The Peculiar Position of the ALT in Japan

For a multitude of reasons, I had always wanted to travel to Japan and see what it was like to live here. For various other reasons, I started wanting to be a teacher. In the last year of college, I found out about the JET Program and other exchange programs that hire assistant language teachers (hereon, “ALTs”) to live and teach in Japan. Hastily, I set into motion my plan to become an ALT by receiving training for a TEFL Certificate and going through the long and stressful JET application process. Now, over two years since my process first began, I have now been an ALT for more than a year. All I can say about my position in this society and education system is: it is peculiar.

I remember when I found out about this job. I wasn't really sure what an ALTs job description was, and there were stories with extremely varying accounts. At orientation, the best our advisers could tell us was the dreaded keyword: ESID (every situation is different). While I've been here, I've been struggling to determine what exactly an ALT is supposed to do. At some of my schools, particularly the elementary school, I actually do something resembling teaching. At others, I sit in the teacher's room all day lazing about, reading interesting articles online or writing on my blog. Sometimes, I am so desperately bored that I write what is on my mind for no particular reason, as I am doing now. I ask if they would like me to do anything, but they tend to avoid bringing me to class. I do things like put up interesting displays on my ever-growing “ALT Wall”, but only because that seems to be the only way I can get some connection to the students. Over and over, I've asked myself, “Why the hell am I here?”

My supervisor put it very simply. “You are here to assist your JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) with whatever they request.” It sounded easy enough, but we slowly encounter a sort of paradox. From my experience, most of the JTEs I work with don't want assistance from the ALTs. I'm under the impression that they believe they are fine teaching English on their own, and that ALTs are unnecessary. Most of them have been teaching for much longer than any ALT, so they can surely handle themselves better. They've gone through their rigorous testing and certification to become a teacher, so they must be experts in their fields. We must ask: why do the JTEs need assistants like us in the first place?

The answer is this: the schools have been mandated to have an ALT by the national ministry for education (MEXT). An authority outside the confines of the school, maybe even beyond the scope of the local board of education, is requiring them to have an ALT, whether they like it or not. But why do their authorities believe ALTs are necessary?

I thought maybe we'd be here as pronunciation models. JTEs and Japanese people in general have pretty messed up accents due to the relatively few vowel and consonant sounds in their native language. I thought, “maybe we're here so the students can hear what real English sounds like.” It seemed plausible, until I remembered that the textbook comes with a CD read by a native speaker. They don't really need something as expensive as me to display correct pronunciation. Most JTEs have me read passages from the textbook, but when I'm out visiting another school (which is the majority of the time), they use the CD. Some JTEs are so out of the loop that they'll use the CD instead of me even when I'm standing RIGHT THERE NEXT TO THEM. Well, I'm obviously not needed in that department.

Another ALT offered a solution: we have been brought here to be conversation practice partners with the students. It sounds like a good idea, except we are given almost no opportunities to actually talk with the kids. There isn't an assigned time where the students can talk to me, nor is there an assigned place to talk even if they wanted to. I don't get a room or an office, and in between class, lunch, cleaning time, and the various council and class meetings, there isn't enough break time to have a conversation. Skill-wise, I can probably only speak to 3-4 kids per school in anything resembling English. Others get completely flabbergasted at the though of speaking anything but Japanese, and avoid the ALT like the plague. The ALT that suggested this answer works at the biggest school with the most affluent students in the city, so they are more serious about English and have an English Club. Even then, the club attendance is quite low, so not many students actually get “conversation practice”. I'd love to have more conversation time with my students, but if we really are here for that purpose, we are hardly being utilized at all.

Someone else, the translator and international relations coordinator in the office, guessed that we're here to display our culture. Only someone with a cultural background such as us can explain the cultural differences of our home countries, right? True! However, like the previous hypothesis, we are hardly ever used for that purpose. I am rarely asked to explain cultural aspects of America, unless they want me to describe a holiday and the accompanying traditional activities (and even that is rare outside elementary school). We aren't even allowed to maintain our cultural societal behaviors, as we are expected to conform to Japanese societal norms. This includes taking shoes off indoors, bowing, using polite and humble speech, saying itadakimasu and gochisousama during meals, waiting to eat lunch until everyone can start, starting and ending class with an official greeting, etc. How effective can we be in spreading cultural behaviors if we're expected to act Japanese? I can only really explain cultural differences on my ALT Wall, but how many students actually read it? Some ALTs aren't even given the privilege of having wall space (I had to personally ask for one)! Surely this cannot be the answer.

The real reason ALTs are deemed necessary is this: even though English is a required subject from middle school through college, Japan is surprisingly poor at English. Among Asian countries, Japanese people actually score the LOWEST on the TOEFL test. That is truly abysmal...

The government knows this, and they attributed it to the fact that the English teachers in this country (traditionally a job held exclusively by Japanese natives) are, alone, not doing a good enough job. Their solution was to bring in “experts of English teaching” from the outside: ALTs. Yes, the licensing system tells teachers they are competent enough to be teachers, but the ministry of education tells them they are not competent enough to teach without an “expert” by their side. Do you see the paradox here? How can they be competent and incompetent at the same time?

This is the confusion my JTEs have, and they are not entirely wrong to be confused. Their own government has given them a teaching license, so they are officially recognized as competent, even if some aren't. At the moment, the teachers are mostly tested on knowledge of their field, while teaching methods and abilities are largely ignored. The requirements to get a teaching license need a revamp to make sure their skills are up to par. One of my teachers told me once that she had applied to be a teacher at a local eikaiwa, or private after-school tutoring academy. She couldn't meet the standards for that position, so she settled for being a public school teacher. WHAT??? The public education system is picking up the rejects???

Beyond that, these “experts of English teaching” brought in from the outside aren't even required to be experts of English nor teaching. I went through the effort to obtain a TEFL certification from a rigorous and prestigious (read, expensive) institution because I thought that was the only natural decision. Another ALT in the city has a masters degree in TESOL. Many of the other ALTs, however, do not have any teacher training or experience whatsoever, in English or any other field. While a few of us are very qualified to teach English, the majority of ALTs are merely English native speakers. They are neither experts of English or experts of teaching, so the JTEs tend to stereotype all ALTs as “merely foreigners”.

This is the peculiar situation of the ALT in Japan. We are brought here under the assumption that JTEs cannot fully function without us, but the JTEs believe that we are incompetent commoners who function merely as assistants (or audio players). In most cases in reality, both the JTE and the ALT are incompetent and unqualified, combining to form a tag-teamed powerhouse of failure. This confusion over who exists for whose sake and the constant grapple for authority in the classroom is why the ALT system and English education in general is in a dead jam. The ones who suffer most are the students.

*Disclaimer: These are my experiences working as an elementary and junior high ALT in a somewhat large city in a very rural prefecture. I do not claim that my situation is the same as any other ALT in a different location or at a different school level (especially high school). As I mentioned before, ESID (kill me now).