#いまあなたに伝えたいこと(9) 英語教師としての三十三年 ― 受験英語と、生徒への思いの間で　ー　 (英語版) Thirty-Three Years as an English Teacher - Between Entrance Exam English and My Feelings Toward My Students - University Entrance Exams, TOEIC, and English as a Language

I taught English at high school for thirty-three years.

Most of those years were spent at academically competitive schools, but along the way I also worked at two commercial high schools. That may have been a somewhat unusual experience.

After teaching at the first commercial high school, I later came to teach at another one through a certain connection.

At that school, I was assigned to teach a class called “Commercial English.”

To be honest, however, I sometimes wondered how much the Commercial English classes of that time were actually useful for students’ future paths.

Around that time, a particular qualification was becoming extremely popular among companies.

It was TOEIC.

The full score is 990.
When I took the test once, I scored 940.

I am not sure whether that was the reason, but the Commercial English class was gradually turned into a TOEIC preparation course.

At that time, a commercial high school well known for TOEIC instruction was Ujiyamada Commercial High School in Mie Prefecture. I was sent there on a business trip to observe their classes and learn from them.

I also attended lectures by well-known TOEIC instructors, including Robert Hilke and Hiro Maeda.

Hiro Maeda is known for repeatedly achieving a perfect TOEIC score and is the author of the book Techniques Just Before the TOEIC Test.

To be honest, it was quite different from the kind of language education I had studied in graduate school and had been thinking about for many years.

The focus was on how to raise test scores in a short time.
Which questions to answer first.
Which ones to skip and come back to later.

In other words, it was a strategy for conquering the test.

I struggled with the question of whether this was truly education.

Nevertheless, I created the lessons and taught my students.

As a result, many students improved their scores to around 500 or 600.

For students at a commercial high school, those numbers meant a great deal.

Some students were able to enter a prefectural university using those scores.
Others secured jobs at banks.

At that time I thought to myself that, compared with entrance exam English, this might at least be closer to the real world.

And yet, I still felt that it was different from what I believed English as a language should be.

I had always believed that language means being able to hear what people say and eventually being able to speak in one’s own words.

But raising a test score and being able to use a language are not necessarily the same thing.

That feeling overlapped with what I had experienced when teaching entrance exam English at academically competitive high schools.

Of course I was happy when my students found new opportunities for their future.

And yet somewhere inside me there was always a voice asking, “Is this really language education?”

Looking back on my thirty-three years as a teacher, I feel that I was always wavering between those two worlds.

Still, if even one student came to feel that English was interesting,
if even one student felt that they wanted to listen to English or try speaking it,

then I would like to believe that those years were not meaningless.

And at the same time, there is still a part of me that quietly says to my students, “I am sorry.”

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