Mark Ledbetter comments about teaching English on Japanese TV

Remember our January 13th post about Japanese TV shows that teach English? The teacher/author who appeared in the video clip we posted, Mark Ledbetter, has sent us an e-mail responding to the post:

Good evening, all. Just stumbled onto this site. And find myself being seriously raked over the coals. Are there really that many gaijins watching? I had no idea! Well, let me say that I actually agree with most of the comments here. In my defense, I did what I could within the restrictions of the show.

Those being:

1) Everything has to be really simple with problems easy enough for elementary school students to understand.

I’m limited to everyday katakana words, as school kids know those. One writer above suggested I talk about the asobu/play problem. Another suggested cunning, mansion, smart, and challenge. In fact, I have dealt with all of these in my books and with mansion on earlier Sekai-Ichi shows. Asobu/play type problems are, to me, much more interesting than katakana words. My favorite in that category would probably be oboreru/drown. Since you don’t have to actually die to oboreru, you hear things like: “My father doesn’t like the ocean because he drowned last year.” Alas, elementary school students don’t know “drown” or most other problem words based on one-to-one translations. So I just can’t do them on the show.

2) Answers should be black and white, right or wrong.

I try, really!, to explain that everything is context-driven, that often right is wrong, and wrong is sometimes ok. I’ve actually managed to get a bit of that into earlier shows, though most of the time it is edited out.

3) It all has to be funny.

Unfortunately, I’m not really a very funny guy. So I have to leave it to the “talentos,” or to the staff to come up with unlikely problems that may arise from katakana pronunciations. In fact, many of the problems (like cool pond) are from real life experience. That one seems pretty unlikely to me, but who am I to dispute their actual experiences?

4) All items have to be considered interesting by mysterious producers I never meet, people who hold all-nighters to discuss the content of the shows.

Most of the things I find interesting are “too difficult.” Most of the things they find interesting are, to me, rather boring. But, apparently not boring to most of their Japanese audience. Again, who am I tell them that what their audience finds interesting, is not?

I’ve proposed a number of, I think, really useful things for their show. The people I propose them to often agree, and even become a bit excited about presenting some important heretofore unintroduced language issues on TV. But the ideas always get shot down when explained second-hand to the decision makers higher up. I just hope that if I’m patient with the system I’ll be able to eventually talk about things that matter a little bit more. I have some hope that that may happen.

Thanks Hartz, and a couple of others, for a few nice words in the relentless (if basically correct) stream of denigration. That’s right, when I use a “textbook” at all (which is rare), I use the English version of Conan. Mangas are often a great source of true-to-life conversation.

Well, thanks for the feedback! It’s always appreciated and, to tell the truth, this is the first I’ve ever gotten.