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JAPANESE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH MAY STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO

BEFORE THEY REACH INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS

Patrick Blanche

Abstract

In this article, the writer wonders why, eighteen years after his first EFL teaching and

teacher-training assignment in Japan, the communicative competence of young Japanese English

learners still seems to be lagging far behind that of their European counterparts (and future

competitors). He goes on to explain how one of his own Japanese university students observed ten

Japanese EFL instructors teaching in eight different schools.

Most of the lessons observed were excessively teacher-centered. Over half of them were

poorly planned. The instructors' mediocre performance may well exemplify one of the reasons why

so many Japanese high school and university graduates remain unable or unwilling to converse with

native English speakers.

The writer claims that the overall performance of Japanese EFL teachers could and should

be greatly improved. The failing instructors whom his student observed are probably the subdued

victims of an education system whose officials have paid considerably more lip service to change

than they have struggled to implement needed, intelligent reforms over the past two decades.

[continued on page 2]

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JAPANESE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH MAY STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO

BEFORE THEY REACH INTERNATIONAL STANDARS

Patrick Blanche

Introduction

Eighteen years after my first stint as an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in Japan1, I would

argue that the “sense of change in Japanese classrooms over the past decade” may be a little less

“palpable” than Guest (2000) recently claimed. Japanese students of English are still not doing very

well. Whether they should or should not be expected to “have difficulty in carrying out

conversations with native speakers” after “six years of formal teaching” is, to some extent, beside

the point. Whether or not EFL is an “academic skill” which, like physics or chemistry, can hardly be

applied to real life situations until a learner’s professional life somehow demands it is a trivial

question in today’s international/economic environment. The fact that a large number of Belgian,

Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Swedish and Swiss senior high school students, as well as an

increasing number of young Hungarians and Poles, can converse with native English speakers2 is

much more to the point.

Why, then, is the British university where I have taught summer EFL courses for precisely

a decade still placing most of its Japanese summer school students in low-level EFL classes? Why

am I, in Japan, still forced to treat over 50 percent of my first-year university students (including

some English majors!) as the false beginners they are? Why are Japan’s students’ TOEIC and

TOEFL test scores currently among the lowest in Asia3? Why is the average English level of

applicants for places at Japanese universities (at least the private ones) falling instead of rising? And

why has the Japanese Ministry of Education Science and Technology just established a council “to

discuss reforming English-language education in schools”4?

Further, I keep wondering how much is really known about what goes on in the majority

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of Japanese EFL classrooms, those which are exclusively or mostly managed by Japanese

teachers/administrators, since (to my knowledge) regular performance appraisals, program reviews,

peer evaluations and in-service training are not exactly common practices among Japanese ELT

professionals, as was recently suggested by an article in The Daily Yomiuri newspaper5. Four years

ago, in an attempt to find out more about this, I advised one of my students (Murakami, 1998), who

had taken a keen interest in language teaching methodology, to base her “graduation thesis”6 on

about ten classroom observations in at least seven different schools. I was assuming the teachers

who would accept to be observed wouldn’t feel particularly threatened by her if her stated purpose

were simply “to collect data for a thesis”. There was a good chance that they would not greatly

modify their usual classroom behavior. Thus I thought she would be able to see things that would

have been hidden from my view if I had been the observer.

Ms. Murakami did a fine job but, as a Japanese undergraduate student, she could not

reasonably be expected to turn her research into a publishable paper: I have had to reorganize and

edit her writing, and to extrapolate some of her findings. Her de facto contribution to this article is

nevertheless very substantial -- and gratefully acknowledged. The following is a description of what

she did and saw, as well as a summary of her and/or my reactions, comments and suggestions for

improvement.

Observation method

I initially thought Ms. Murakami would be able to apply observation criteria derived from

a student-teacher interaction analysis framework I had developed earlier (Blanche, 1992); these

criteria are listed and explained in AppendixⅠbelow. However, only three of the teachers who later

accepted to be observed were to conduct a speaking and/or listening class. In addition, none of them

would allow my student to use a tape recorder, which meant that she would be unable to go over the

lessons afterwards. As a result, I advised her to use slightly different and simpler criteria. These are

listed in TableⅠ. A detailed explanation follows the table.

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Table I

Observation criteria eventually used

TeacherAttitude

Talking timeInteraction with students

Students Interaction with other studentsTime on task

Activities

Introductory (warm-up) activitiesCore activities: - quality

- variety- appropriateness

Closing (follow-up) activitiesUse of equipment Black/whiteboard, furniture (desks),

Audio/video, overhead projectorUse of classroom spaceUse of class time

Explanation of how the chosen observation criteria were to be applied

(Key: T = teacher; S = student; SS = students)

*T’s attitude: friendly/warm (enough or not); encouraging (enough or not); enhanced by body

language/use of hands (yes or no).

*T-SS interaction: positive or negative; not enough, or enough (at least 15% of the time with SS working

in small groups/pairs and their instructor moving around between groups; 15 % = “average”).

*T talk: too much (over 35% of the time; 35% = “average”) or not; relevant or not.

*S-S (S) interaction: enough small group/pair work (at least 50% of the time; 50% = “average”) or not.

*SS’ time on task: enough (well over half the time; 60% = “average”) or not.

*Warm-up (introductory) and follow-up (closing) activities: are there any? If so, is their length

appropriate? Are they good or bad (e.g. do they actually introduce or expand the theme of the lesson)?

*Core activities: quality (good or bad); variety (enough or not); appropriateness—do these activities

teach what they are supposed to teach, and do they fit in well with other activities?

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*Equipment use: black/whiteboard (enough/too much/relevant or not), furniture/desks (efficient/

appropriate or not); audio/video, overhead projector (if available, used when called for/enough/too much or not).

*Use of classroom space: is it efficient (are the students made to use as much individual/small group

space as they could/should) or not?

*Use of class time: efficient (good, even pace) or not.

As an undergraduate student, Ms. Murakami would not have been able to use a more

‘objective’ observation instrument by herself, considering that it takes small groups of graduate

students in Britain or the United States weeks of controlled practice with standard tools to get valid

results. Her results were certainly approximate in and of themselves, but the overall picture that

eventually emerged was, in my view, fairly clear –- albeit not so bright.

Results

Ms. Murakami observed ten classes in June, July and September 1998, as shown in Table

II. Her observations took place at eight different locations in the Fukuoka and Kumamoto areas of

Kyushu7.

[continued on page 6]

TableⅡ

Observation schedule

Dates Types of school Length of lessons Skills mostly taught1. June 29, 1998 Private University 90 minutes Reading

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2. July 7 Private University 90 Listening

3. July 10 High school 50 Reading

4. July 10 High school 50 Reading

5. July 13 High school 50 Reading

6. July 13 High school 50 Reading

7. July 14 State university 90 Listening

8. July 18 High school 50 Grammar

9. July 18 Language school 40 Listening and speaking (conversation)

10. September 26 State university 90 Writing

The results of these observations are summarized in Table Ⅲ, Table Ⅳ and Table Ⅴ below.

[continued on page 7]

Key for the following three tables:

+ = good (3.5 or above on a scale of 1 to 5)

Δ= so-so/average (from 2.5 to 3.4) - = not good (from 1 to 2.4)

Table Ⅲ

Behavior of teachers and students

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Observations(in chronological order)

T’sattitude

Ttalk

T-SS interaction

S-S(S) interaction

SS’time on task

No. 1 + Δ Δ + +2 + - Δ - Δ3 Δ Δ Δ - -4 - - - - -5 + Δ + - Δ6 + Δ + - +7 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ8 Δ Δ - - -9 + Δ + + +

10 - - - - -

Table Ⅳ

Classroom activities

Introductory(warm-up)activities

Core activities Closing(follow-up)activitiesQuality Variety Appropriateness

No. 1 Δ Δ Δ Δ -2 - - - - -3 + Δ Δ - -4 Δ - - - -5 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ6 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ7 - Δ Δ - -8 Δ Δ - - -9 - Δ Δ Δ Δ10 - - - - Δ

Table Ⅴ

Use of classrooms and class time

Classroom equipment

Classroom space Class time

No. 1 - - Δ2 - Δ -3 - - Δ4 - - -5 - - +6 Δ - +7 - Δ -8 - - -

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9 Δ Δ +10 - - -

In Ms. Murakami’s thesis, all ten lessons were fully described and criticized. The

performance of each teacher was evaluated in great detail, but lack of space prevents me doing it

here. Thus I am limiting myself to the description and critique of just one lesson, followed by a brief

general discussion.

Sample appraisalA listening class at private university (observation No. 2)

Class size: 20 students; level: low intermediate (second-year students); duration: 90 minutes.

This lesson was chosen for a sample appraisal because it was of low quality, although

listening is an area where non-native English teachers can achieve as much as natives if they use

captions or scripts during their preparation time.

Structure of the lesson

a. Listening to/watching a videotape recording [55 minutes].

First, the learners watched a short, two-minute conversation three times in a row. Then

the instructor gave them a list of tasks they were to perform or questions they were to

answer about the conversation, along with detailed explanations. This work had to be

done in a text/workbook, but as one of the tasks was to fill in blanks while listening to

the conversation, the tape was played four more times: without interruptions the first

time, with pauses at the end of each sentence the second time, without interruptions the

third time and, again, with pauses at the end of each sentence the fourth time. During

the fourth listening, the learners repeated each sentence after the instructor. Finally, they

practiced the conversation in pairs, changing some words or phrases in the process.

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b. Interim activity [15 minutes].

The class listened to an English song. The instructor also asked a few students personal

questions, e.g.: if they had done anything interesting lately, or how they had been getting

along generally.

c. Listening to/watching a videotape recording [20 minutes].

The students watched a short, one-minute conversation three times. After that, the teacher

asked them questions, and they watched the scene again in order to verify their answers.

Evaluation

The students seemed to feel comfortable. The instructor looked directly at them and used

a lot of body language. He often smiled, which gave him a friendly appearance. He spoke loudly and

clearly. He kept walking around the classroom and gave everybody plenty of individual attention.

He praised the learners who came up with good answers; and to those who made mistakes, he just

said, “Good try!”

The instructor’s overall attitude was quite positive but this, unfortunately, was also the only good

thing about his teaching. There were serious deficiencies in eight other areas, as follows.

1. Lack of preparation.

He had clearly not spent enough time preparing for his lesson. He relied almost entirely

on a very small portion of the text/workbook that accompanied the video, without

leaving out, adding or changing anything. The activities proposed in a textbook should

often be adapted or complemented to meet the needs of a particular group of students. No

two classes are exactly the same.

2. Insufficient content.

The videotaped conversations the teacher used were both too short. Altogether, they

lasted three minutes. This surely was not enough material for a 90-minute class!

3. No previewing (introductory) activities.

A short reading and/or discussion should have primed the learners for what they were

about to watch/listen to.

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4. Inadequate follow-up activities.

For instance, what could the students actually learn while regurgitating the first video-

taped conversation, which they had already heard seven times?

5. Too much emphasis on detailed listening.

What a majority of Japanese students of English need, above all, is to develop listening

strategies that can help them grasp the general meaning of a discourse.

6. Impractical teaching.

In real life, students are unlikely ever to hear the same thing repeated more than twice

(seven times here). Consequently, they must learn how to get the gist of a conversation

or talk when they first hear it.

7. Not enough emphasis on skills other than listening.

Listening, like other language skills, should not be taught in isolation. Although there

was enough time to include relevant non-listening activities in this lesson, reading and

writing were limited to the use of a workbook. The speaking activities were either

unproductive (repetition of the first videotaped conversation) or out of place (interim

period).

8. Wrong reinforcement of the learners’ speech.

The instructor should have repeated each of the sentences in the first videotaped conver-

sation after, not before, the students – how else could he have corrected their pronun-

ciation? Moreover, the model to be first followed by the students, in each case, was the

recorded sentence.

Suggestions for improvement

Two longer film/video clips: a relatively long one (four to six minutes), and then a

relatively short one (two to four minutes). In terms of content, the second scene should

follow on, or be germane to, the first one.

Pre-listening activity: a short reading and/or a small group discussion on a topic related to

what is talked about in the recorded conversations. Some of the more difficult/unfamiliar

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words/expressions used in the video should be introduced during this reading/discussion

The students watch the first scene with the sound off and try to guess what is happening

and what (some of) the actors are saying.

The students listen to the conversation(s) with the picture off and try to understand the

general meaning of what the people are saying.

Test: true-false statements (“say if the following statements are true or false”).

Now the learners watch the scene with both the sound and the picture on. They try to

understand everything in more detail.

Test: multiple-choice questions.

Short discussion in small groups: the students try to guess what is going to happen next.

They watch the second scene with the sound off, decide whether their guesses were

correct or not, then make more guesses.

They watch the second scene again with the sound on: what happened after all?

Review: the learners watch the two scenes consecutively with the sound on and do a gap-

filling exercise, using (part of) the whole script.

Follow-up activity: the learners write scripts for similar (not identical) scenes. The

instructor assigns at least three different topics to different groups. Some of the groups

will act their scene out at the beginning of the next class.

Notice how many times the word “instructor” or “teacher” appeared above: once. This would

have been a student-centered lesson.

General discussion

Overall, the teachers’ performance was disappointing. Almost everyone looked good at

the beginning of their lesson, yet in most cases this first impression quickly melted away.

The teachers’ positive attitude is mainly what made them shine for a few minutes. By and

large, they were dynamic people and handled themselves well in their classroom as far as body

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language was concerned; they seemed to have established a good rapport with their students; they

apparently wanted to be, and probably were, liked by them. This could have made their teaching

very effective. It didn’t. Even if their outward friendliness never was a sure sign of insecurity, at

times I thought it was traceable to a surreptitious attention- seeking effort that soon became

counterproductive.

The center of the stage is where a language instructor belongs only some of the time. He

or she, of course, is the stage director; but the stage itself rightfully belongs to the students: they are

the true actors; and if they are also young adults, they should be treated as (intelligent) adults. On

this score, Ms. Murakami quoted Watanabe (1995), a Japanese author: “teachers have to plan classes

so that students can start taking the initiative”, and “a lesson should be a process in which the

students’ active participation is based on the teacher’s guidance and plays a key role”.

Unfortunately most of the teachers she observed talked too much (in some cases

endlessly) and were authoritarian beneath the surface. The learners were not highly motivated

because they lacked opportunities to experiment with English, to make and correct mistakes, and to

learn by doing things instead of absorbing information that few of them were willing or able to

retain. The college students among them weren’t developing the learning strategies they would need

after graduation: they weren’t shown how to become autonomous learners in order to keep on

learning in the future.

A paradox Ms. Murakami didn’t fail to notice is instructive: the more authoritarian the

teachers were, the more trouble they seemed to have in ‘controlling’ their lesson. They did not

budget their time properly or at all; they often got bogged down in superfluous grammatical or

lexical details; and when, because of this, an introductory or review activity crowded out core

activities, the focus of the lesson remained unclear.

Moreover, some of the core activities that were used during the same class had little in

common—there was no central theme. In several instances, the students ended up doing something

other than what they should have been doing (e.g. grammar instead of writing); or there were not

enough activities for a complete lesson, especially if the instructor was relying mostly on a tired old

textbook.

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Conclusion

From what I could see through my graduating student’s eyes, I concluded that seven of the

classes she observed were excessively teacher-centered. In addition, most of the instructors had not

sufficiently or adequately prepared their lesson. The suggestions I would make to these people if I

could gather them in the same room are summarized in Appendix II.

Nine out of ten instructors should have performed substantially better. Yet my sense is that

the education system which molded them and now regulates their work has not changed a great deal

over the past two decades and is just as, if not more, culpable.

Only three persons appeared to be well grounded in basic education. I doubt that the

others were entirely responsible for what looked like ignorance: most likely, they once were

respectful student teachers to whom an older, uncriticized master or mistress handed down

inefficient techniques. Thus some of the money which the Japanese Government lavishes every year

on thousands of young foreign ‘Assistant Language Teachers’ (who are often relatively, and

sometimes completely, inexperienced) might be better spent on the training or retraining of

homegrown ELT professionals.

A couple of semesters in America or Britain are not enough to underpin a lifetime of

English teaching for someone whose native language is not English. Japanese EFL instructors

should be virtually required to spend at least three months studying abroad every four or five years.

Crowded classrooms and burdensome, often irrelevant, administrative ‘duties’ should no longer be

the norm for ELT professionals in an advanced industrial nation. When are Japan’s Japanese

teachers of English and other languages, from junior high school all the way up to college, going to

be given the time, the space and the professional growth opportunities they need to do what they

should do – teach, improve, and teach?

Even where Japan’s specificity could legitimately be used as an excuse (the culture is

“unique”, “silence is golden”, students are “shy”), today’s merciless international competition

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makes very little room for exceptions. Malaysia, for example, is having many of its local English

instructors retrained overseas8. Singapore, one of whose official languages already is English, also

wants to raise its spoken English standards9. In Japan, however, there seems to have been more

confabulating, hand-wringing and dilly-dallying nationwide than serious, concerted and effective

action when it comes to the teaching of foreign languages.

Japanese is not and will probably never be a world language, but Japan is a major modern

country. For cross-cultural, economic and geopolitical reasons, the country’s edu- cation system

should therefore turn out a much larger number of university and high school graduates who are

fluent or semi-fluent in a world language. As was mentioned earlier, the Japanese Ministry of

Education, Science and Technology has recently established a council to discuss reforming English-

language education in schools: what this advisory council should perhaps tell the Ministry is, “no

more excuses, please.”

[continued on page 15]

AppendixⅠObservation criteria initially selected

The teacher’s body language

Facial expression

Eye contact

Voice: loudness, clarity and warmth

Motions: walking, sitting/standing, gestures/use of hands

The teaching methods/mechanics

Pace: slow, average or fast; constant or varied

Activities: relevant or not; varied or not

Materials used: appropriate or not, varied or not

Equipment used

Percentage of teacher talk: in English; in Japanese; overall

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Kind of teacher talk: error correction, giving directions, question asking, question

answering, praising, modeling

The learners’ response

Level of interest: are they interested or bored?

Physical activity: are they moving and interacting a lot?

Time on task: approximate percent of class time each student spends on task-based

activities

Percentage of talking time: in English? In Japanese? Overall?

Kind of talk: one-on-one (pair work), one to everyone (presentations), small group

(discussions); question asking (students-teacher, students-students); question answering

(students-teacher, students-students); repetitions (individual, choral)

[continued on page 16]

Appendix II

Some advice: for teachers like those who were observed

*At the beginning of each class, tell the students (in Japanese, if necessary) what they are

going to do and learn, and how they will be able to use this experience/knowledge. It will help you

focus your lesson.

*Give your students credit for their intelligence. Trust them.

Give them real classroom responsibilities. Give them some power. Make them feel that

they are (to become) responsible for their own learning. Do not spoon-feed them.

*If there is some teaching some learners can do (almost) as well as you, let them do it.

*Try not to make your students do in class what can be done at home.

*Speak English as much as possible, and pressure the learners into (reward them for)

doing the same.

*Do not use any textbook as a crutch. Textbooks alone can’t teach – including yours, if

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you have written one.

*Use a variety of materials. Try not to be ‘predictable’: good teachers often ‘surprise’

their students.

*Use warm-up (introductory) and closing activities for most of your lessons.

*Make sure that all the activities you use for a lesson are relevant, appropriate and part of

a coherent, integrated whole.

*Make sure that these activities deliver the results they are supposed to deliver. If an

activity does not seem to be working well, promptly replace it with another one.

*Check up on yourself every ten-fifteen minutes: “Am I following my plan? Are the

learners following me? Should I slow down, go faster or change anything?”

*Time is precious: use it efficiently.

*Do not always wait until everybody has finished an activity before moving on to the

next one: keep up the pace.

*Try not to spend more than twenty minutes on any activity.

*Do not spend more than a third of your (students’) class time talking – especially not in

Japanese.

*Have your students work in pairs or small groups as often as possible. Small group

work will increase their motivation as well as their talking time.

*Do not spend more than 30% of your class time sitting, unless you are sick, really tired,

or physically handicapped. Standing/walking around will make you and your students feel more

alert. It will also keep you in good physical shape.

*Make the learners use all four language skills during each lesson. All language skills

reinforce each other. If, for example, writing is what you are (primarily) teaching, teach it with the

support of some reading, listening and speaking. Also remember that reading is the most natural

input to writing, and listening is the most natural input to speaking.

*Prepare for each lesson – even a lesson you have already taught thirty times. “Prepare”

rhymes with “care”.

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Notes

1. At the Language Institute of Japan in Odawara and under the inspiring guidance of P. Lance

Knowles, the Institute’s then Director, to whom this article is gratefully dedicated.

2. A fact which the Council of Europe’s Directorate of Education, Culture and Sport in

Strasbourg, France (where the writer completed a research project [Blanche, 1989]), and the

Center for Information on Language Teaching and Research in London, England (under whose

Director's supervision the writer also worked), would both be able to confirm.

3. As reported in the May 31, 2002 issue of The Japan Times: “Japan consistently ranks among the

worst of the 21 Asian nations and regions that take the Test of English as a Foreign Language, a yardstick

widely used in entrance exams for foreign students at U.S. and Canadian universities”.

4. As reported in the January 11, 2002 issue of The Daily Yomiuri.

5. May 24, 2002 issue: “Unlike primary and middle schools, public high schools hardly ever open classes to

outsiders, even parents. Also, teachers have no opportunities to observe their colleagues’ classes. This means

that nobody, except the students, knows what goes on in the classroom. Some teachers have gone for decades

without being checked by other people”.

6. In Japan, a “graduation thesis” is merely the equivalent of a long, 20-to-25-page term paper

written by an undergraduate student, towards the end of his or her senior year, on a topic

related to his or her major field of study. However, Ms. Murakami’s report was 53 pages long

and more like a real thesis.

7. My student promised all the teachers she observed not to reveal their names or the name of

their school/university.

8. As reported in the May 19, 2001 issue of The Daily Yomiuri.

9. As reported in the May 8, 2001 issue of The Daily Yomiuri, and in the July 2, 2001 issue of the

International Herald Tribune.

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teachers and researchers. Language Learning 39, 313-340.

_________. 1992. A proposed student-teacher interaction analysis framework for foreign language

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31.

International Herald Tribune (eds.). 2001. Singlish bad; English Good. International Herald

Tribune (Asian edition), July 2 issue, p. 4B.

Murakami, M. 1998. A quick look at EFL teaching in Japanese classrooms. Kumamoto Gakuen

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The Daily Yomiuri (eds.). 2001. Singapore pushes for ‘improved’ spoken English. The Daily

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______________________. 2001. Malaysia to recruit English teachers. The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo),

May 19 issue, p.6.

______________________. 2002. Ministry to seek tips on English education. The Daily Yomiuri

(Tokyo), January 11 issue, p. 2.

______________________. 2002. Kudos for salaryman principals. The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo),

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The Japan Times (eds.). 2002. English teachers face retraining. The Japan Times (Tokyo), May

31 issue, p. 2.

Watanabe, K. 1995. Perspectives on action research in English Language Teaching. Tokyo:

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