I have no idea why I didn’t blog about this much, much earlier. Let’s attribute it to being really sleepy. Rachel and I have articles here. Thanks, Gideon!!

So, here is my first published article.

Noun, verb, gerund, subjunctive, infinitive, future progressive, comparative, superlative, past participle, auxiliary verb. In Japan, children are deluged with such words when they start to study English. No wonder, then, so few people in Japan speak English, even college graduates who have studied it for at least 10 years. In all Asia, only three nations have lower TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores than Japan: Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. Internationally, it ranks fourteenth from the bottom out of 88 countries.

When I am on the train, I often see students holding little books trying to memorize lists of English words. Needless to say, that is no way to learn a language. Many Japanese have memorized thousands of words and the first dictionary definition of each word. Many have a better knowledge of grammar than most Americans, but all to no avail. When they speak, their sentences are often a string of words in an incomprehensible order. Typically, Japanese schools force-feed innumerable rules of grammar and list after list of words, but do not teach how to interrelate and communicate words or ideas. (See www.engrish.com for examples of the kind of English used all over Japan.)

One of the most difficult things when teaching English, even to small children, is to break through cultural barriers and thinking habits. Teaching English in Japan is as much about showing students a new worldview as it is about the language itself. In this rigidly hierarchical society, the relationship between a teacher and a student, as with all other relationships, has strictly defined boundaries. Though that is not something wrong in itself, it does not work when trying to teach a language, especially to children.

I have been tutoring and teaching English for the past eight years in homes and private English schools. Though I have been teaching adults, too, most of my students have been children. When I teach, I try to gain the children’s trust and friendship. I try to be a friend or sister while I teach. Most children come to understand and enjoy this less formal relationship, but some are not able to handle such familiarity and quit my classes.

When children first start coming to class, we do a lot of chanting, clapping, and singing so they can learn words and sentences in rhythm without consciously trying to commit anything to memory. Once my students get to the point of being able to speak some English, I simply keep correcting their mistakes as they speak with very little or no explanation, as a mother does with her own children.

Using correct grammar should be an unconscious habit, like breathing. I do not want my students to have to think about or struggle with grammar. I want them to be able to think and feel in English before they worry about terms and rules.

The pictures that words draw look different in each language, even when saying the same thing. Just as each country has its own music and art, each language has its own rhythm and shades of meaning.

Children do not need to know any grammatical terms to be able to speak a language. When mothers teach their babies how to speak, they do not use any terminology.

What I do explain carefully and correct meticulously are phonics, spelling, punctuation, and handwriting, but, like grammar, I try to help them learn to write correctly by sheer force of habit. When children turn in homework with mistaken punctuation or with handwriting that is anything less than their very best, they know I will make them correct every mistake. The passing score for every page of homework is 100 per cent. Anything less is not acceptable. (This is something I learned from my mother.)

Phonics is easier to understand than English grammar. If children learn the 26 letters of the alphabet, about 50 letter combinations, and about 25 spelling rules, they should be able to read and spell more than 95 per cent of English words. It is simple compared to the two Japanese alphabets, which are 50 characters each, and the 2,000 standard written characters almost all of which can be read in several ways.

I usually allow my students to decide how much homework they are going to do. I recommend a certain amount, but if they want more or less, it is up to them. However much they decide to do, I hold them to their commitment. Of course, there are always children that refuse to do any and I have to assign them work, but my goal is to make children so eager about studying that they beg for homework. Most of the time, this works, and I have to hold them back from doing too much.