Can Japanese Teach English? 幸子さんが英語を教える？

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

I saw Sachiko, an old friend of mine, a couple of days ago. For readers who are reading this blog for the first time, Sachiko had worked as an in-house translator for nearly 20 years until being transferred to another department one year ago because of the company's reorganization. Currently, she still translates some documents but also teaches coworkers English. She held an English class a few weeks ago and is going to hold another two classes next month.

I was interested in how she was doing because she had no confidence to make a good English teacher when we last met. She told me that she couldn't teach English because (1) she's not a native English speaker and (2) those who really want to improve their English skills must have already started learning themselves and don't have to be taught by others.

But she has changed. She said that she couldn't do anything with her not being a native English speaker, but still could talk with students in English as a non-native speaker. Also, regarding (2), it's not an English problem, but a common problem of studying. If they can't keep studying because they don't know what to do, it's her role to tell them about what to do so that they can start to learn on their own, Sachiko said.

She has already started to teach students how to improve English reading and listening skills through so-called sight translation and shadowing. She's also been telling them to use materials for Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) if they want to improve TOEIC scores as she's aware that her students have ambivalent feelings toward the test. They know that the higher score they get, the higher valued they are in the job market. TOEIC is the most common test for Japanese companies to evaluate employees' English skills. On the other hand, they also know that even if they get a perfect score in the test, they won't be able to better communicate with native speakers.

But she believes that once they have good experiences in learning English, even in improving TOEIC scores, they would start to learn English voluntarily and enjoy it. They are interested in English, but don't learn it because they have no good memories about it. Finding their lack of "effort and reward" experiences about English learning reasonable, she realized that she had to help them feel good about English. Teaching non-native speakers on TOEIC is unpopular among some native speakers because it doesn't improve their actual communication skills, i.e., even those with perfect scores don't speak English satisfactorily, but you know what? Speaking in English with native English speakers in Japan costs too much, 30$ to even 50$ per hour. Who can afford it?

Once they have good experiences of English learning, they would keep learning by themselves and be able to get opportunities to be involved in jobs which need communication in English. Of course they would face another problem at that stage and have to expand their exposure to English to improve their speaking and writing skills. But when they reach that stage, they would no longer need her support and would be able to keep learning by using English in the workplace. Her job is to raise their English skill level to the level where they can walk on their own, i.e., identify weaknesses and solutions by themselves.

Wow! She's a good teacher, isn't she? As her friend and also her first English student, I'm very happy and proud of her and respect her.

久しぶりに幸子さんに会った。前回、英語の先生をやれと言われて困っているとぼやいていたのでどうなったかなと心配していたが、案外元気そうで安心した。それに少し変わっていた。

前は確か、「自分はネイティブでもないし、それに英語を本当に勉強したいという人はとっくに自分で始めているはずだから、教えることなんてない」って言ってた。でも、ネイティブではないという件はともかく、教えることの意義については「これは英語の問題じゃなくて、何を勉強していいか分からないっていう問題だったのね」と言い始めたのだ。

何でも、TOEICの点数についてやたら職場で聞かれる一方、満点取っても大してしゃべれるようになるわけでもなく、意味なんてないと思っていたらしいが、TOEICの点数を上げれば英語の仕事が増えるのだから、それを目標にすればいいのでは、と頭を切り替えたとのこと。それに日本人って点数好きだからやる気が出るらしい。生徒さんは英語についてはとにかく苦い思い出しかない人が多いので、「先ずはTOEICの点数を上げ」、「英語の仕事を増やし」、「そこで壁にぶつかったら、使える英語について教える」という二段構成にしたらしい。つまり、当面の幸子さんのお仕事は、「やればできるんだと感じられるレベル（使える英語かそうでないかは置いておいて「点数が上がる」）」まで引き上げることだとのこと。

おー！先生している、幸子さん。友人として、そして英語の生徒として、とっても嬉しいです。尊敬してます。頑張ってね！