New guideline calls for high school English classes to be taught in English

Tuesday 23rd December, 06:06 AM JST

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Dogdog at 06:56 PM JST - 24th December

Any katakana in my classes is not accepted. The vowel sounds in Japanese can also be applied to English vowel sounds in many English words

Mutually exclusive statements there. English vowel sounds are different from Japanese vowel sounds. You're the one applying katakana to your classroom. You're just not expanding it to the consonant sounds, where the difference is more obvious.

As to your other comment on US and Brit pronunciation of certain vowels. Sorry to burst your bubble, but English native speakers, no matter where, have the same pron of vowel sounds. The difference is where and when, and that Brit English has more dip vowels than US English.
pointofview at 08:01 PM JST - 24th December

cleo,

If their spelling is good they should be able to recognize the word and say it properly. Just like Kanji. Its all about recognition. There are also accent differences in the words you gave as examples. Unfortunately, the kids may experience a number of ALTs from different countries during their studies but I can`t do much about that.

dogdog,

I teach no katakana sounds. They already know the sound of their own language and many of them are similar to English words. I teach all kinds of Phonics, every letter/every lesson. Dont assume. Bottom line is that there is very little emphasis put on pronunciation in the English programs and that is why many of them cant be understood.
Dogdog at 10:58 PM JST - 24th December

They already know the sound of their own language and many of them are similar to English words

Totally wrong. If you bothered to study comparative vowel quadrilaterals of Japanese and English phonemes, you would soon discover that the places of articulation are quite different.

Added to this is the fact that English vowels have 12 places of articulation and japanese have only 5.

Also the weak forms of English vowels (90% of usage) are an unknown quantity to the Japanese language -or any syllable stressed language- in usage (initial and medial position = weak form/ final position = strong form) and function (allows English, like Arabic, to operate as a 4/8 second time stressed language).

However what you are doing is still light years ahead of what I see being done by JTE's. Good luck, but you are teaching them to utter English, if only the vowels, via a Japanese sound system - katakana.
cleo at 01:40 AM JST - 25th December

they should be able to recognize the word and say it properly

But your 'properly' is different from my 'properly'. I don't think it's unfortunate at all that the kids experience a number of ALTs from different countries, with different accents; I think it's essential that they have experience of people with different accents if they're going to be able to cope with different accents later on. The problem is that there's this idea that there is one and only one 'correct' pronunciation that the kids have to learn for the tests, when in real life they're going to have to deal with all kinds of accents, both native and non-native. The testing system, and the teachers, cannot get their heads around the idea of there being multiple equally-correct-but-different answers.

As for where exactly the vowel articulation is made, I don't think that's much of a problem so long as what they produce is intelligible. A kinda-neutral accent is probably easier on the average ear, but it doesn't really matter if a person's accent is British, American, Australian or whatever, so long as it isn't so thick it's unintelligible. And that goes for native as well as non-native speakers.

Personally I'd like to see (hear) more Japanese with Welsh accents, boyo.
Sarge at 02:19 AM JST - 25th December

"Most kids aren't motivated because they either assume, or realize correctly, that they don't need English"

Eigo wakaranai - nihongo hanase!
PepinGalarga at 04:16 AM JST - 25th December

with the advent of US Network television shows such as 24 and Prison Break, it would be a heck of an incentive for kids to learn English so they can understand what these people are saying.

Japan may be sort of an isolationanist country in its entire history, but anyway japanese people will need to learn English. it will improve their bottom line. English is hands down the international language. I am a native speaker of Spanish myself (hope you can notice from my posts hehe).

Japanese immigration is fighting a losing battle at the ramparts to keep foreigners out. Whether they like it or not, Japanese society will be more and more heterogeneous.
Dogdog at 07:52 AM JST - 25th December

with the advent of US Network television shows such as 24 and Prison Break, it would be a heck of an incentive for kids to learn English so they can understand what these people are saying.

That's actually one of the hurdles to learning English, since the vocab registers are either very dialectical (Prison Break, 24, The Sopranos) or technical (West Wing and ER). These programs help to feed the 'English is too difficult for me to ever understand' propaganda machine of the Japanese education ministry.

Programs in English on Japanese TV should be graded by lexis as well as entertainment content.

The reality is that the effective presentation, learning and exploitation of EFL in Japan will only happen when the herrenvolk Japanese speakers of English (I can use English properly because I am one of the chosen few Japanese, but the majority of Japanese are not chosen), the insecure (I can't speak English and if the ordinary Japanese in the street could, it would show a mighty flaw in my intellectual armor) and the Meiji era linguistic Sadokuists (japan is a one language country) are taken out of deciding of Japanese state school EFL policy making. Added to this, there has to complete overhaul of the university examination system.

There are many Japanese competent to formulate an effective future Japan EFL policy, it's not a 'foreign v Japan' thing, but they are and will remain executives of the present ineffective policy, rather than the formulators of new effective policy.

English education in this country is one of the biggest wastes of ny taxes in this country. I mean at least the bears get to use that state funded highway to nowhere in Hokkaido, if no one else does,
shiuu at 08:04 AM JST - 25th December

New guideline calls for high school English classes to be taught in English

Ha. Ha. Too bad I'm not in the classroom to see the train wreck which is sure to result from this plan's attempted implementation.

Talk about the blind leading the blind.
kenjinakasone at 07:19 PM JST - 25th December

some things Japanese students should be informed of. they should not go to the midwest, south, or midwest in the U.S. for college, especially the midwest since detroit is bankrupt now. english should be more learned when there is at least a 30% Asian population in the U.S., U.K., or Australia, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. otherwise they probably will encounter heavy racism, and that makes learning english pretty worthless.
Dogdog at 07:43 PM JST - 25th December

otherwise they probably will encounter heavy racism

What, like notices in bars and other public facitities saying 'No Asians', politicians constantly bleating about the Asian crime wave, notices in banks telling customers to beware of crime with a cartoon picture of a criminal always having slope eyes and a table head, Asians being stopped on bikes by police and housing agents, where 70% of the housing advertised is not available to Asians?

Yeah, I hear you bro
kyushujoe at 08:30 PM JST - 25th December

Pointofview You're right. We all have to teach what ewe know. But 'phree' is seriously weird.
kyushujoe at 08:31 PM JST - 25th December

Should be "we know"
kenjinakasone at 06:27 AM JST - 26th December

i said Japanese students.
Philosophy187 at 07:29 PM JST - 26th December

That sounds like logic. Do they have that in Japan know?
roguestate at 03:38 AM JST - 29th December

I really hope this will finally "embarrass" all the older, incompetant JTEs out of the system. They serve no purpose other than to stifle the energy, enthusiasm and creativity of the next generation of teachers. Wanna see a big change in English language learning in schools across Japan? Clear out all the dead wood at the top to allow some new growth.