caught at a comment such as “I disagree with you because…” and I am sometimes so dull at someone’s joking something. But I guess blogging in English to the world gives me a good training to be more international person rather than a traditional Japanese type of Japanese. haha, do you know what I mean? ^ ^; I want to be flexible: when I speak to old Japanese people, I will try not to speak my opinions and I’d rather keep nodding to let it go, (lol) but when I speak with foreign friends I can be more honest to my feelings or thoughts.

If you ever had unexpected reactions from communications with your Japanese friends or neighbors or even me (!) please think about this difference. It’s only a difference due to cultural background. But I have to say temperament like this makes us more mysterious and less understandable from the eyes of non-Japanese people’s. (lol)

Please feel free to share your thoughts with me and other readers!
I think the Japanese who live abroad or who have international friends are less likely but very Japanese people are more likely to be how I stated above. What do you think? ^ ^;