American English please.
If it is possible, please read it just like you are talking to someone at natural speed.
Thank you in advance :)
I have been hearing criticism about the English curriculumin the Japanese education system for a long time. I'm one person who has beef with it.
Today, I put myself in Japanese English teachers' shoes.
One of the criticisms asks why J-English teachers are still asserting their powers even though there are also ALTs at schools. As you know, ALT is a term that was created by the Japanese Ministry Education of the JET program.
I was wondering why the name still had "assistant" attached to it, and why the Japanese board of education wouldn't allow them to lead the classes. They are native speakers, and it would be ideal if they taught the kids. But today, I'm beginning to understand the reason they don't think it is ideal.
I'm not a qualified teacher, but I tutor several students at my home. One of the students has gotten two native speaker teachers recently while still coming to my house once a week. She can chat with one of them almost every day on Skype if she tries.
I ask myself what my position is. I'm lost. I make English mistakes, my pronunciation is not good, and my grammar is worse. Sigh..If I were an English teacher working at school, and the native speakers had the right to lead their classes, what could I do?
Although it is not the same case as mine though, I am starting to get why theJapanese government still authorizes Japanese teachers to lead their English classes. Otherwise, they would lose their jobs.
I made a mistake near the end and had to read one of the sentences twice. Sorry about that.
I was an ALT on the JET program for 5 years. My experience was that Japanese teachers would let me lead the class in elementary school, but at the Jr. High school the JTE's (Japanese teachers of English) insisted on leading the class most of the time. Only one JTE (who was very good) in JHS let me lead most of the time, and there were a couple occasions where I was able to "take" control of the class from weak teachers (emergency substitute teachers with no training).
I always felt that the reason JTEs needed to run the class in JHS was because of all the tests the students had. JTEs have a lot of pressure to prepare students for these tests. Since the tests are all based on the textbook, the JTEs have to ensure that the students get to a certain page in the textbook by test time. Teaching at elementary schools was much more fun for me :)