Like I said in my previous post today, Eigo Noto could be a very helpful resource for schools, since most of them aren’t going to be able to have a full-time ALT. Unfortunately, the lessons are so inefficiently organized that it’s almost a waste of time and resources. On top of that, a slew of questionable production decisions make it so that what they do learn is often tainted.
There are no grammar explanations*, and the teachers certainly don’t understand the grammar. But then they’re expected to perform with correct grammar in front of the whole class. For example, in the ninth and final section of the fifth grade book, the kids learn a couple phrases that are important to know at restaurants: “What would you like?” and “I’d like ~”. The problem is that there were already three to four weeks of lessons for the same material earlier in the year, except we taught them that waiter will ask, “What do you want?”, to which you respond, “I want ~”. Which, of course, they have long-since forgotten (not a huge loss, since you usually wouldn’t say those specific words at a restaurant—think “I’ll have ~” or “I’d like ~”). So, we have two lessons in the same text book that take up four weeks each, devoted to the same exact thing, just with slightly different wording.
*In the interest of full disclosure, I originally typed “There’s no grammar explanations”, which both I and Microsoft Word’s grammar checker know to be grammatically incorrect. I hung my head in shame before going back to my angry rant about bad grammar.
Since we also focused a few lessons on "What do you like?", the kids generally just revert back to that, since there's no contrast of current and previous vocab or grammar points.
There’s no sound in Japanese that matches the wo of would**, so Japanese people say, “oohdoh,” instead. The homeroom teachers have spoken English incorrectly their whole lives, so they don’t know that there’s anything to correct. The kids also don’t know that the ‘d in I’d is a shortened version of would, so instead, they’re forced to just parrot the two phrases. To make matters worse, most ALTs can’t speak Japanese well enough to give a detailed explanation of a grammar principle, so it never gets taught.
*It’s the same with woman, which is generally pronounced ooh-mahn in Japan, which could be a cool man-horse hybrid (horse = uma in Japanese)
I take time out of the lesson to correct overall pronunciation, and to draw diagrams that help people understand how to produce sounds correctly or remember a grammar concept. If necessary, I’ll give an explanation in Japanese. I’d like to think that it helps, since they always seem to come around—but I’m sure they forget it the moment I walk out the door. After all, they won’t see me for another month.
Like I said, the teachers were often taught incorrectly, so the ignorance spreads like wildfire. Here’s an actual exchange in which my friend Crescenda took part:
Crescenda: How do you say 猫(cat) in English?
Student: uh…kyaht-tah?
Homeroom teacher: No, it’s kyaht-to!
[Crescenda commits hara-kiri]
The other day, one of the teachers reprimanded a student for referring to the fictional teacher in the lesson as Yamamoto-sensei. Sensei in English is teacher, so of course, we say Yamamoto-teacher in English, right? WRONG. I’m okay with them calling me Jesshe-sensei (they can’t say see—it comes out like she). I am not okay with them calling me Jesse-teacher. That’s just ridiculous.
Some teachers understand that we don’t call teachers teacher—that we use Mr. Yamamoto instead of Yamamoto-teacher. But then they extend the Mr. to all males, as an extension of the –san honorific suffix. I’m Mr. Jesse, Babe Ruth becomes Mr. Babe Ruth, Michael Jackson becomes Mr(s). Michael Jackson, some kid name Junpei in class becomes Mr. Junpei, Daniel-san from The Karate Kid becomes Mr. Daniel, Mister Rogers becomes Mr. Mister Rogers, and so on.
Like I said, there are no grammar explanations in Eigo Noto. Indefinite articles (a in a car and an in an apple) and definite articles (the car, this cat, that skid mark, etc) are very hard for Japanese learners of English. There’s basically no equivalent in Japanese. There’s also usually no plural marker***, like s in cats. So, when a Japanese kid says, “I like dog”, it makes perfect sense to him, but elicits a giggle from the ALT, who is usually sure that the kid doesn’t actually eat dog.
***Sure, there’s –tachi and –ra, but they’re not always used and definitely not as essential.
On top of all of that, the words that the kids are “learning” are words that are already used in Japan and have been katakana-ized into the Japanese language. For example, these are common, everyday words in Japan:
• Hamburger = Hahmbahgah
• Hot dog = Hotto doggu
• Salad = Sarada
• Orange juice = Orenji juusu
• Fried Chicken = Furai chikin
In other words, the kids spent eight weeks of the year “studying” words that they already knew.
Anyway, here’s our restaurant demonstration for the kids:
Me: Hello.
Homeroom Teacher: Hello. Watt oodoh you rike?
Me: I’d like a hamburger, a hot dog, and salad.
HRT: OK. Hahmbahgah, hotto doggu, ando sarada. He-yah you ah.
Me: Thank you.
HRT: You-ah weh-ru-kahm.
Power to these HRTs, who are being forced to teach a language they secretly (or not so secretly) hate. They keep on keepin’ on, even though the Ministry of Education is out to get them. They get their pay cut while every school employs an ALT and buys $10,000 touch screen TVs for their English class, yet they keep on teachin'.
My goal is not so much to make fun of the HRT’s pronunciation as much as to point out that it’s important that they get an actual native speaker in the room that can help coach the kids on pronunciation. The kids are usually really quick to pick up proper pronunciation, while the adults are so set in their incorrect ways that they’ll likely never change (though they could if they wanted to).
So, it follows that any recordings of spoken English that are going to be used to teach kids correct pronunciation should be spoken by native speakers, right? This is where Eigo Noto really drops the ball.
It's obvious that whoever's announcing the food is not a native English speaker. With the nasalization and over-stressed Rs, I'd guess that he's probably Japanese. It's a pretty standard mistake for a Japanese person that's trying to sound American. All the comedians on TV talk that way, so the kids do it, too. They all end up sounding like bad caricatures of Wario.
I'm sure that the voice "artist" speaks English well. Just not like a native. And kids need to hear a native, or else they'll go around saying FRY chicken, yogart, and homburrgurr, sending the whole world in a downward spiral toward its eventual cataclysmic doom.
You want to teach kids that there are different accents in South Africa, Australia, America, and England? Getting a South African, Australian, American, or English person to record some dialogue would seem helpful, right? Here’s what we actually get:
Yes, that’s right. Richard Brant’n and Chongi are the same person. He’s from Korea AND Australlia. And he likes boisboll, among other sporrrts. Seriously. How hard would it be to get an actual Australian to do an Australian accent?
And I get the whole "there are different accents" angle. But an American faking an Australian accent is bad. These are things I shouldn't have to bear:
• An American faking a Korean-English accent
• An American faking a French-English accent
• An American faking an Italian-English accent
Why is it necessary for kids to learn how other countries incorrectly pronounce English? Do I study Japanese by listening to how Chinese people speak it?****
****No.
Eigo noto's got a lot a good in it, but they need to fix this stuff if they want it to be effective. They can start with new voice actors:
So let me get this straight--I'm supposed to know how a Frenchman, a Japanese man, a Korean, and a dog speak English? Oh, and I'm pretty sure that Chongert is also the dog.
6 comments:
So many comments!!!
Firstly, YES, accents are RIDICULOUS. I remember this Australian who says "sporrrts" clip so well. The skin on the back of my neck did about a thousand crawls. Hell, it's still crawling.
I also hate Eigo noto for this reason, but--not in defense, just as a point of interest--other English textbooks do this, too. When I was doing my CELTA we used 'Cutting Edge' (Pearson Education) and I clearly remember those recordings also having """Italians""", etc.
Grammar. Yes, why not just keep it simple. Seriously, "I would like" is pretty polite. Who needs to know that when they're 11? I think there's lots of simple grammar that is actually not taught or exploited. I remember the sweet days before Eigo noto when my elementary schools were still doing their own thing. Our English has actually got worse since the noto, because it was pretty good to start with. The teachers and schools have been working on it for some time. So anyway, one of these lessons we just did some activities and games that had the kids using the construction "the is ". Really easy to do with their vocab. "The tomato is red." And a pretty good place to start with some sentences. Should slot in pretty nicely right after "My name is..." and can even go BEFORE "I like...". Don't recall having seen that construction in Eigo noto.
Really, we could teach so many more simple yet essential things. Scrap "would". How about a small selection of past tense words? Some easy pronouns. Matching those to is/am/are. Pipe dream, right?
As for time that ALT spends at schools, oh my WORD. One of my biggest beefs with the system. Why is that every education department in the WORLD ignores all current knowledge related to learning? What do we know about young children? They pick up languages faster, more naturally, they're easy to motivate, they're curious, and their brains, ears and mouths are still open (and I mean that quite literally) to new sounds. But okay, we're the Japanese government. So, let's give these children the least amount of English study, and then let it get heavier once they're too old to learn anything properly. So we'll just teach them to be these monolingual Japanese drones with very limited English (English will hurt their fragile brains, we know all bilingual people are totally dysfunctional and confused, right), and never teach them another language.
ACK. Somewhere in my mind there's this utopia where Japanese students get a lot of English instruction early on, so as to make it their second language, which then frees them up to add a third language (e.g. Chinese or Korean) when they hit junior high.
But obviously I'm just a dysfunctional and confused bilingual working up some more insanity towards trilinguality.
Sorry. This was so long, that it made me split it up into two comments.
I think Japanese people are hamstrung by their phonological system and by the nature of their grammar. Let's start with phonology:
Problem 1. No codas. An English syllable is made up of an onset (a consonant), a nucleus (a vowel), and a coda (another consonant) (together, CVC). There is, for the most part, no coda in Japanese (except for 'n' (which is much like a vowel, actually)). There are also hardly any complex onsets (except for a few, which are actually a consonant mixed with a 'y' ('ky', 'py', etc.), which in Japanese behaves more like 'i' (a vowel). Try explaining how to pronounce the word 'twelfth' (CCVCCC) to a kid who can only make CV sounds.
Problem 2. Japanese rejects dipthongs. Now, I know that in Japanese you can have more than one vowel sound in a row, but they aren't blended like they are in English. The only exception I can hear in Japanese is 'y' sounds, which Japanese people say like 'i'. For example, 'ya' is pronounced as a dipthong-ificated (ridiculous made up word, in case you couldn't tell) 'i' + 'a'. 'Yu' is 'i' + 'u', and 'yo' is 'i' + 'o'. That's why Japanese people can't tell the difference between 'year' and 'ear'. Because 'yee' is just 'i' + 'i', which is merely 'i'.
And forget tripthongs. 'Out' (VVVC) is out of the question. It gets pronounced 'aah oo toh' (V V CV).
Problem 3. And then they have no vowels. Come on, 5 vowels? What is this, Tagalog? You need like 17 vowels (give or take) to speak English.
Problem 4. In English, 'r' and 'l' should (in my opinion) be classified as vowels. That's how they behave. In Japanese, 'r' is very consonant-ey (also a made up word). That's why they have such a hard time saying it. We should just tell students to treat ‘r’ and ‘l’ as vowels.
Problem 5: In Japanese, many sounds (especially vowel sounds) are cut off with the throat, while in English, they fade out (like a good ol' he-sings-she-sings-they-sing-together '80s ballad). For example, Japanese people will pronounce the Enlish word 'me' more like 'meet' (though not exactly).
Other problems: 'Th' is a killer for almost anyone learning English. Stress accent vs. pitch accent is also very hard. There are also a plethora of other problems that vex Japanese people. But really, I think that if you fix the main 5 problems, everything else combined would be only slightly worse than negligible.
By the way, I think the reason Koreans speak English so much better than Japanese people do (despite Korean and Japanese being very similar, except for phonology) is that Koreans don’t have problem 1; [I don’t know anything about problem 2]; problem 3 isn’t so bad, because they have a lot more vowels than Japanese; problem 4 isn’t as bad, because they have a kind of ‘l’ sound; and [I don’t really know, but I think 5 is the same in Korean]. Just those few differences really translates into a huge gain in Koreans’ ability to speak English.
Anyway, here is an example of how problems 1-5 can frustrate a Japanese speaker:
'My name is Richard.'
CVV CVVC VC (V)V-C(V)C
'My': They can't say the dipthong 'ai'. Rather they separate it out into 'a' and 'i' (problem 2). Japanese people often cut off the 'i' unnaturally (Problem 5).
'Name': They can't add the 'm' (C) at then end, although this should be easy to teach, since 'm' is so close to their 'n' sound (problem 1). They also don't have the 'ei' dipthong. They will split it up into 'e' and 'i' (problem 2). The 'm' also gets a bit cut off, but not so bad (Problem 5).
'Is': They lack the correct vowel (problem 3). They also can't tack 'z' on as a coda (problem 1).
'Richard': I think Japanese people would rather tie 10,000 cherry stems in their mouth than attempt to say 'ri' as a kind of dipthong (problems 2, 3, 4, and 5). 'Ch' is no problem, but 'rd' is (problems 1 and 4).
What do you think the chances are that any native Japanese-speaking student would stumble onto these 5 problems, even in 6 years of English study? How about when they are handicapped by learning English through katakana? Forget it.
I just think we should first teach Japanese kids to say, "My name is Richard." If they could say that one phrase, then they would be equipped to begin speaking English.
As for grammar, I think the main problem lies in the fact that on the spectrum of analog to digital, English is analog, and Japanese is digital. Now, I know that prescriptivists (as all good people are) would say that English, too, is digital. That may be true, but not so much so as Japanese. You can hardly mess up one byte of code when speaking Japanese without the entire program freezing. In comparison, even a large brushstroke out of place doesn’t render the English picture unrecognizable. I think that Japanese people simply take too digital of an approach to English grammar. And that might not be so bad. But how are we, professional oil painters, supposed to teach Japanese students, equipped only with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, how to create something that looks like an oil painting? (I know there is a logical fallacy or two in there, but you get my point.)
Wow. A glaring typo in my first line. Sorry about that.
Oooh, and I don't know how to spell 'diphthong' (or 'diphthong-ificated')! I'm going soft . . .
Well, that was pretty fascinating actually.
As a teacher, though, I've come to accept that these kids are Japanese and will have Japanese accents. That's just life right? Everyone has an accent.
That said, I do try to focus on pronunciation as often as possible. Really all ALTs should. The Japanese teacher can hardly teach correct pron if they don't speak with a heavy accent themselves.
I actually think a lot of the problems go back to what age groups we're focusing on. Teach the younger children. If you go and teach a bunch of six-year-olds some words, and then next you have elementary school 5th graders, it realy blows my mind how that age group is already pretty much deaf to new phonology, whereas the 6-year-olds--given enough repetition and practice--are not.
Another problem is that kids are introduced to reading very late, and in the syllabus--at least where I'm at--there's no phonics approach included. It's alphabet, okay, read. That might work in hiragana (syllabaries are nice that way) but as we all know it does NOT apply for English phonics. If younger kids could learn the sounds earlier, and learn to read them earlier, things would be so much better.
But as it is I do try to focus on a few. Especially schwa. I draw the symbol with some pointy ears and two eyes and viola, this is schwa-chan everyone. My kids know it by name. And we do a warm up and just do this vague ridiculous sound that just escapes from our lungs and is totally lazy. And I point it out, every time it appears. So hopefully at least one or two of my kids will know how to pronounce 'better' or 'culture' or 'world' better (all spelt different of course!).
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