Can you walk this way? Talk this way?: Retroactive Post

Over the last couple of days, I've been asked to grade papers for all the English course students. The first years wrote the first drafts of their self-introduction speeches, the second years wrote letters to this woman that they had read about in their textbook and the third years wrote a brief composition in response to whether Japanese people are modest or not. Doing so has given me a better idea of their different English abilities and just the sophistication and growth of thier writing and thoughts.

Another thing that happened yesterday was my main first-year teacher pointed out an observation he had about our English course students. He had expressed concern that their speeches were rather simple, "I was happy." "It was beautiful," but believed that this was simply a result of English being thier second language. However, on the 3 day trip he went with them this week, reading their diaries written in Japanese, the thoughts remained on the same level, thus prompting him to believe that it was rather a lack of writing skills and not language skills. So he wants to work on developing their writing styles this term.

I point this out because it's so different from what the other JTEs seem to be doing with their students; he seems to want to teach them to be learners of English, and not simply learn English. And I'm a bit chagrined to find that he's the one that this is coming from. I feel like it's easy to adapt to the Japanese style of teaching English once you're here, and for him to remind me of that, I feel more inspired to 'rock their worlds.' Today, I really feel like a teacher. It's great. And I'm a bit sad to think about leaving this country and this life.