Transitioning from teaching ESL back home to EFL in Japan

Recently on a social media platform, a comment came up about the differences between teaching English in various countries. I have only ever taught English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in my native Canada and English as a foreign language (EFL) here in Japan. The question got me thinking about the path I took and the differences between the two contexts in which I've taught.

A change of place and a change of context when you work abroad photo, Andrea Piacquadio

ESL Instructor experience back home

At ESL schools in Canada, to land a position, instructors must have a recognized TESOL qualification. The most common is CELTA, followed by post-graduate diplomas from local colleges and universities. On top of the standards required by the individual ESL schools, the schools themselves are regulated by a provincial agency overseen by the education ministry in my province. While it might be a lot of bureaucracy, it provides consumer protection for students and labor standards for staff.

A day in the life in Canadian ESL schools

In the classrooms of ESL programs in Canada, I depended on whiteboards, textbooks, and photocopied materials. These days, when you look at language school job ads in Canada, the expectation is that candidates have digital savvy, too. Some schools ask for candidates who have experience with Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and Moodle, to name a few.

The typical work day and course duration, too, that I experienced in my Canadian ESL job are very different from how I operate here in Japan. The ESL schools, geared towards preparing students for standardized tests and to accommodate visa durations operate on short course cycles, most four to eight weeks. Each cycle, we instructed the learners based on the Canada Language Benchmarks and taught grammar, vocabulary, and usage in communication. The purpose was to help the students gain skills to support their attempts at tests such as TOEIC, TOEFL, and IELTS.

The work day is intense - the schools I taught at scheduled lessons with brief breaks in the morning and afternoon. Teachers often prepped before the start of the work day, at lunchtime, and an hour or two after lessons finished, and sometimes the paid prep hours didn’t reflect the actual hours we put in.

Finding a place in Japan’s teaching job market

The independent and chain eikaiwas, English schools, in Japan bear little resemblance to the ESL teaching experience I had in Canada. Very few of the chain eikaiwas specify that job candidates have a qualification for English language teaching. Senmongakko, professional training colleges, or university language learning centers are similar teaching environments. These institutions usually require that teachers have at least a recognized qualification and experience with teaching adult ESL or EFL.

Pivoting to secondary education

I found my niche in high school English language education. It’s a big adjustment to teach in academic programs where the standards are set by MEXT. Some things I appreciate about the environment are the academic year starting in April, with a cycle of terms. The school I teach with has a unit system that allows teachers to set short-term and long-term goals. The terms are separated by breaks, so I get enough time for reflection and refinement of our syllabus, and much-needed rest and personal time.

The biggest adjustment for me was pivoting from teaching self-motivated adult learners focused on English language acquisition to teens whose English learning is only one element of their academic career. Sometimes in my lessons, I draw on my experiences as an ESL instructor in the old country, but a lot of my teacher practices I gained here in Japan.

Have you pivoted to a very different work culture in the field you started in back home? What’s the same or different from your “old country” experience?