I have been learning new things since the start of my new career as a teacher at a cram school.

Since I didn't study English much as a junior high school student, I found myself relearning English grammar that junior high school students must know these days.

I have to say that students now seem to have much better ideas about how to compose English sentences than we, at least I, did in the past.

But one thing I must say is that these students are not given chances to learn what we did study.

A phrase "be able to" is a good example. I found out that students around here have two different textbooks. So if one is using one kind of the two, one may not know what the heck "be able to" means at all, but one with the other textbook knows exactly what it means.

Due to such a difference, I sometimes have to change what I teach and hear from students.

Tonight I experienced something that all teachers might experience at least once.

Students solve questions, and we teachers only need to correct their answers and give them some hints in case some of them can't figure out how to answer.

There was a question to put given words in a correct order and to write a sentence in Japanese as well. The correct order of the words was: "Baseball is much more popular than football in Japan."

One student's Japanese sentence said: "日本ではサッカーより野球の方がもっと人気があります."

To me, I really wanted to give him an A+ for his courage and knowledge, but I couldn't do so because his answer might not be considered as a right one on an entrance exam.

If you know what "football" means in British English, you know why I am feeling a little sorry for that student, who might have had a knowledge of British English. "Football" means "soccer" in British English, so his answer wasn't technically incorrect.

Yet my job there was not to let him continue to translate "football" as "soccer." He had to stick with what teachers would want from students.

In this case, "football" as British English "soccer" wasn't the right answer that he should have written.

Although I had to correct him, I told him that if I were to correct his test, I would give him a point, but that he as a student having a BIG test ahead should go with a generally known translation of "football" as "American football."

I love this job, but this is a kind of thing that I hate about this teaching job. Probably it would end up the same way even if I work at somewhere else.

But I just cannot ignore the fact that one with the knowledge of languages that have words meant differently in different places has to face unfairness, especially on tests.

What I could do as a teacher now is probably to let students know that what they know is absolutely correct and that it is unfortunately not something that Japanese testing systems are ready for yet.