The Cat Shat on the Mat/What Is Wrong With Japanese English

We learned at the Kobe conference that Japan isn't ready yet for English to be a compulsory subject at shogakko (elementary) level. Yesterday's experience had me agreeing.

There is a small shogakko which has two blond gaijin kids among the ranks, the children of the people who run Hagi's conversation school. The principal also speaks English and because of the gaijin I think, is a little too vigilant about teaching the kids English. Instead of doing fun games and songs, they do "phonics". They basically have to repeat words (after me of course) even though they have no idea of the meaning, and learn to differentiate between the sounds.
It's very dry and boring and I often get confused over the sounds myself because they are isolated out and drilled so many times. And these kids are 8!
For example "ran - run" "fan - fun" "ban - bun"

This week we had an extra special phonics lesson with the third graders. We had "shot - shat". The children had a test on the sounds and I found myself in a very quiet classroom saying "shat....shat.....shat" over and over. I could have corrected them, but it was only in the middle of the lesson that they sprung it on me and I thought, hey, a little in-joke won't hurt anyone. And what would I say - "uh, this means the past tense of shit". Right.

We then went on to do "tan - tin - ten - ton - tun". I had to pick one word out of the group and say it, the children would guess which one I said and write it down. I refused at this point, saying that ton and tun were pronounced the same and tun wasn't even a bloody word. It was retorted back that tun is in the dictionary. Maybe someone out there with a massive Oxford will find it but I've never bloody heard of it.

The day before this happened I went out to an island school, I taught at the shogakko where there are only 3 students. They are all siblings. They are the children of one of the junior high school (in the same building) teachers. So basically its just a glorified day care for his family.

Anyway, we were having lunch in the lunch room when a TV camera crew came in. Considering you can't even buy a pice of chewing gum on the island this was a surprise. It was a Tokyo crew filming "island life". They came around and interviewed various people. They looked at me and whispered and formed a huddle. There is a westerner in the room! They conferenced and nudged each other and then formed another huddle. Eventually the presenter came over and looked at me strangely before saying "Hello" and seeing if I understood that. I thought, oh God, what a brilliant example for the kids. No wonder hardly any one will speak English to you despite then learning it all thru school. Even the first grader knows how to say hello, come on.

I was again shocked today when a teacher who had previously never spoken to me in anything but Japanese spoke to me in good English. I've been here for a year now!

Somewhere out there is a TV program on it with me rolling my eyes into the camera.