Methods of Language Learning in Japan

I remember talking to a taxi driver in Hakodate a while back. He told me about another foreigner who taught English in Japan. It didn't take long for that guy to get fed up with teaching, and he left the country with the lasting impression that Japanese people are just plain stupid.

Why? Well, Japanese students are moderately able to understand written English, but their conversation skills are extremely sub-par. I mentioned this before when talking about my speech contests students. They can memorize and recite paragraphs of difficult English, but they can't even answer when asked, "Did you study a lot?" It's an excruciating experience, being unable to communicate without writing everything down and giving them a few minutes to extrapolate a response.

As much as I empathize with the guy for his frustrating experiences, I don't agree with him. Yes, Japanese people seem to have a painstakingly difficult time picking up English. Sure, it gets frustrating. However, anyone qualified in the field of language teaching can easily tell why they're having such a hard time.

In a nutshell, it's the method they're using. It's hard to explain it in words, so I'll let this diagram do the explaining for me:

And herein lies the problem. Japanese teachers of English mistakenly believe that "native language" and "intended meaning" are the same thing. They believe that the only way to produce English is to start with Japanese, and then grind it through a grammatical translating machine. They think language is like math!

This becomes obvious when you see that English classes are taught almost exclusively in Japanese, no matter what the students' ability level. I looked at worksheets the teachers have created, and there are many activities that force students to translate each word in a sentence individually, and then do a big switch-a-roo in word order to abide by grammar rules. Imagine how hard it would be if you wanted to say something, like "I want to eat lunch." From the overall meaning, the Japanese sentence would be 「昼食を食べたい。」 Then you'd break the words individually apart, and translate directly into " lunch / eat / want to ". Then, you'd think of the grammar rules, and reorder the sentence into " want to / eat / lunch ". Then you'd remember the assumed subject, and finally end up with "I want to eat lunch." All the time it took you to read that explanation is how much time a Japanese kid takes to construct and say this sentence. I literally have to stand and wait for MINUTES for a simple sentence. That's assuming they know all the translations and grammar rules. If they don't, this could take exponentially longer, but they usually just give up before then.

No, no, NOOOOOO! That's not how language works!! Native language is not the benchmark to base all other languages on! A language - any language, even your native language - is merely a path to express a desired meaning. Overall meaning is the genesis where all language should emerge from!

When I tried learning Japanese the first time, it felt a lot like what they do in Japan. I was terrible, and I could speak almost nothing. After a few years off, I decided to start over and learn Japanese again in a different location. This time, we spent very little time translating English to Japanese. For only the first week, we memorized simple everyday phrases. After that , we focused on learning the Japanese language from scratch using the basic building blocks of grammar and vocabulary. Of course, certain concepts still needed to be explained in English, but the first year was spent slowly constructing genuine Japanese and weeding English use out of the classroom. By the beginning of the second year, classes were already taught purely in Japanese. Not a single English word was spoken by the teacher, and yet we all had no problems understanding.

This is why we were successful. We constructed Japanese out of the meaning we wanted to express, bypassing English altogether. Of course, we had to give conscious effort to construct the sentences, but it was still pure Japanese. These days, when I speak Japanese, I'm also thinking in Japanese, so I can have a conversation at real-time speed.

This is why Japanese people can't speak English. It's not that the kids are stupid. They've just been doing it wrong. And, until someone with lots of power decides to make a radical change to the system, they will continue to do it wrong. My role here is to be an assistant to the teachers that insist on doing it wrong, so there is very little I can do to make an impact. It's like watching children play with toy guns, believing that they are preparing themselves for real combat.

Maybe that's what that guy meant when he called Japanese people "stupid." It's not the people learning who are stupid. It's the people who are teaching.