Sugoroku

We played a game called "Sugoroku" in class. There is a game board that is a map of the world. There is a travel path drawn across various countries. Students roll a dice and move across this travel path. Where ever they stop there is a number with a corresponding question about that country or city (for instance America has 3 stops: New York, Texas and California.)

The questions range from pretty simple "What do you want to buy in France?" to medium hard "What languages do they speak in Singapore" to more difficult ones like "What is the capital of Indonesia."

It's no secret that Americans are infamous for being uneducated about the world and it's countries but I was comforted to find that my students, who are high school first years (same as US high school sophomores) knew a lot less than what I think American high school seniors know.

I don't say this to offend and make fun. America is a country full of many different kinds of people and there are plenty of immigrants. Even as far as restaurants go, we have a bit of everything.

Japan is so homogenous that they aren't exposed to the same things we are. Over all, Japanese students are clearly better at academics than American students which may or may not mean much, depending on what you are really looking for.

I played this game for two class days with 320 students and some of the results were pretty surprising...

"Name two cities in Italy." First, nearly all the students said "Rome" and then had to think. Then a lightbulb would flick on over their head and they'd say "Paris!" After consulting a map they'd find that Paris was in France and they player would have to move one space back...

"Name a food from India." Maybe I am biased because I like Indian food, but every student said "Curry." Which is expected, Curry is very popular here (though Japanese curry barely resembles Indian curry.) So I'd ask the students "Can you name another food? Something other than curry?" Most of the time students didn't know anything. Some students would say "Naan" which kind of counts, but I feel like that's like saying "tortilla" is Mexican food... it's a part of it, but it's not really a food you eat on its own.

Only one student knew the capital of Indonesia. This isn't too surprising. I don't think many people know this one, though I had falsely assumed that Japanese people would know more about Asia than Americans since they're a part of it.

Most students couldn't name two places in China. The most common first answer was "Peking" and when I suggested "Hong Kong" most of them said "That isn't a part of China, that's a country."

I was slightly baffled by some of these responses.

The longer I spend here the more interesting I find the school systems. Especially since I work at 3 schools that are on completely different levels.

One has golden angel students that will do any lesson plan I cook up, whether it's fun or not.

One is more average, large classes, fun students, but if the lesson plan isn't good they get rowdy. It's a bit of a struggle to get them to use English, but it's not impossible. You just have to approach it the right way. (This is the school that played Sugoroku)The students range from being quite friendly and talkative to introverted and silent to the "I hate the ALT...or at least I pretend to" attitude. I enjoy this school because if I were a high school student in Minami Uonuma Japan, I'd certainly be here.

The last school is the lowest level as far as English goes. The students have little to no interest in English and are at a very basic level. The amount of effort put into actually participating in the lessons changes from class to class but it ranges from excitedly calling out random answers in broken English to sitting with their backs turned to me playing games on their cellphones. The fun classes are REALLY fun and the bad classes are pretty bad but I do enjoy it there.

Aaaaaaanyway, I better get back to my desk. Today I have 8 hours and 30 minutes of no class. It's high school entrance exam day #1 in Niigata which means the students aren't even in the building, just the middle school students who want to go here. I've read a lot of "Kafka On The Shore" by Haruki Murakami today. It's very long and I'm only about a quarter of the way through it, but am enjoying it so far... and I think another 70 or 80 pages await me before the day is over... so I will retire to my desk.