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Trial of English-speaking test for Tokyo high schools raises eyebrows

Buntaro

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An attempt is being made to include an English speaking test in a high school entrance exam in Tokyo. Some parents are not happy. (It will become just one more thing to spend more money on for juku classes.) This could have huge implications for the English-teaching industry in Japan.

FOCUS: Trial of English-speaking test for Tokyo high schools raises eyebrows

"A private-sector English-speaking test will be introduced at the Tokyo metropolitan high school entrance exam for the first time in Japan this month, but the initiative to nurture "speaking skills" faces stiff opposition from some parents and education experts questioning its fairness.

"The test will be implemented for the entrance exam on Nov. 27, targeting almost 80,000 third-year middle school students in the capital who wish to attend metropolitan high schools from next April. Speaking test scores will be added to the overall scores of the entrance exams, being held next February.

"Some parents and experts are demanding that the test be called off due to the need for more transparency on who will score it and the standard for deducting points.

"Meanwhile, some junior high school classes in Tokyo have started preparing for the speaking test. In mid-October, third-year students at Konan Junior High School took part in improvised skits in English."

(cont.)

FOCUS: Trial of English-speaking test for Tokyo high schools raises eyebrows

A private-sector English-speaking test will be introduced at the Tokyo metropolitan high school entrance exam for the first time in Japan this month, but the initiative to nurture "speaking skills" faces stiff opposition from some parents and education experts questioning its fairness.
english.kyodonews.net
 
So many thoughts. The almost tacit admission that Japanese schools do not adequately prepare Japanese kids to speak English (despite the mandatory 6 years of English instruction). The knee jerk rejection from parents on the basis of...presumed increased juku expenses, which is another admission that the Japanese school system is inadequate. But aside from that, the foundational belief that requiring kids to actually speak English is an unnecessary burden. An imposition that needs to be resisted. "Just who will be doing this so-called "testing"" kind of attitude.

Meanwhile, I think kids nowadays are much more accepting of English than previous generations due to the internet, online gaming, and the overall increase in opportunities to come into contact with English in various forms. Whereas the Showa generation could confidently ignore English instruction, The kids born in Heisei will be keenly aware of the gap between people who can speak (even a little) English, and those for whom English is an impenetrable wall. If you were born in 2000s, and you want to play Minecraft or Overwatch or GTA, the motivation to speak English is already there. If you play soccer or watch content from any foreign artist, you will have motivation to speak English. The kids are probably better prepared for this than their parents realize.

Anyway, this kind of "you can't expect our kids to be tested on a skill they should already have" attitude is funny. No surprising, I guess. But somehow tragic, all the same.
 
This will only increase pressure on students and families, and even teachers, without actually encouraging them to improve their language skills. Language skills benefit people because they want to have them, not because they're forced on them. The only reason to test is to identify strengths and weaknesses to help the student improve themselves.

The obsession over measuring performance through tests and using it to separate kids into winners and losers is driving people mad.
 
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The results will be converted to a score of 20, which is included in the overall score of 1,020 in the spring's entrance exams for Tokyo metropolitan high schools.
Click to expand...

So it counts for ~2% of the overall result?
 
I wonder if you get bonus points for creativity.


"I was going to practice playing the piano. So I went to get my favorite songbook of Marilyn Manson ballads.
I couldn't find it at first but suddenly an evil spirit pushed it so that it fell on my head.
If that wasn't strange enough, when I opened it I found that it contains hardcore pornography that my brother must have hidden in there."
 
nice gaijin said:
The obsession over measuring performance through tests and using it to separate kids into winners and losers is driving people mad.
Click to expand...
Is that better, worse, or just as bad as everyone being the "same" for everything. What I have seen with my kids in school, here in the US, is that everyone has to be the same. Those who made the effort and those who didn't. No one "wins" or "loses" anything anymore, its medals/awards for everyone. I'm not convinced that is a better situation.
That being said most standardized tests in the US, and I would guess elsewhere, are really trying to make sure everyone is the same. You should think the same way and work the same way. How else are we going to get more cogs for the machine?
 
I do wonder how that would be graded. There is so much room for interpretation/inference there.
 
It should be pointed out that attempts have also been made to include English speaking tests in entrance exams at the college level, but these attempts have all been defeated so far.

'Stop messing around': Japan univ. test takers express rage, joy over shelved English tests

"TOKYO -- Many youths voiced anger and confusion after the education ministry abruptly announced on Nov. 1 that the introduction of private English tests to university entrance exams would be postponed, while some expressed relief."

(cont.)

'Stop messing around': Japan univ. test takers express rage, joy over shelved English tests - The Mainichi

TOKYO -- Many youths voiced anger and confusion after the education ministry abruptly announced on Nov. 1 that the introduction of private English tes
mainichi.jp
 
College seems like a better place to have the test in the first place. Or at the end of high school at least.
 
I'm guessing the ones who expressed rage are the ones who spent a million yen on private English lessons to prepare.
 
Petaris said:
College seems like a better place to have the test in the first place. Or at the end of high school at least.
Click to expand...

It is a fascinating question, whether suddenly introducing an English speaking test is more 'fair' if it is done at the high school or college level. But the real issue goes much deeper.

I have seen this a few times, where a college's English teaching is a disaster, based on disastrous policies at the government and society level. (The same thing is happening, to a lesser extent, in colleges and high schools in China.) One way that schools choose to 'deal' with such a disaster is to suddenly throw a test at it, not giving students enough time to prepare for it, and not making any attempt to link the test to ongoing curriculum. The idea is to use such a test to evaluate how well specific language objectives are being taught in the school's curriculum, but this is definitely not what happened to the 67,000 middle school students in Tokyo, without any warning and without giving them any time to get ready. Japan needs to look at how its English curriculum is failing its students, put together a new curriculum to fix the problem, then evaluate how well the new curriculum is working, not the other other way around. "Bad curriculum? We'll just throw another test at the students, then it's up to the students to figure out what to do."

Another thing is to 'grandfather' everyone already in the system. Japan needs to start with clear English speaking objectives for today's elementary school first graders and work with them as they grow up going through various grades, not suddenly dump this on today's ninth graders without any warning.

Of course, none of this will happen in Japan, and things will continue to get worse, not better.
 
In the U.S. we have regular standardized testing but it's only to benchmark where students are at, not as a gate to get into high school.
Of course the standardized tests expressly used for college admission (SAT, ACT) are a different story.
 
I have a few more ideas on the status of English teaching in Japan.

First and foremost, because the problem is so bad, so widespread, and so intracted in Japan, the national government needs to take the lead, step in and do something. I am convinced that the Japanese government should create a new ministerial department, a Minister of English Teaching in Japan. This new minister should be a foreigner who is very familiar with the situation. (This new minister should not be a Japanese person, and he/she should definitely not be one of Kishida's political hacks. Also, the position should NOT be within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (文部科学省, Monbu-kagaku-shō), because it would just contribute more to the problem rather than solving the problem.)

Extensive research needs to be done. Is there even one school district in Japan that is doing a good job teaching the speaking of English? What are they doing right? Can their techniques be transferred to other school districts in Japan?

Extensive research of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programs in other countries also needs to be done. For example, Singapore is well-known for having the best EFL programs of any country in Asia. What is Singapore doing right? Can Singaporean ideas be successfully used in Japan? Can teaching ideas from America, Europe, etc., be used in Japan? The research and implementation just hasn't been done.

Next, research programs need to be started at test school districts in Japan. Let's do the research, try several different programs in several different test school districts in Japan, and see which come up with the best results.

We should also look at isolated school districts, perhaps schools on isolated islands such as Minami Daito (near Okinawa) and Chichijima (south of Tokyo). What types of special considerations do schools such as these have?

We can only hope Prime Minister Kishida is reading this and is ready to act.
 
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Singapore is multicultural though so they need a lingua franca and English makes a lot of sense.
 
It's been a while since I lived in Japan. When I was in Japan, it was a bit of a joke how a large number of high school English teachers could not speak English! There was also a lot of trouble between older high school teachers who could not speak English and younger teachers who could. (The older teachers were threatened by all of this and took it out on the younger teachers.)

What is the situation in present-day high schools in Japan? Are most English teachers now able to speak English, or is it still just as bad as when I was in Japan?

I should also point out how, in Japan, a lot of teaching English meant reading a story in English and then discussing it in Japanese (with no speaking or listening to English). Is it still like this?
 
I also find language teaching in the US to be terrible. I took 5 years of French but did not come out near fluent in French. I also had Chinese and that was not great either. I guess the difference is English being the international language we don't feel we need to teach other languages to any usable level as we expect everyone to speak to us in English. My Japanese actually came from a private tutor myself and another at my company way back when used that was of course very different than a classroom setting. In the end I guess I want to say language teaching is no better in US schools.
 
True but there's a lot more opportunity to get exposure to English in Japan than, say, French in the U.S. Also I think they get six years of English and even get some exposure in elementary school don't they? My current company was a domestic-focused company that bought a U.S. company. So it has many people who surprisingly are not equipped to work in English even in written form. Some of them literally write in Japanese and convert to English using DeepL or something in order to communicate by email. Lucky for them online translation is pretty decent these days. Of course it's helpful for me too. But if I'm writing to them in Japanese, I usually write in Japanese first and then auto-translate to English to confirm the meaning is what I intended.
 
The autotranslation stuff is nice and cheap now. The school is now talking to my wife directly who speaks very limited enlgish they translate to her and she can write Japanese to them which the software translates to them. You do end up with a few somewhat odd things now and then but it is good enough. For example my wife writing back on seeing a report on academic development 確認しました。 comes out as like confirmed but it is good enough.
 
I feel like there is certainly something to be said about who exactly is doing the marking. Are they native English speakers? What kind of English is considered correct (American, Australian, English, etc. All have differing pronunciation)?
 
In my view, Japan cannot get rid of the weakness about spoken Japanese till they depend on Katakana for English words. Just my two cents
 
EmpJapan said:
In my view, Japan cannot get rid of the weakness about spoken Japanese till they depend on Katakana for English words. Just my two cents
Click to expand...
Oops, I meant spoken English.
 
EmpJapan said:
In my view, Japan cannot get rid of the weakness about spoken Japanese till they depend on Katakana for English words. Just my two cents
Click to expand...
I agree entirely. I'm learning Welsh at the moment, which is a difficult language to pronounce for English speakers, containing many sounds that don't appear in English.
Welsh language teachers consider it better to focus on the sounds of the words and not to even look at the words until the words have been drilled, and they certainly don't write approximate pronunciations above the words.
 
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