Fail: Why Japanese Children Aren't Motivated to Learn English

One day, on two separate occasions, my students asked their teachers to talk with me in English.  In both instances, the teachers told them it was むり (無理, muri), which means impossible.  I chuckled a little at the time because I understood what they had said and was musing to myself that their kids could probably do a better job speaking with me, but this underscores one of the major problems I face as an English teacher in Japan.  Simply put, there is no motivation, positive or negative, for my students to learn English and even I’m hard pressed to argue it’s useful for them.

Before I go any further, I’d like to reiterate that I live way out in the countryside, on a series of islands that is ultimately connected to the mainland by a single bridge.  I could probably count the number of local foreigners, excluding ALTs, on a single hand.  Unlike the big cities, where tourists are a common sight around the holidays, there are precious few opportunities where knowing and using English is necessary or even helpful.  On some level I feel like all my kids understand this, that English is something that, for most of them, will atrophy like it has with their teachers.  On one hand it’s really frustrating, because I know English education has been around long enough that most, if not all, of my teachers learned it at some point.  On the other, I can’t really blame them for being a product of their surroundings.  I’m sure my Japanese, as horrible as it already is, would be effectively non-existent had I remained in the states and had no need to practice it.

This is only half of the equation, though.  Now I’ve established that at least some of my kids (probably a fairly good number actually) have seen that learning English won’t help them much in the long run, save for getting them into the high school of their choice, but I’ll get to that in a bit.  Are there any other factors motivating them to do so, maybe a short-term benefit or some sort of negative consequence of not learning?  Well, I suppose in the short-term they get to talk with me and while I like the idea that my kids are learning English in order to be my friend, I just don’t think that’s the case.  Certainly some of them seem really excited to talk and spend time with me, but not enough that they’re going to raise their grades just so we don’t have to delve into Japanese as often during our talks.

As for any negative consequences again there don’t seem to be any.  The Japanese education system doesn’t fail students or hold them back a grade.  Remember this point the next time someone tells you that Japanese students have a college level education by the time they finish high school.  While it may be true that the curriculum is that advanced, unless the student is really motivated there are probably a few classes they failed horribly and just weren’t penalized in any way for it.  The worst punishment I’ve seen for failing class is a tongue lashing from the teacher, but for English the worst the kid is going to get is sitting with the failing half of the class after a test and being forced to write lines rather than playing some mildly more interesting games in the advanced class.  If you already don’t like or care about English, you probably won’t care which of these classes you’re in either.

Finally, we have high school entrance exams.  While it’s true that English is a requirement on these tests, depending on what school you’re trying to get into you may not need to know any English at all.  I’ve heard that prospective students can pass the English portion of some tests by successfully writing their name on the top of the page in Japanese.  Granted, these are highly specialized technical schools but when you factor in the number of students who are simply going to work right out of junior high and the number who will want or will settle for a technical school, the end result is a good chunk of kids who ultimately will have no need for English.