That's right. I work for a company in Tokyo, we have several foreigners there and lots of Japanese.
They want to eventually work in English (for instance slides are always in English) but they also want us to learn better Japanese. So They want to hear ideas on how they can support our learning.

Ideas seen as possible:

1 - Company pays a certain % of Japanese school fees
2 - A number of hours per week (for instance 3) you can go to the school instead of working (and you will be paid as working).
3 - Pay some online service or buy books for us so we can learn in our free time

discarted:

- Take working hours to study by yourself. As it will be difficult to track if we are really studying or just been lazy
- Paying money (as prize) for passing tests

I am in almost-JLPT1 level and my main problem is that I dont have time. I work from 9am to 9pm/10pm and then I have to cook, eat, clean, sleep. So I dont want to go to a language school because I will not have time to review afterwards.

Any good idea ?

Our company organises lessons on-site and pays for them (100%). They're 4 hours per week and take place during work hours (with accelerated individual lessons for people going on transfer to japan in the near future). There are tests etc to ensure you aren't just slacking off.

They're compulsory for grads up to JLPT N4 level (this may have changed though), and after that they are optional.

We're an australian subsidiary of a japanese company though, not in japan itself. You'd also probably have trouble justifying it if you were N1 though as that'd probably be considered "good" enough" here. Don't know of anyone who's tried and got rejected though.

Whew. I thought this thread was going to go in a totally different direction, based on the title.

what direction? 怪しい

I think one problem is that the foreigners here, we all have very different levels, from almost 0 to almost bilingual

This looks like a pointy-haired-boss decision to me. If you don't need Japanese to do your jobs, why would you have to learn Japanese?

This is bound to fail...

iSoron Wrote:This looks like a pointy-haired-boss decision to me. If you don't need Japanese to do your jobs, why would you have to learn Japanese?

This is bound to fail...

Because it's Japan and the more Japanese you know the better your relationships with your coworkers will be. And relationships are the most important thing in Japanese companies.

Are you being forced to attend the classes?
If not, then just take the opportunity to buy some books, and keep studying on your own.

Or if you are keen on option 3, design your own website which publishes anki decks designed exclusively for yourself, make it look professional, and charge a hefty fee for the access. Then get your company to essentially pay you to study Japanese :p

I do think I prefer studying by myself than going the a school. I have a ton of material to go through, grammar books, a personal anki deck, etc.

The problem is that they may pay or gives us free time for the school but will not do it for our free time because it is very difficult to evaluate if we are studying or just pretending and letting time pass.

I think trying to cheat on option 3 will not work but nice idea

- Paying money (as prize) for passing tests

That is the only one that will actually work. Part time classes are worthless and there is no incentive for attendees to excel in them. Similarly, no one is going to study in their free time if they are not already motivated to do it. There needs to be an incentive.

Many companies in Japan pay a 手当て for (English) language competency (based on TOEIC score). It's a few thousand extra yen on your paycheck every month.

^ Yup then you can spend the money as you see fit on learning materials.

Failing that, option 2, as working 9am - 9pm I'm guessing people lack time rather than money.

If they really want to give you classes then a private tutor would prob be a good idea. 2 hours self study and 1 hour with a tutor will be better than classes unless everyone is the same level.

This sounds like a let's do this for the sake of doing it thing, rather than something that will yield actual results. Unless people put real effort in there wont be a lot of improvement. If they really want people to study then what are they doing having people working 12 hours a day?

I thought the same as nest0r, that you either worked for some crazed genetic engineer who wanted to purify a race, or that you were an excellent lunguistic architect bent on streamlining the Japanese language.

zigmonty Wrote:Our company organises lessons on-site and pays for them (100%). They're 4 hours per week and take place during work hours (with accelerated individual lessons for people going on transfer to japan in the near future). There are tests etc to ensure you aren't just slacking off.

To hold the lessons on-site is the best option i guess. First the company should evaluate where everybody is at language-wise, and then hire someone to give lessons to the various groups, during the morning hours. I would also ask for some time off during work, to be able to do the necessary reviews. As an incentive also ask for the money for passing a test.

Paid to learn Japanese? Now that would be the life.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way.

This venture is doomed to fail for all but the most motivated, who will learn on their own without the company's help.

With that in mind, try to find the best way to improve everyone's Japanese. (At this point, you've either forgotten that it's doomed to fail and you're getting disgusted, or you've remembered and are screaming at me... It's okay, just hang in there.)

The company won't allow time for self-study unless they can measure whether you are really studying or not. So normal self-study is out. But we can work with that. Some ideas:

1) Hire a tutor to come once a week for a group session on the company time. The tutor should concentrate on conversational Japanese so everyone can get the most benefit. The tutor should work on pairing people up with each other, as well as talking in a group.

2) Find an online service that provides study services. Allow employees an hour a day to study. iKnow.jp is a good example since it tracks study time. Because of the way it tracks time, if someone ends up with 2.5 hours of iKnow time from 5 hours paid study-time, that'd be a good measure that they actually did study.

3) Organize a company-only study group where everyone is involved in planning lessons and hosting the group. Meet once or twice a week for a couple hours and discuss things. (In Japanese as much as possible.)

But in the end, remember that none of this will work due to human nature. These are just good ideas to give your boss so that he won't think you're blowing him off.

"The company wants to work in English" - this scares me.

mezbup Wrote:"The company wants to work in English" - this scares me.

i was told the same at university... you shouldn't be studying Japanese, you don't have time for that. Everyone there was actively discouraged from learning Japanese, as it's more important that they learn English.

Despite the fact that all the lectures were in Japanese, the slides were in english, so it was assumed that you don't need Japanese.

I'm sure many places in Japan want to internationalise, especially if they're willing to take on foreignors.

well, i was told that i didn't need to learn Japanese at all, then when i pointed out that all the lectures were in Japanese, they decided that they should change all the lectures to english. (despite the fact that the majority of people there would find that incredibly difficult, and despite the fact that there would still be conferences every month or so in Japanese).

i don't think the person telling me to not learn japanese was because of 建前 at all. He was very insistent on it, and seemed to get pretty annoyed whenever i mentioned learning Japanese.

******************************
As for ideas for the company: how about a "speak in Japanese" day every few weeks... all conversations and requests on that day must be made in Japanese. If the person doesn't know the language, they should ask one of their collegues, and write down the response so they have it for future. Collegues should also correct Japanese speaking if possible.

Otherwise, a conversation group in working hours once a week or so. Equal numbers of non-Japanese workers and Japanese workers should join and converse in Japanese as well as they can.

well, if I were manager...

1-identify the specific need for learning japanese, and why it needs to be improved
2-set a concrete target to achieve that can be measured
3-develop a program with measurable milestones to get to that concrete target

since i can't do 1 and 2, 3 is impossible to develop


however i'm not a manager
and such outlandish liberal easy-to-organize ideas won't fly in conservative cubicle world in the US, so i doubt it will work in Japan



(as you can tell, i do not like my job)

Most people on here don't believe in language schools or classes, but in dedication and immersion. I haven't had a single Japanese class, but I'm already maybe 2 years ahead of people that study Japanese formally at a university here. If I were you I'd convince my boss to let me do self study since that's much more efficient, atleast for people like me that are always held back by the slow pace of classes.

I've always had this crazy idea that businesses should give employees a 2-hour lunch
break every day and encourage them to spend that time wisely.

For example:
1)fitness classes (or some kind of physical activity)
2)music/dance/arts classes
3)reading books (fiction, non-fiction,etc)
4)textbooks (for learning job related skills)

I feel like the standard 1-hour lunch break is just barely enough to get out, eat, and maybe
have 20-30 minutes for yourself. But that 20-30 mins you're constantly
thinking "I have to go back soon" and so you get nothing out of it.

2 hours is long enough to let you refresh your mind,learn something new, and
come back ready to work.

I often feel that employees are locked inside a cage at their office and when they
get home, they are too tired to put any effort into learning anything else (either work or
hobby related).

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Good luck with your studies.

I agree with the people that suggest that self-study and immersion are a good way
to go. Classes are really for people that have no idea how to approach learning a certain
language. Once you get the idea, self-study is the way to go (if you're the type to self-study, if not, that's ok).

@chamcham
It is not a company's responsibility to allow you to enjoy hobbies.
In reality most people would just use the long lunch break to sleep or mess around on the internet.

Some companies do provide such time (Google makes employees spend something like 10% on personal projects), but projects need approval and need to have an end product afaik.

It's worth pointing out that the reason we are given japanese training is that we work pretty closely with head office in japan and it's pretty much a japanese-only company. The burden is more or less on us to bridge the language gap. That and transfers to japan are common, so we need japanese skills to be able to function when integrated into a japanese group.

They teach us japanese because there is a business need for us to know japanese. It's not about encouraging hobbies. If you're in a position where you don't *need* japanese, then it'd be a harder sell. For example, its only really the engineers who are given the training. Support staff like HR and accountants etc generally aren't.

If your company is really serious about Japanese, they need to have Japanese language ability (measured by JLPT levels or similar) as part of your performance evaluation. This needs to have a clear influence on renumeration and promotions and this needs to be openly communicated.

The style of learning (self study, classes, etc.) should be left to everybody's own preference, only sucess in form of passed language tests counts. If someone takes classes, they should pay for themselfes first, and get it refunded after passing the test. Like with other skills, the company basically buys ability. Therefore studying should be outside of your working time. Additionally the company also could offer courses before or after working time, depending on demand.

IceCream Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:"The company wants to work in English" - this scares me.

i was told the same at university... you shouldn't be studying Japanese, you don't have time for that. Everyone there was actively discouraged from learning Japanese, as it's more important that they learn English.

Despite the fact that all the lectures were in Japanese, the slides were in english, so it was assumed that you don't need Japanese.

I'm sure many places in Japan want to internationalise, especially if they're willing to take on foreignors.

Seriously? I find that rather depressing. I can't imagine slides being in Japanese at my uni (笑) that just seems kinda nuts from the perspective of an english speaking country that you would have the slides in a foreign language. There's a real desperation to learn English... I guess its the whole internationalisation thing. Still... I was looking at the exchange programs to Japanese universities and some only offer programs in English... although there are some where if u have JLPT1 you can choose from the normal courses the Japanese students do. Still... surprising.

we have discussed this idea:

Every 6 month we will get a test, this test till give us a grade from 0 to 10.
Then we will get 2000yen * level achieved every month.

If in any of these 6 month revisions we get lower result than a previous one, we stop getting this extra money.
The problem of this schema is that people with lowest level who the company want to improve most are the ones that get least incentives.

Other problem is that we dont know where to find this 0 to 10 grading thing.
We can try using JLPT but JLPT has no speaking part.