Japan has the least confident students in the entire world. Anytime and anyplace, students will tell you directly, "I can't speak well!" And they mean it! But it's not only students. I meet serious, suited 50-year-old businessmen who blush and shyly wave their hands like schoolgirls who say the same: "My English is bad." Hipsters dressed all in black in a nightclub will suddenly lose their cool, start escaping towards the bar, and say, "English? Heta. Heta heta!" I hear this chorus of self-pity all the time!
This doesn't happen in other countries. Traveling around the world, people may be good or bad at English, but they never have the teeth-sucking panic that Japanese have. Why does this happen in Japan? The question is not an easy one, and surely the answer is different for all students of English. And since everyone in Japan studies English at some point in their lives, everyone in Japan is an English student, current or former. How can the entire country be lacking confidence in English?
Of course, Japanese culture values humility. Bragging or being overconfident is totally inappropriate in the world of Japanese politeness. The attitude of unassuming modesty is a pleasant thing, and is very different from America where young people often put on a cool front of total self-possession that can be very grating. However, "High Anxiety" and "Low Confidence" seem to be the prerequisite courses for English study in Japan.
When learning a language, a certain degree of poise and self-assurance is absolutely necessary. Displaying confidence in English is not always arrogant or selfish, but simply part of communicating. A huge lack of confidence becomes an irritating restraint to comfortably speaking another language. As with any endeavor in life, finding the right balance of confidence and humility is not easy, but it is at the very heart of using English well.
The consequences of not learning appropriate confidence can be disastrous. Most students get sidetracked into permanent anxiety that flusters them with even the most basic of English interactions. For many students, their English becomes arrested at a low level simply because they never learn how to act confident enough to engage in real language use. They then lack practice, lose energy in the struggle to find confidence, which then makes them avoid more practice, which in turn keeps confidence low.
Does the school system create this vicious cycle of diffidence? It does little to break it. One way to start breaking this vicious cycle is to think of learning language as a dramatic activity that needs a "willing suspension of disbelief." When I teach, I usually suspend my evaluation of my students and treat them as English equals. When I do that, they begin to act with a greater degree of confidence. The act eventually becomes reality, and they acquire confidence. This is not an easy process, and often ends up with a degree of over-confidence, but that is still better than being stuck in childish fears and uncommunicative panic. It is one way out of the cycle.
Occasionally, I like to have a student in class who appears over-confident. They can be a bit noisy and demanding, but I find it easier to restrain their bubbly enthusiasm than to encourage those with too little confidence. Confident students lend fearlessness to the class. Students with high confidence can engage in conversation, ask questions, try out creative activities and be active, even if they are, to be honest, a little annoying at times. Students with zero confidence simply sit silently in their chairs. I prefer the annoying, active students to nice, silent students.
Every so often, to give a lesson in confidence and self-awareness, I ask students to grade their own papers. This always confuses them, because the teacher is supposed to do all the grading. I explain that I want them to see their English and their writing more clearly. I want them to grade themselves honestly and think of the reasons why they give themselves the grade they do. When I do this, though, only a handful of students ever grade themselves appropriately; the vast majority grade themselves much, much too low. Rarely does anyone ever grade their own work too high.
Why is that? I always wonder. Are they so dependent on the teacher? Do they have no idea of where they are in the world? Are they just being shy? The answers are different for every student, but one thing that always emerges from forcing students into self-evaluation is that they are not able to see their own work very clearly. Their confidence comes from test scores or objective evaluations, not from their own sense of themselves. The default mode in their head is pre-set for low confidence.
What students need to learn is that speaking, writing or using English involves a certain degree of self-aware surety in order to proceed. Like acting on the stage, confusion, anxiety and a bumbling approach create their own kind of disaster if indulged. Genuine humility always connects to genuine confidence.
As a teacher, one of the benefits of being 'on stage' every day is that the ability to appear confident becomes part of your life. I do not always feel confident inside, but outwardly, a display of confidence sets the students in class, or an audience for a presentation, at ease. They can relax, I can relax, and then the communication can take place. If I acted like I really felt, nervous at times, the lecture, presentation or class would be awkward and uncomfortable. Students need to learn to act a bit, too.
Japanese cultural values cannot be changed, of course, but they do not need to be. Being confident, assertive, and self-aware are values demanded for success in modern life. Those values already exist in Japanese culture. Many Japanese have strong confidence in their own abilities for many different areas of life. Strangely, though, English seems to just not be one of those areas. If students could develop the ability to express, even if just acting, a confident attitude in English, they would gradually and naturally develop a genuine confidence, not a false one based on test scores or false compliments.
Of the truth of all this, I am very, very confident!
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