Traditional Japanese Instruction

One of the reasons learning Japanese is difficult is because of the way it is taught, particularly in the early stages.

Principally, I have 3 major complaints about this period, and I'll deal with them one by one:

1) First, I disagree with the idea of teaching Japanese to "foreigners" as being fundamentally different from teaching Japanese to Japanese children.  While there are certainly differences, I believe that there is more in common among these two groups than educators seem to believe.  If there was more commonality, a student would have access to a wealth of study materials targeted at schoolchildren to make rapid progress.  The kanji that a foreign student learned would more accurately track against a Japanese student's, which would make graded readers (or any printed material for that matter) accessible.  Grammar and vocabulary would be acquired in approximately the right sequence to assist the learning process.  There is no reason on earth why 「推薦状」 should be taught prior to 「ほとんど」.

As I progress into the deep intermediate level, this issue is becoming less and less important; the textbooks at this level are not so bad at covering standard Japanese (although they completely avoid the entire concept of even the most common slang forms).  I'll treat the subject of kanji instruction separately.

2) A minor complaint that I have, is that classes tend to spend a great amount of time teaching the hiragana syllabary - which is a good thing - but then they tend to gloss over katakana as though it is far less important.  This is a mistake.  There is a huge (and growing) amount of the language written in katakana, and a good portion of it originates from English; this is an easy way for an English-speaking person to easily gain some vocabulary they can have some confidence in, and a way to foster an interest in reading from an early point in studies (which is clearly a daunting task).

3) But certainly, my biggest issue with Japanese instruction has to be the forceful, primary emphasis on the です・ます form.

Sure, it makes foreigners seem polite from early on, and it is ultimately very useful, but it deliberately impedes progress by causing confusion.  This form is the very first form any foreigner ever encounters, to their detriment.  It isn't until several chapters of a textbook are studied that the dictionary form - and indeed the differences between these two forms - are even explained.  The very first verb form taught should be the dictionary form, even if it is not the most polite form to use to end a sentence.  To my first point, do children speak with です・ます form for their first words ?  No, they use dictionary form first and learn politeness once they can understand their surroundings and speak a few sentences.  I believe that this should also be the case for foreigners: politeness only matters if you can make yourself understood in the first place.  Incomprehensible polite-form gibberish cannot possibly convey the politeness intended by teaching です・ます first.  I think an earnest approach, and the correct attention to body language are far more important in conveying this intended politeness in the early days.

The primary argument I would make toward teaching dictionary form first, is the fact that it is absolutely essential for subordinate clauses and compound sentences.  Teaching です・ます first causes people to have a moment of hesitation and confusion at the juncture between clauses, and interrupts an otherwise smoothly-flowing thought process through a complex sentence.  The frustration of this moment causes most students to avoid using complex sentences altogether, in order to get their point out more efficiently.  This should be considered a failing of the overall teaching process, as most such students will ultimately have a lower-functioning level of Japanese than they desire.  To compensate for this, there should be frequent drilling of subordinate-clause expressions such as "The man I met yesterday"/"The book that I use for my Japanese studies"/"whether he brought his umbrella this morning".  These are really the building blocks of language, and should be stressed and re-stressed as often as possible until they become natural.  Such subordinate-clause adjectival forms should also be taught much sooner than they currently are; perhaps in first-year studies shortly before the です・ます form should be.

Of course, I'm mostly a product of the current system of teaching, and I can't foresee whether there would be other unforeseen issues with my desired approach, but I genuinely believe that the above points would improve things for students of the Japanese language.