4 posts tagged “rant”
OK FUCKFACE WEIRD OLD GUY WHO HAS ONLY STARTED COMING IN THIS MONTH AND WHOSE FUNCTION IS UNDEFINED:
YOU NEED TO FUCK OFF AND STOP.
You come in, and you commandeer a school laptop, inconveniencing other people who need to use it to input their marks, or show powerpoint shit in class, etc., and then you sit across from me just, apparently, surfing the internet and updating your blog (which you insist on showing me several times a week). You're worse than I am, as far as sitting on my ass at work using the internet.
BUT THAT IS NOT ALL
Then, you insist on talking to yourself, loudly, and making all manner of fucking mouth-noises behind your facemask. STOP IT.
Fuck off with your tea in your thermos; the way your thermos pours makes the most REVOLTING POURING NOISE EVER.
Additionally,
if you're going to drink tea (1) DO NOT SLURP THAT LOUDLY. Slurping is
fine, I guess, since it's the done thing here, but this is FUCKING OVER
THE TOP. I SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR YOU SLURPING WHEN I AM AT THE FAR
END OF THE FUCKING ROOM, but I can, so imagine how badly I want to
throttle you when I'm sitting at my own desk.
Additionally, when you're drinking tea, if you're going to finish your cup of tea off very quickly DO NOT SIT THE CUP DOWN. The clunk of you sitting your cup down ever 2 seconds IS INFURIATING.
Furthermore, YOUR TEA IS NOT SO DELICIOUS, NOR ARE YOU SO PARCHED THAT YOU MUST SIGH LOUDLY AFTER EVER SIP.
The whole
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every two seconds all fucking day IS UNNECESSARY.
Here's another V6 video, it's all summery and shit.
So, the government, every year, throws a new idea at the elementary schools to make English education better, but it's all band-aid fixes; they're all poorly thought out hacks designed to get a little bit of improvement without actually changing anything, and unfortunately, that doesn't fucking work, as is evident by the poor results from years and years of tinkering but never actually overhauling English education in this country.
Right now, in grades 3-6, the children are supposed to get one "English activity" time a week. The period this falls in isn't a specific English class -- it's a project period, a time for long-term projects, special things the teacher wants to teach but isn't strictly curriculum, etc. Three periods of that a week, one is supposed to be English.
From April 2009 some schools (all schools must start it by April 2011), instead of recommending that one of these "project periods" is "English activity time", they will cut that down to two periods a week and make an official "English Activity" class. This means textbooks that need to be followed, and an actual curriculum instead of "o hi, just do whatever you like a hyuk".
On the one hand, this is excellent -- what elementary English is sorely lacking is a cohesive curriculum for the teachers to follow. But this is Japan, and Japanese English textbooks are notoriously fucking retarded. But even shitty textbooks can be worked with, given the proper teachers and the proper effort.
The guy (as they always do when talking about textbooks), broke out the, "It is the law that you must use this textbook and not deviate from the textbook so you must use the textbook and not deviate because it is the law," line. "You must focus on speaking and listening!" YES! I totally agree. "You mustn't weigh them down with grammar. Vocabulary is more important than grammar in elementary school." EXACTLY, well played!
"You must never write English on the board. It is not allowed to have the children read in any way." ... what? I'm not saying we should get them reading BOOKS, but learning what some words look like doesn't hurt, so long as the focus is still on speaking and listening.
"You must also never ever practice pronunciation with the children. Pronunciation is in the junior high school curriculum, not the elementary curriculum. Please remember." Okay, here's where dipshit asshats go off the rails. You want us to train their speaking and listening, but we're not allowed to make sure they say things properly? Speaking, listening, and pronunciation are three tentacles on the same English Education monster. You can't speak English if you don't listen to it and learn how it sounds. You can't listen and glean meaning if you haven't had your own pronunciation trained a little bit. I'm not saying we should have 10 year olds sitting in rows doing nothing but practicing their interdental fricatives for 45 minutes; I'm saying that a little bit of pronunciation coaching, i.e., "Ah, to make this sound, you have to put your tongue between your teeth -- like this!", is necessary. If we don't coach pronunciation, you'll get children who have two years of solid vocab and speaking under their belts, but who have been saying "Thursday" as "Saaaaaaaaaaaaaazuday" for two years. You can't FIX IT after they have done it wrong for so long. Mistakes like that need to be corrected immediately, so that the child remembers it and learns the proper way and moves on.
The edict from MEXT, however, would have children happily saying things completely wrong and then getting to junior high school and being told that everything they know is wrong. It makes English suck for them, it makes teaching English to them suck for the JHS teachers, and sets the stage for yet ANOTHER generation of Japanese people who take English for at least 8 years in school and can't understand any English or be understood by any native speaker. We already see this problem in junior high schools in the form of writing. They're taught how to write in elementary school, but they get taught old, archaic, disused systems of romaji, and bizarre letter formation. When we get them in JHS, the first thing we have to do (and it's something we spend 3 years doing) is breaking them of all their bad habits -- habits they learned because no one was around to correct their mistakes. The elementary teachers don't know any better - they lack any training in English at all. Blind leading the fucking blind.
"You must never correct the elementary teacher's English. English is scary for them! They do not know English! They haven't learned it, so of course they will make mistakes. Never correct them, whether it be in front of the students or after class." This, too, is ridiculous! I mean, yes, we must be careful not to hurt the teacher's feelings by being unnecessarily harsh when correcting them, but correction is necessary. If we let people make mistakes forever and don't correct them, they never learn, and if no one is learning, then why the hell am I a teacher?
I often get invited to mini-symposia about English teaching in Elementary schools. The elementary teachers lack the confidence to teach English -- partly because they don't know English, and partly because they haven't been given any resources on what or how to teach -- so they ask me to come and give them pro-tips.
Here is the only pro-tip that has any relevance. It is step 1. Once MEXT has completed step 1, I will divulge the rest of the my clever plan.
STEP 1: TRAIN ELEMENTARY TEACHERS IN ENGLISH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. USE SOME COMMON SENSE, JAPAN.
Now, I'm not saying we need to train them to fluency -- that would be ideal, but isn't feasible. What IS possible, and necessary, is for the teachers to have a series of seminars giving them the tools and resources and skills they need to teach a foreign language and feel comfortable with it. The other big thing that will give them the confidence and comfort they need is to LEARN THE LANGUAGE. Just as well as their students are expected to know it by the end of 6th grade -- no more. It would take some time in summer vacation, it would take some money, but this is a REAL step towards a solution to the English education problem in this country, unlike the band-aid solutions of throwing textbooks and more hours at it. If the teachers teaching don't understand the subject, and therefore can't teach it, no amount of money or time or textbooks will be worth anything until you get a clue and put the money into TRAINING THE TEACHERS.
Of course, I'm the only one with any fucking sense when it comes to stuff like this, so expect the Japanese to continue to suck at foreign languages until the end of days.
I hate the new people upstairs.
They move in, decide that their apartment isn't enough space, and so use the corridor outside their apartment as storage, including for their food-garbage, which stinks up the entire hall, and since the door on my apartment doesn't have a proper seal, my apartment; they have a balcony on which to have barbeques and dry clothes and shit but that's apparently not good enough for them, so they've decided that they also have sole-access to the roof -- I don't have a balcony so I should have roof access but noooo; my internet dropped to 1/3rd of it's normal speed, which in turn broke my tv-through-dsl, when they moved in -- not a coincidence; they keep the door to the roof open all the time and keep the light in the hall on all the time -- besides shining right into my bedroom because there's a window in my door (there's not in theirs) it also attracts moths which then congregate in the corridor outside my apartment, not theirs. They clomp around like fucking elephants and have at least one kid that cries from the time I wake up in the morning until almost the time I go to bed at night. Whenever I cheerfully greet them, they just give me the "OMG, A FOREIGNER, I AM TARO'S PROVERBIAL DEER-In-THE-HEADLIGhTS" look.
They're just fucking rude and inconsiderate. Am I expecting too much to expect someone who moves into a building which has had only one resident up until that time to knock on that resident's door and say, "Hi, we're new. We have a kid who may be loud, but we'll do our best to keep it quiet, please understand. We'll be using the roof, do you ever go up there? Oh you do, okay, that's cool, we'll make sure to share it. Well it was good meeting you, let's be good neighbours. ^_^" ? I really don't think I'm out of line expecting these things.
also JESUS CHRIST, MY NEIGHBOURHOOD USED TO BE NICE AND QUIET
BUT nOW I'VE GOT CRYING BABIES AND ELEPHANT-WALKERS AND PEOPLE WITH LOUDASS FUCKIng EXHAUSTS RIPPING THROUGH MY NEIGHBOURHOOD AT TWICE THE SPEED LIMIT
AND LIKE
SOME FUCK ON A SCOOTER THAT INSTEAD OF LIKE, REVVING NORMALLY IS ALL LIKE
VROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoomVROOOoom
and it's super fucking loud
and people with shitty cars that sound like they're going to blow the fucking engine, when they're really just coasting gently backwards
Seriously, if I had known the neighbourhood was going go to shit like this, I wouldn't have stayed for a 4th year, or I would have demanded they move me to a different apartment, and pay my fucking key money.
I'm gonna try not to heat at all this winter, so that the fucks upstairs don't get to benefit from my heating efforts, which they would, since there's no insulation, and it'd just float up and warm their floors. Fuck them.
