Interview
Tom Merner
Tom Merner has been teaching in Japan for 18 years and owns a conversation school in Yokohama. He currently
teaches a "Teaching English to Children" methods course at the Japan College of Foreign Languages. He has served as
a member of the Ministry of Education's authoring committee on the Practical Handbook for Elementary School English
Activities. He is co-editor of the "Teachers Learning with Children" newsletter of the JALT Teaching Children SIG.
He is also involved in the production of the popular NHK childen's series "Eigorian" and "Super Eigorian".
Tom spoke with ELT News editor Mark McBennett in October 2002.
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About teaching in Japan
ELT: You have some 18 years experience of teaching in Japan. How and why did you get started?
RW: I actually started as a part-time substitute teacher at a very small English conversation
school when I was in college. Although being interested in teaching English, since my mother
and grandparents were all English teachers in Japan, I had no intention of taking it up as a
career. I guess the decision of starting to teach at home after my employer refused to give
me a full time position kind of dragged me into where I am now. I have always loved teaching
and have enjoyed watching the happy faces of kids having fun, discovering things, and learning.
Over the years, I have enjoyed teaching students of all ages and can't think of having another
job now.
What changes have you observed in English teaching since the early 1980s?
I started teaching when the audiolingual method was still popular. The school I first taught at
used textbooks filled with sentence pattern drills and I remember watching the tired faces of
students having to repeat and mechanically practice the sentences in the books. There weren't so
many fun ideas for teaching kids either and a lot of copy and practice was being done in workbooks.
Thanks to all the development in materials and methods, and the idea sharing among teachers, we
currently have so much to choose from and I think many students can benefit from such developments.
One thing that hasn't changed is the limited time we have with students and I feel there still are
some students and parents out there thinking that just coming to an English conversation school with
native instructors once a week will make them bilinguals.
You started your own school in Yokohama back in 1987. Was it a difficult process? How long
did it take you to get the school established? What were some of the hurdles?
I started a year before at a different location after having to leave a school where I was teaching
part-time. I had about 10 students and a company teaching position (and also worked part-time during
the day at a construction site!). Then I took over what was supposed to be an established school
from a person I knew. There were over 60 students until I started and then that number fell to
something like 10 in the following two months. The lucky thing was it was spring time and I managed
to gather about 20 new students.
I remember running around the neighborhood putting flyers in mailboxes (I still do it once in a
while) and trying to find better ways of advertising. I guess I was fairly lucky and my school grew
to a decent size in several years. Since then the school has gone up to somewhere around 200 students
with several locations to teach but is currently steadily rolling down the hill. I've been through a
lot of this and that and ups and downs along the way. One of the biggest difficulties I have had is
hiring part-time teachers. With a small school like mine, it is so hard to find good teachers willing
to stay. Then again, it could be due to my lack of managerial skills.
In addition to running your own school, you also teach future teachers at third-level
institutions. Much has been said about the lack of motivation of Japan's college students and the
colleges' failure to really address the issue. Are the students that you teach part of the problem or
hopefully part of the solution?
I am not sure whether they are part of the solution, but I hope they can grow up to be so. Fortunately,
I have a bunch of motivated students. It is probably because I teach a specialized course (teaching
English to children) rather than a general English course where, many teachers are struggling with
unmotivated students. Most of my students have clear hopes of becoming children's English teachers and
they seem to understand how much effort it takes. The sad thing is that although there is a strong
demand for English for children, many of the full time jobs go to native speakers and many of my
students seem to have a hard time finding full time positions after all the efforts they go through.
This is recently becoming a demotivating factor for our students.
You're also very involved in JALT and its Teaching Children Special Interest Group (SIG). Tell
us about that.
I joined JALT about 10 years ago when I thought it would be a good place to learn about teaching and
gather new ideas since I was kind of isolated in my own world at my school. The annual conferences have
always been a good stimulation for me and they have been the place I meet new friends in the same field.
I joined the Teaching Children SIG just after it was established. I volunteered as the newsletter co-editor
thinking it would be a good way to pay back for all I had gotten from JALT. I guess that was when I got
tangled up in the volunteering web J and have taken up several positions since. JALT Junior was a great
success last year, and I hope we can see many people attend again this year in Shizuoka.
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