Probably the greatest barrier in terms of getting Japanese students communicating in English is the fear of mistakes.
No matter how much you encourage them to simply try, no matter how much their textbooks preach about taking a chance and having marvelous adventures as a result, the truth is that the Japanese education system - and probably the society as a whole - does not leave much room for experimentation or error.
You see, you don't get to go back at any point.
There is a set process. You're born. You go to school. You go to university (unless you immediately start training and working after high school). You get a job - probably the same one you will have for the rest of your life. You get married. You have children. It's all rigidly laid out for you.
Welcome to the Shire, Bilbo Baggins.
There's no deciding in your thirties that you want to jump career tracks and promptly return to college. There's no changing professions in your mid-twenties. Or, at least, I have seen no evidence of this yet.
Life in Japan is high stakes. Particularly in the first few decades of your existence. If you screw up at an inappropriate time, you could stumble off your perfectly paved life path and wander lost forever in the brush - the shameful fuck-up of your family.
As a result, I look around the classroom and I swear the kids use their erasers more than their pencils. They're just so wary of making a mistake.
This was taken to the next level in one of my classrooms yesterday.
We were reviewing vocabulary from their last lesson with a game of Hangman. For the record, I did feel a tad perverse playing this game with Japanese high schoolers the day before exams started, but the teacher rebuffed my attempts to soften the exercise by drawing another less morbid figure.
As it was, the students really got into the game. They were actually *gasp* voluntarily participating. They really didn't want the poor little stick figure man to die.
And that's where the problem surfaced. The high schoolers became paralysed just selecting a letter of the alphabet. The game ground to a halt because they were petrified about pointing at a chalk mark on the board in case it added another part to the picture. There were no serious consequences at all, but they couldn't risk the failure. They just sat there and went completely quiet.
It was all very eye-opening, a little bit sad, and I think a pretty powerful anecdote about learning mindsets in Japan.
No matter how much you encourage them to simply try, no matter how much their textbooks preach about taking a chance and having marvelous adventures as a result, the truth is that the Japanese education system - and probably the society as a whole - does not leave much room for experimentation or error.
You see, you don't get to go back at any point.
There is a set process. You're born. You go to school. You go to university (unless you immediately start training and working after high school). You get a job - probably the same one you will have for the rest of your life. You get married. You have children. It's all rigidly laid out for you.
Welcome to the Shire, Bilbo Baggins.
There's no deciding in your thirties that you want to jump career tracks and promptly return to college. There's no changing professions in your mid-twenties. Or, at least, I have seen no evidence of this yet.
Life in Japan is high stakes. Particularly in the first few decades of your existence. If you screw up at an inappropriate time, you could stumble off your perfectly paved life path and wander lost forever in the brush - the shameful fuck-up of your family.
As a result, I look around the classroom and I swear the kids use their erasers more than their pencils. They're just so wary of making a mistake.
This was taken to the next level in one of my classrooms yesterday.
We were reviewing vocabulary from their last lesson with a game of Hangman. For the record, I did feel a tad perverse playing this game with Japanese high schoolers the day before exams started, but the teacher rebuffed my attempts to soften the exercise by drawing another less morbid figure.
As it was, the students really got into the game. They were actually *gasp* voluntarily participating. They really didn't want the poor little stick figure man to die.
And that's where the problem surfaced. The high schoolers became paralysed just selecting a letter of the alphabet. The game ground to a halt because they were petrified about pointing at a chalk mark on the board in case it added another part to the picture. There were no serious consequences at all, but they couldn't risk the failure. They just sat there and went completely quiet.
It was all very eye-opening, a little bit sad, and I think a pretty powerful anecdote about learning mindsets in Japan.
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