Three Curricular Reasons Why Japanese People Can’t Speak English
1. Inadequate reinforcement of the lessons. It’s not that the grammar-translation method doesn’t work, it’s that it’s not backed up by something more. School students get a lesson once a week if they’re lucky, for less than an hour. That lesson explains grammar and introduces vocabulary. And then . . . whooosh, you might as well send them to Siberia. Japanese kids have tons of words and a smattering of grammar, but no examples of how to use the stuff in action. They need reinforcement: real-world materials showing the variety of ways in which words are actually used. There’s no reading program, no opportunities for conversation or presentation, no schedule for watching movies. The grammar explanation isn’t the problem. It’s that it isn’t rounded out with further study.
2. Classroom control. Now, if you’re a teacher, you can probably relate to this. Traditional, lecture-centric teaching requires everyone to shut up and pay attention to you. It’s just that there’s a fine line between classroom control and turning your class into a mini prison. Shut everyone up too much and you can’t restart them.
From a student perspective, too, there’s a tendency to avoid doing anything that even remotely approximates work. Remember being a student? Man, I sure do. The last thing I wanted to do was, well, anything. I just wanted my teacher to leave me alone so I could go back to reading G.I. Joe comics and daydreaming about jumping out the window. And that was in college.
These combined forces create a situation in which the teacher is speaking, everyone is nice and quiet, but nobody is listening. The message is being lost, and little learning is happening. It’s like teaching someone to swim by giving them weekly lectures on swimming. This situation exists in schools around the world, and unfortunately, does little to prepare people for the act of speaking. It’s certainly not unique to Japan. Some teachers just use too much stick and not enough carrot. At the risk losing some classroom control, it wouldn’t kill you to get people out of their seats and actually interacting with each other.
3. Inadequate practice. Students learn, but they don’t get to apply their knowledge. According to self-proclaimed linguistic savant K. Seymoreofmystuff in The Skill of Speaking Fluent Japanese, speaking requires skill, not just information. Kind of like how I’m the greatest basketball player ever with a remote in one hand and a can of beer in the other. There’s a huge difference between knowing what to do and actually being able to do it. Put somebody face-to-face with another human being and all sorts of things happen to their brain. They sweat, blank out, pee their pants. It’s not always good. You gotta practice for that
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