Let's get this straight first, teaching English in Japan can be great and some students are very nice and interesting. If you're lucky you can get a job with decent pay too. It also gives you the chance to live in Japan for more than six months. Any one of those things can be enough for someone to hang around to do it.
That said, it can also be a real pain. I just thought I'd made a thread to see if anyone else has similar problems and get feedback. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but maybe it really is the students just being awkward. They pay us though so we need to make them happy... somehow!
Here are a few problems I regularly encounter.
1. I ask the student a question to check whether they know anything about a topic or check they understand. They then ask me "Why are you asking me that question?" It seems like they aren't actually paying attention to the question and think I'm secretly trying to do something else. They also don't seem to comprehend that, you know, it's an English lesson and the teacher is going to ask them questions.
2. Related to 1, a student will know exactly how to do a task but say "I don't know what you want me to do." So, for example, yesterday I had a group company class. They can all speak English fairly well and the goal was "Give bad news using diplomatic language" adapted from the textbook unit. They did all the 'paint by numbers' exercises in the class fine, like change things like "That won't work" to "That might not work", but when it came to the 'production' part of the PPP cycle (I know, I know, outdated but I have to do it) I asked them what they considered 'bad news' at work. So, on cue "We don't know what you want us to do". So I said "Okay, maybe it's easier to think of good news and then make it the opposite" I ended up asking leading questions like "Do you want customers to spend more or less money?" and got a list of good things on the board. Then, I asked what the opposite was - they could do that easily with some leading questions again. Then when it came to applying the concepts they practised early they again got it after some leading questions. To be honest I think they just didn't see the point of the target language, like it was too abstract for them when "It won't work" seemed logical to them. It was like they couldn't do anything not printed on the page but that's been fairly common in my 7+ years of experience.
3. I've noticed that people who have had to work in a different country, especially meeting customers rather than foreign colleagues, are much more cooperative and understand they need to actually do something themselves in a lesson. Has anyone noticed this? It's seriously like night and day, people who haven't been overseas tend to just stare and wonder why I'm asking questions...
That said, it can also be a real pain. I just thought I'd made a thread to see if anyone else has similar problems and get feedback. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but maybe it really is the students just being awkward. They pay us though so we need to make them happy... somehow!
Here are a few problems I regularly encounter.
1. I ask the student a question to check whether they know anything about a topic or check they understand. They then ask me "Why are you asking me that question?" It seems like they aren't actually paying attention to the question and think I'm secretly trying to do something else. They also don't seem to comprehend that, you know, it's an English lesson and the teacher is going to ask them questions.
2. Related to 1, a student will know exactly how to do a task but say "I don't know what you want me to do." So, for example, yesterday I had a group company class. They can all speak English fairly well and the goal was "Give bad news using diplomatic language" adapted from the textbook unit. They did all the 'paint by numbers' exercises in the class fine, like change things like "That won't work" to "That might not work", but when it came to the 'production' part of the PPP cycle (I know, I know, outdated but I have to do it) I asked them what they considered 'bad news' at work. So, on cue "We don't know what you want us to do". So I said "Okay, maybe it's easier to think of good news and then make it the opposite" I ended up asking leading questions like "Do you want customers to spend more or less money?" and got a list of good things on the board. Then, I asked what the opposite was - they could do that easily with some leading questions again. Then when it came to applying the concepts they practised early they again got it after some leading questions. To be honest I think they just didn't see the point of the target language, like it was too abstract for them when "It won't work" seemed logical to them. It was like they couldn't do anything not printed on the page but that's been fairly common in my 7+ years of experience.
3. I've noticed that people who have had to work in a different country, especially meeting customers rather than foreign colleagues, are much more cooperative and understand they need to actually do something themselves in a lesson. Has anyone noticed this? It's seriously like night and day, people who haven't been overseas tend to just stare and wonder why I'm asking questions...