Approachable Mr. Me

Yesterday I went to my first English class. I just started teaching with my host mom at their Cram School. Cram School is a second school that Japanese people go to. During the day they have school, then after school they go to ANOTHER school that kind of covers the same stuff to help. It's long though, like 4 or 5 hours long. I only teach one 50 minutes period though. My students are eleven twelve-year-old boys and one girl of the same age. My host mom warned me on the walk over that they are probably going to be really shy and afriad to talk to me since I am good at English and they don't know me. (Japanese tend to be very shy when it comes to speaking English. This is why a lot of them aren't very good at speaking but many tend to be excellent with reading and writing...)

I walked into the little Cram School and my host dad was finishing up teaching his Science class in one of the classrooms. My host mom and I waited outside for him to be finished. The second he opened the door to step out, a door-full of a faces filled the door frame all saying "Hallo!" "How Are You?!?" "Nice to meet you!" "Hey!" I walked in and those kids were just bouncing off the walls with their english. By age 12, they have had no real English experience. They exercised all the English they knew in the first 10 seconds.

I went over the first half of the ABC's which they were already able to recognize but they don't know the English way of pronouncing the letters names. Then we covered some of the words that Japanese borrow from English. "Radio" "Pizza" "Sandwich" "Jacket" and practiced pronounciation. It was quite fun. We then did self introductions. "Hello, my name is Mike. I come from America. I live in Chicago. I am 20 years old. I have 5 people in my family. I like to play music." Then they tried.

When the class ended I was called into the other room with older students who wanted to talk. We did some basic conversation stuff, I drew a map of America and labled chicago. They asked me to draw in the 5 great lakes which I could not do...they currently have a false perception of where Lake Ontario, Eerie and Huron are. I could fill in Chicago and New York just fine though.

No one was afriad of me. No one in this country is. They don't really have a reason to be afraid of me I guess. I am skinny, fuzzy, really white and make strange faces frequently. Although, once a Japanese friend of mine sat in my seat when I got up to walk around at lunch one day and when I got back she said "Are you mad at me because I am in your seat?" "No, not at all, it's fine, I'll just sit here. (at another chair)" "You look mad!" I was smiling and kind of laughing "Why?" "Your eyebrows look mad!" These Malarkey eyebrows sure can be a curse sometimes. For those of you who watch Seinfeld, their is an episode where Uncle Leo gets his eyebrows singed off and Elaine paints on new ones for him and they are pointy and angry looking so everyone always thinks he is really mad and mean...yeah...I'm pretty sure that's me in this country....except only sometimes.

Today when I was standing at a Convenient Store with my friend a group of tennis players from a university just walk up and go "HELLO!" "OH REALLY????" "HI!" "I AM SPEAKING ENGLISH!" "I PLAY TENNIS!" to my friend and I. We had a half english/half japanese conversation...but of all the IES students I seem to get the most people who approach me to try speaking english. I am not sure why, I feel like it's a big practical joke....anyway...

When I got home my host mom told me she was amazed at how laidback American teaching method is. She said she loves it. All I did was steal ideas from how I learned Japanese. I think the Japanese approach tends to be a little serious and "by the book." Casual English isn't widely understood. For instance, one of the most common "slang" phrases in English "What's Up?" is so utterly confusing for many people. To those who don't know what it means, of course it's weird to hear, it has no real meaning other than "what exists above you?" or "What does the word 'up' mean?" depending on how you look at it. You would think that this would be an early lesson since everyone says it to everyone.

Instead of knowing this, they just have a much better understanding of English grammar and a good set of polite english phrases and words. For instance my host mom used the words "Symbiosis" and "Lucrative" the other day. I know what they both mean, however, I can't recall the last time I used either of them. Lucrative, I guess, is a little more commonly used...

Anyway... I'm on Spring break in one week and I am exciiiiiiiiited.