Japanese for English Teachers Working in Japan

Where an English teacher's Japanese actually gets used

Whether you arrive through an assistant language teacher programme, a dispatch company, a private language school, or a direct hire, the pattern is similar. You are contracted to bring English into the room, and the school is organised in Japanese. Your desk is in the shokuinshitsu, the staffroom, among homeroom teachers who share a class with you. Announcements are made there every morning, timetable changes are posted there, and the person who decides whether your idea for Friday's lesson happens sits two desks away.

The Japanese you need is therefore not academic. It is a fixed set of staffroom phrases said at fixed moments, a short list of classroom instructions for when English fails, a few sentences to a parent, and a more careful register for the principal. Contracts, visa categories and school rules vary between boards of education and companies, so treat this guide as the language and confirm the rules with your employer.

The staffroom morning

The day begins with a greeting to the room and then to the teachers nearest you, followed by the morning meeting, called the asa no uchiawase or shokuin chōrei depending on the school. The meeting is fast and full of names, and nobody expects you to follow all of it. What you need to catch are the words that change your day: henkō for a change, kyūkō for a cancelled lesson, kesseki for an absence, and a period number followed by a class name.

After the meeting is the moment to ask the homeroom teacher about a class you share. Keep the question short and specific: how the class is doing, whether anyone is absent, and whether there is something you should know. The reply will often be a quick warning such as chotto ochitsukanai n desu, they are a bit unsettled, or a request to start with something calm. Asking every morning is not a burden; it signals that you are paying attention to the class as much as to your lesson.

Staffroom phrases by moment

The staffroom is a room where people greet each other constantly, and the phrases attach to moments rather than meanings. Otsukaresama desu is said to anyone you pass after the morning, shitsurei shimasu goes at the door of any room you enter, and the person leaving before you says osaki ni shitsurei shimasu while the room replies otsukaresama deshita. The general workplace greetings guide covers the reasoning; here is the set as it applies across a school day.

Planning a lesson with the Japanese teacher of English

Team teaching means a planning conversation, usually squeezed into a break. The Japanese teacher of English will often speak to you in English, but the planning goes faster if you can follow their Japanese and offer your part in Japanese when they are tired. The core questions are where the class got to, what page comes next, and who does which part. Offer to take a specific piece, such as the warm-up or the pronunciation practice, rather than asking what they want you to do.

Two words carry most of the negotiation: tantō, being in charge of a part, and susumu, progressing through the book. The learner mistake is agreeing to a plan you did not fully catch; if you missed the page number or the activity, ask again with the number in your question so the teacher can just say hai.

Notice that sensei is used as you to a fellow teacher. Anata is never used in a staffroom; the title does the work, and Tanaka-sensei is the polite form of you when speaking to Mr Tanaka.

Classroom instructions for when English fails

A lesson opens with the class leader, the nicchoku, calling kiritsu, rei, chakuseki: stand, bow, sit. From then on the class should be in English, and most schools want it that way. But there are moments when a Japanese instruction is the right tool: a fire drill announcement, a class that has stopped listening, or a page number that six students have missed. Use the instruction once, in Japanese, and go straight back to English. Students learn quickly whether you are willing to translate everything, and if you are, they stop listening to the English.

The forms below use te kudasai, which is polite but clearly an instruction. Older colleagues may use the plainer nasai forms with students; as the foreign teacher you are safer with kudasai, which never sounds harsh from you and still gets the room moving.

Wakarimashita ka, did you understand, gets a chorus of hai whether or not it is true. A better check is to give the instruction in English, watch who moves, and use the Japanese only for the students who did not.

Praising and correcting students

Praise is where a little Japanese does the most work, especially in junior high school. Good job in English is background noise to a fourteen-year-old; yoku dekimashita from the foreign teacher is remembered. Keep the praise specific when you can, naming the pronunciation or the loud voice, because a specific compliment tells the rest of the class what you want.

Correction is gentler in Japanese than most learners expect. Oshii, so close, is the standard word for a near miss and turns a mistake into a game. Machigaete mo daijōbu desu yo tells a frozen student that errors are allowed, which is the sentence that gets shy students to speak. For behaviour, keep it short and low: a name, a pause, and oshaberi wa ato de, chatting can wait, is more effective than a long speech.

Speaking with the principal and vice-principal

The principal, kōchō-sensei, and the vice-principal, kyōtō-sensei, are addressed by title, and everything said to them is a notch more formal than staffroom talk. In practice the vice-principal manages the staff, so leave requests, schedule questions and problems go there first. The pattern is always the same: the title, a request for a moment of time, the reason, and the request itself as a question. Go-sōdan shitai koto ga aru no desu ga, there is something I would like to consult about, is the sentence that opens almost every conversation.

Requests use itadaite mo yoroshii deshō ka rather than the te mo ii desu ka you use with peers. Accept an answer with shōchi shimashita, the formal understood, and leave with shitsurei shimashita. The mistake is over-apologising for a normal request such as a hospital visit; state it plainly and formally, and the answer will usually be a simple hai.

Talking with parents at a meeting

Parent contact usually comes at the observation day, jugyō sankan, when parents stand at the back of your lesson, or at a parent-teacher meeting, hogosha mendan, where the homeroom teacher leads and may bring you in for a comment about English. Parents are addressed with full formality. Open with itsumo osewa ni natte orimasu, the fixed phrase between a school and a family, and introduce yourself by subject.

Say one concrete positive thing before anything else, using the student's name with san. Then, if there is advice, frame it as what would help the child improve further, never as a complaint. The parent's reply is often self-deprecating about the child, such as ie de wa zenzen eigo o hanasanai n desu, and the right response is reassurance plus a small, doable suggestion.

School events and the words that fill the calendar

The school year is shaped by ceremonies and events, and each one arrives in the staffroom as a word you need to recognise weeks in advance because it changes the timetable. Sports day practice swallows afternoons, the school festival takes a week of preparation, and the choir contest fills the corridors with singing. You will be assigned a kakari, a duty, for most of them; ask which one is yours and offer to help, because the events are where colleagues get to know you.

Keeping the class in English while using Japanese with colleagues

The balance most experienced teachers settle on is simple: Japanese is for the staffroom, the corridor and the parents, and English is for the lesson, with Japanese allowed inside the lesson only as a short rescue. Students should hear you use Japanese with their homeroom teacher, because it shows respect for the place, and they should hear you refuse to use it with them, because it shows the English is real. Telling a student eigo de itte mimashō with a smile, then waiting, is the whole method.

• Give every instruction in English first, with a gesture, and use the Japanese version only for the students who did not move.
• Keep a private list of the five Japanese instructions you used most this week and try to replace each one with a gesture or a routine.
• Learn the staffroom Japanese for your own duties before the general vocabulary: the words for your club, your events and your classes.
• Ask the Japanese teacher of English to correct one Japanese sentence of yours a day; they are a language teacher and usually enjoy it.
• When a student speaks to you in Japanese outside class, answer in simple Japanese and then repeat the answer in English, so both languages stay friendly.