There's a way.

I've been reading English newspapers in order to improve my reading skills. The other day, I found an article about coming Japanese new English education system which would begin in April 2013.


According to Shukan ST, a new teaching guideline released Dec.22 calls for high school English classes to be taught primarily in English.

The drive is aimed at enhancing students' English communication skills, according to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry. The level of vocabulary would match the level taught in China and South Korea, ministry officials said.

How come have they come up with this idea? This is absolutely ridiculous. Of course, it'd be wonderful if it is possible; however, I'm skeptical about how many teachers and students could deal with this way of study. It's obvious that many Japanese people can't speak English even though they have been studying it for at least 6 years in school. There are a lot of teachers who had such an English education in their school days. They still have a lot of difficulties speaking English. Do you think they could explain grammartical things in English to their students? I'm afraid I don't think so.

I took an English writing class last year. Our teacher was a native English speaker, who spoke only English in his class. For the first time, I experienced how tough taking a class in English was. I understood what he was talking about, but some grammartical terms confused me a lot and I couldn't explain them! I thought I got used to communicating with people in English, but this skill was not enough. I couldn't do anything but smile bitterly to think how foolish I had been.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to say that Japanese English teachers don't have any abilities to teach English. They are surely capable of it and know how to do. However, we have to understand this; teaching English in English is a totally different story.