The English education of Japanese (My Opinion)

So my job is an English teacher in Japan. I work in a Private elementary school that teaches English to all grades of students. This is a bit out of the norm as in Japanese public schools, only elementary school grade 5 and 6 are mandatory to learn English.

This already creates a language gap between students. But I guess that is the same with any country and private and public education. The families pay to attend the school so the students get a different education.

Any who, last year I was a public school teacher. The books that they use (depending on the prefecture depends on the books that are used by schools) the level of English is of a very low level. Also, we do not teach reading and writing in public schools. To make matters worse, when they attend Junior High school the level of the textbooks takes a massive jump and then they are reading, writing and listening in English. Although the grammar points are taught in Japanese.

I am by no means an expert on language learning. I struggling to find methods that work for me to learn Japanese. But after teaching in public school for two years I do know an ineffective method of learning English.

A few years back the Japanese government changed the mandatory age of learning English down to 5th and 6th grade. Then, each prefecture had to design its English program. The one I taught felt like it was just done to say "Hey look we are teaching English" and that was that.

 I do not really know where I am going with this so i'm going to finish this here. Have a good day all.