Saw this advert and found myself shaking my head with empathetic exasperation. I found this advertisement on Alc Space (an incredibly useful Japanese-English online dictionary, btw) for the well-known language learning software, Rosetta Stone. It is geared towards the Japanese who've scored well on their English exams, but still can't seem to speak English. I spent years and years in Japan before moving to Africa, 2 years of which I spent as an Japanese-English interpreter/liaison/English instructor. Teaching at the kindergarten and elementary school level was honestly a wonderful, rewarding experience. Teaching at the middle school and high school level however often left me exasperated at the way English was being taught. Like many places in the world, the type and quality of school that you are able to advance to is dependent on the grades you received on the national exam. In comparison, in the U.S. (my "Country of Origin" as we, refugee resettlement folk put it), entrance into higher learning (be it high school, university or grad school) is based on a wider range of, let me call them, "capability measures," such as extracurricular activities, final grades on not just the SAT (our version of the national exam), but also final grades in individual courses, personal interviews, internship and conference experience, language ability, travel experience, work experience, publications, letters of recommendations, etc. Because so much importance is put on a Japanese student's score on the national exam, there tends to not be as much focus on creativity, or in the instance of language instruction - pronunciation and conversational comprehension and ability. English is one of the main subjects on the Japanese National Exam, but being able to comprehensibly communicate in verbal English is not tested. The result? Japanese students focus mostly on written English. They excel at grammar patterns, for instance, and spelling. But speaking and comprehending a native speaker of English? Good luck. It's a shame too because Japan is such a wealthy country that does so much GOOD in the world. If the majority of the population could actually verbally communicate in English (past basic communication), imagine what that would do for their economy, for their "reach" in the world, for tourism and so on!? When I was teaching in Japan, middle and high school students were being taught English pronunciation not as any non-Japanese would comprehend it. It was being taught as it is written in Japanese. For example, students were being taught that the word, "cat" was pronounced, "kato," and "dog" was to be pronounced "dogu." Then I'd see the young students try to communicate with such incorrect pronunciation with a foreign, English-speaking tourist. The tourist would, of course, struggle to understand what on earth they were saying and the Japanese student would in turn lose confidence and probably pass up the next opportunity to test out their English speaking ability. My capacity to teach them correct pronunciation was limited because I visited but once a week. With me teaching them American pronunciation and their instructors insisting that they still memorize the "katakana-ized" (see footnote) version of English, they were basically being asked to learn two separate languages - one that wasn't going to be on the national exam that determined the rest of their life, and another that had no effect whatsoever. What would you do? Study the "katakana-ized" version of English indeed! Oh, Japan, I feel for you indeed...
Footnote: Katakana is the set of Japanese characters used to write foreign or emphasized words. Like the other two Japanese alphabets, katakana is based on the syllables "a," "i," "u," "e," and "o" so words ending in a consonant such as "dog" cannot be written less they are alterted to "fit" the katakana alphabet...thus "dog" becomes "dogu," "can't" becomes "can'to" and so on. The Japanese language does not cater for "l" and "r." Japanese does have a sound that is similar, but it is more a combination of both "l" and "r," thus in the typical Japanese accent, "English" will sound like "Ingurisshu" and embarrassing misappropriations like "erection" instead of "election," will be heard. My favorite one, however, is from the movie, "Lost in Translation," where a Japanese prostitute demands that Bill Murray "lip" her "stokinzu" ("rip her stockings"). heh heh heh
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