Teacher's Notes: English Inside and Out (of the Classroom)

One of my best students confided in me the other day that she feels she is very good at English during class, but that speaking with me was difficult.  I assured her she spoke very well and that one of the main reasons I was here was to help her get more comfortable with English conversation.  I told her that talking to me should be relaxing and that she could use Japanese, gestures, or pictures when she didn’t know the English.  This got me thinking about my role as an ALT and the ways in which I feel English should applied and quantified inside and outside the classroom.

The decision of when to use English and when to use Japanese is a topic often discussed at ALT meetings.  In fact, it was brought up at the Kumamoto Mid-year Conference just last week.  I have always been an advocate of using as much English during class as possible.  Sometimes it isn’t, like trying to explain why a particular sentence is wrong when checking the student’s work, but I’ve found that most of the time students can handle instructions and simple explanations in English.  I also feel that avoiding English is a disservice to the kids.  Again, technical explanations like grammar should be covered by the JTE in Japanese, but a ten-minute discussion about tangentially related material, such as famous historical figures referenced in the text, can and should be done in English.  The reason is simple: it is not as crucial for students to retain this information as it is to expose them to English.

Though I feel my students are competent enough to handle almost exclusively English instruction, everyday conversation presents a number of challenges that class simply cannot prepare them for.  Almost everything about classroom English is fixed: classes last a certain period of time, the school year follows a set schedule, there’s often only one right answer to any given question, and the use of Japanese is discouraged (even by me).  In contrast, real communication is fluid: conversations can last a few seconds or several hours, topics vary, there’s a multitude of ways to convey the same idea (think of how many ways you can say “Yes”), and, in my case at least, the use of Japanese is actually encouraged.

These stark differences arise from the perceived goal of each situation.  English class is designed around the idea of passing the high school entrance exam of your choice.  The notion that it gives you the tools to read and speak a foreign language can be looked upon as simply an added bonus.  Here, students strive for perfection because the better they are, the better school they can get into.  Day-to-day conversation, however, is all about conveying ideas.  Here, the aim is simply to understand one another in any way possible.  This is why discouraging Japanese outside of class is a negative thing in my mind, because it cuts out the valuable overlap you share with your students in exchange for an artificial challenge.

No Japanese means wedging students into that middle section while you refuse to do the same.

Taking a step back and looking at these two distinct spaces, it becomes clear why even the most gifted of students may have trouble with English conversation.  While exacting, classroom English is also very narrow.  It may be true that only one answer is going to get you a point on the test, but that answer will come from a limited set of information.  Again, the material here is fixed and definite.  Natural communication, while having a fairly simple goal on the outset, is far more daunting in practice because it can go anywhere and has the potential to run the range of an entire languages lexicon.  When I talk to my students, I do try and gauge what level of dialogue I think they can handle, but I don’t sit and ask myself what sentence structures or vocabulary words they know.  I’m not quizzing them, but trying to get to know them, so naturally some things are going to come up that they’ve never heard before.  At that point, they need to know that it’s okay to use Japanese, to gesture, to draw pictures, and to make mistakes because the only way that communication fails for sure is when one of us gives up.

When my student said that she didn’t feel she was good at talking with me, I suspect she was gauging her speaking ability using the same scale implemented in class.  Why wouldn’t she?  It’s the only thing she’s familiar with.  Every class has grades, tests, and a standard that’s expected to be lived up to.  Talking with me is completely different, and I’m sure that’s as terrifying as it is exciting.  I only hope this experience serves to encourage her and that she stays passionate about learning and speaking English.