Quote:
Originally Posted by lazyrapper
If I was Japanese and wanted to learn English I would expect a teacher who had a reasonably good understanding of English grammar. Why do you think you could teach Japanese people to speak English when your English grammar is so lacking?
Learn to speak English first then ask the question again.
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It would be nice if the Boards of Education in Japan agreed with you. Unfortunately, they don't. They think that sticking just anyone who was able to muddle their way through English courses in college, regardless of degree, is acceptable, assuming the people involved are native speakers.
It is often shocking to my Japanese Teachers of English that I, gasp, went to college to be an English teacher and have an actual English degree. That I know how to diagram sentences. I even met a teacher tonight who just moved into the area who admitted when he first came to Japan to teach he had to look up the difference between a noun and a verb!
I chose to teach in Korea and Japan because I wanted to be a bit more adventurous, but I honestly expected that I would find myself in the company of other people who actually went through school to be a teacher. Imagine my surprise when I found out that all of my native speaking coworkers held degrees completely unrelated to English or even communications, and have never had an education course in general, let alone a TEFL course! I find it mindboggling.
I have had to put in a lot of hardwork in order to show my schools and my BoE that they can believe my transcripts because of a lot of piss poor behavior by earlier ALTs. I am not a human tape recorder, I am not a teaching assistant, I have the qualifications. Luckily, the teachers I work with really respect me, and we work very well together. Sometimes I team teach, sometimes I teach alone, but there is never any doubt that I am actually teaching.
I really wish that people considering coming to Japan to teach would stop and ask themselves how important the teaching aspect is to them. I am not asking everyone to pursue English as a degree or teaching as a career like I have, but I would definitely recommend reading up on teaching theory and child/adolescent psychology, or even taking a genuine education course or two. Maybe research how difficult it is to became a teacher in your home country, or more, look at how difficult it is to obtain a teaching license in Japan (I am working on it, and it is NOT easy). Try to bone up and be able to talk to talk when you get into the classroom because you have put in effort on walking the walk.