What to Do in 9th Grade to get into Harvard

UCLAri
Sun, 16 Apr 2006 13:03:03 +0000

The Ace,

I studied in 2003 at Tsukuba University and ICU.

The Japanese can’t speak English for a number of reasons. Here are a few I’ve come to believe are true-


The textbooks are simply awful. They’re based on passing the tests, which require no listening or speaking anyway. No real-life applicability at all.
Even when they do have natives in the classroom (like me), they focus primarily on having them be human tape recorders and read the stupid dialogues. Did I mention that the dialogues are based on the test, too? And that they oftentimes have serious grammatical and diction errors?
Even when errors are made evident, the teachers have no power to change anything, since the tests are based on the texts. That means that despite the numerous errors I’ve pointed out (like saying, “Gee, that’s a high building!” instead of “tall building”), the teachers have NO POWER to change anything. The error stays.
Cultural attitudes. Language learning requires a bit more open-ended thinking than most Japanese students are accustomed to. I can’t even get my kids to fill in blanks for ad libs, because it requires too much actual creativity. They’re all afraid of putting the wrong answer!


Japanese education is great at teaching things that require only rote memorization (math, science up to a point, and kanji.) It fails at teaching creative thinking, languages, and problem solving. I have kids that, when pressed with figuring out how to spell a word, won’t figure out why I placed a dictionary on the desk. They actually have to ask my WHY I put that there. If I tell them, “look it up!” they instantly go, “ohhh, okay!”

But before that, blank stares.