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Non-teachers teaching English in Japan?

I am confused over these contradictory statements...
The Japanese schools won't hire over the phone, but the Koreans will. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Good luck in Korea. More xenophobia, many more unscrupulous managers in the larger cities, and despite the advantage of free rent, you will face the fact that losing your job means losing your visa, unlike in Japan. Truly, good luck!
Gee, thanks! I'm not scared s--tless now.

I'm pretty much working in Busan so I can use it as a springboard to get into Japan. That's all. It costs a lot less to fly to Osaka or Tokyo from Busan, S. Korea, for interviews than from Philadelphia, PA. I know its a risk, but I have a number of friends over there who are doing okay. We'll see.

With 3 years of experience (in what, exactly?) and almost an MA (in what field?),
This is going to sound nuts. 3 years exp. in TESOL/TEFL as a tutor (i.e. one-on-one teacher sometimes, glorified language partner other times) at an ESL institute. I'm familiar with all of the teaching manuals and materials there. My MA is in History (I'm particularly interested in comparative history), and I want to do research on Muromachi Japan in particular.

Anyway...

JimmySeal said:
This "dead frog teaching method" (to borrow the words of Richard Graham) is, in my opinion, the very reason that English performance is so poor among Japanese students.
This stuff is useful if you want to learn to read a language. I can read French and Latin pretty well because of this. But I absolutely cannot speak or understand them verbally. I learned Japanese mostly through verbal communication, so my reading/writing is sketchy. What is needed is balance, really, between spoken and written language instruction. It seems to me that the Japanese are teaching students how to read English, but not communicate verbally.
 
Japanese are very analytical people in many ways, and they like to break English down like a science to "fully understand" it before putting it back together into whole sentences, much like dissecting a frog.
This sounds like the grammar translation method still taught in many secondary schools (by Japanese teachers, by the way, not by foreigners). It is geared towards providing a measure of understanding English in a way to pass the insipid college entrance exams, not as a measure of learning how to use the language to communicate.

Once taught, it is easily forgotten, but the gap in conversational communication is still there.
 
Once taught, it is easily forgotten, but the gap in conversational communication is still there.
That's how the TOEFL nails many of my students. Many of the Japanese (and Korean) students at my Institute have a decent reading comprehension. But the TOEFL has listening comprehension and speaking sections which many of them bomb their first times around.
 
Students in Japan bomb the reading section largely because they can't read fast enough to finish the sections, and because they don't know how to infer knowledge.

They bomb the listening sections because they have not gotten enough practice in listening at normal speeds or with normal vocabulary.

There are other reasons, of course, but the above relate directly to their lack of training from academia.
 
Students in Japan bomb the reading section largely because they can't read fast enough to finish the sections, and because they don't know how to infer knowledge...
There are other reasons, of course, but the above relate directly to their lack of training from academia.
These things are somewhat epidemic, I've noticed, with the E. Asian students we get at my job. Americans are bad (due to education becoming stultified), but not that bad. Europeans are probably the most capable of analytical thought and inference.

I've long been a believer that the school systems were never, ever meant to teach, regardless of what country you are, but to institutionalize. In this regard, I believe, they are ultimately successful, more's the pity.
 
aawww... I was just kidding!👍 I think Hirai Ken is a pansy ,thats all. and when you said you looked like him it gave me a chance to get a joke in there... LOL:p
Sorry for getting off topic
Oh good.... I was thinking I should get pissed off or something... not really actually.

I get annoyed when people who meet me through another person ask for a pic with me 'cause I look like Hirai Ken'... I've had that happen perhaps four times now.

Anyways, the Japanese have also told me I look like some famous baseball player, some famous comedian, and even Keanu Reeves. Hirai is just the most common person I'm told I look like.
 
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