More than 90% of engRish teachers in Japanese schools are incompetent
Ministry survey finds schools’ English teaching falling short
Yomiuri Shimbun—Only 4 percent of public middle schools in the country conduct a good portion of each English lesson in English, a figure far below the goal set by the Education, Science and Technology Ministry, ministry officials said Sunday. …Only 8.3 percent of middle school teachers and 16.3 percent of high school teachers scored more than 730 points in the TOEIC test, a figure indicating thorough comprehension of ordinary English conversation and an ability to provide quick responses.…more…
From time to time, folks back home in the States ask me, “You have a high school teaching certificate and an MA in linguistics, so why aren’t you teaching English in Japan?”
My answer is that, “teaching engrish is too painful.”
Japan routinely scores in the bottom 5% of countries in their TOFEL test scores and the average TOEFL scores among the Japanese are very low in comparison with South Koreans, Chinese, and Taiwanese. The reasons/excuses for this are discussed here. The Japanese education system is so screwed up, it’s both totally beyond hope and hopeless as a teaching job prospects. However, Japanese engrish does make for great t-shirts, hee, hee.
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