If you want to maintain and improve your child’s English skills, OUTSCHOOL can be a great option.
Here are the reasons why.
Hello, I’m Meg.
I am a Japanese mother raising two children in Tokyo.
*This article contains an ambasaddor promotion.
Reason 1: The Difficulty of “Buying” an English Environment in Japan
To create an English-speaking environment in Japan, it is essential to ‘buy’ one.
Unless you have 10 English-speaking relatives, friends, or acquaintances in Japan, it’s nearly impossible to create a natural English environment. Japan is a monocultural, monolingual country where Japanese is the SUPER dominant language.
International schools are expensive, and English preschools are also quite costly. While there are English retention classes available, attending these classes a few times a week is not the same as immersion, so additional effort at home is necessary. A major issue is that these options are mostly concentrated in urban areas such as Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, and Nagoya, with few available in rural areas.
Reason 2: Few Places Match Your Child’s English Level
Suppose you live in a major Japanese city and are lucky enough to find an English educational institution.
Make sure to visit before enrolling your child. Check to see if English is genuinely spoken there. Sometimes, despite being labeled as English institutions, most children speak Japanese, and teachers often have to remind them with “No Japanese! English please! “ This is a common scene in Japan’s easy English immersion education.
Additionally, if the English level of the class is low, teachers are forced to use simpler English, which means your child might not have many opportunities to hear high-quality, age-appropriate English (unless it’s a traditional international school or related kindergarten).
If You Can’t Find a Suitable English Educational Institution
In such cases, regardless of where you live in Japan, OUTSCHOOL is an option I highly recommend as long as you have internet access. I am currently an official ambassador for OUTSCHOOL, and I genuinely recommend this educational platform without any bias.
In Japan, educational institutions with native English-speaking teachers tend to be quite expensive. However, on OUTSCHOOL, the teachers are primarily native English speakers, and there are no additional fees for this. Most of the classes my children take are taught by American or British teachers.
In the U.S., OUTSCHOOL is mainly used by homeschool children. Children can learn not only school subjects but also explore a wide range of interests and entertainments, including games and dance. Additionally, OUTSCHOOL also provides classes for neurodiverse children, offering a supportive learning environment for all children.
If you haven’t tried OUTSCHOOL yet, I encourage you to take this opportunity to do so. You can find reviews and videos of the classes my son and daughter have taken on my blog posts and Instagram (though they are explained in Japanese).
Here is a $20 referral discount link. Feel free to use it.
If you’d like to try Outschool, please use this $20 off referral code:
$20 off referral code：z6SGNMvW
Please feel free to contact me through social media.
I speak both Japanese and English.
Instagram @ouchieigoen
Twitter(X) @eigohome
OUTSCHOOL Classes My Children Have Taken
You can use your browser’s auto-translate feature to read my other articles written in Japanese.