FOUR ARTICLES ON TEACHING ENGLISH TO JAPANESE C

TO JAPANESE CHILDREN: A CRITICAL REVIEW

The teaching of English is big business in Japan today. There is, though, a clear schism between the interests of the private sector and those of the State school system. More than differences in intensity and nature of interests is the difference in philosophical and didactic approaches. The Ministry of Education is still stifled by tradition, chauvinism, politics, and considerations of tenure; it finds it hard to migrate to the next century while the rest of the nation is bounding towards it. Thus, the State focuses on classical grammar-translation, rote-memorization of paradigms, and reading; whereas the private schools focus on the here-and-now of communication with an early emphasis on conversation.

Mitsue M. Tamai and Ritsuko Nakata are perhaps the two leading ESL specialists in Japan. Fundamentally, they share the belief that language is to communicate rather than simply to pass State examinations with their focus on school English. Richard Beach has taught English in Japan for a number of years and surveyed the textbook field for young Japanese ESL learners and found it deficient. Eloise Pearson likewise has much experience in teaching ESL in Japan; this paper reports her interview of Ritsuko Nakata. These four articles give one a short but incisive picture of ESL for Japanese young children today.

Mitsue M. Tamai's "Three Important Factors in a Children's

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should not talk in the early stages (Asher, 1988, cited in Nakata, 1991). Her modified TPR method (which she calls MAT for Model, Action, Talk) utilizes the ability of the left brain to elicit speech simultaneously with the action (Note that the Swedes, for instance, have arrived at the same conclusion). Nakata found that her students wanted to talk from their very first lesson. Then, why dilute or thwart their enthusiasm? Rather than suppressing the children's eagerness, Nakata uses it as a springboard for getting them to talk in the fifty-minute weekly classes. As a result, "they are able to understand and say several hundred words and sentences by about the first ten months of the course" (p. 24). They can handle the present, past, future, and progressive tenses, as well as verbs with infinitives, time words, daily expressions, and classroom English--in interrogative, negative, and affirmative forms. Pronunciation is said to be very good, with natural speed and intonation. Best of all: the children love to talk in their newly acquired fun language. Nakata tries to tailor her teaching to individual interests, abilities, and rates of acquisitions. Although she shares most teachers' belief in the sequential acquisition of compre

Category: Psychology - F