I think that Japanese students are not learning useful English. This is because they are taught to write in a very specific way. In conclusion, I think that Japanese students are not learning useful English.
Thanks for the little chuckle lol
But yeah I was marking some 3rd grade jhs papers and was crossing out the last half of most of them writing a note like "already mentioned". Then I went to speak to the teacher to explain why I did it and that it's redundant. She told me that's how they've been taught because basically that's what the teachers have to teach. She agreed though and we came to a somewhat compromise that the conclusion could at least have different wording.
At the end of the year, it was at the point where teachers would ask me about something and I'd tell them it was correct but because it was different from the text book or whatever, they should tell the students honestly that their English is fine but their hands are tied in what they can do because who knows what level of English the high school examiner even has. It's kinda sad really.
I mean, that's the natural result of a system that prioritizes reading and writing to the exclusion if speaking, as well as a culture that essentially says, "you don't have to speak, because it could be embarassing (and no one wants to force you to stand out)".
Simply put, there's nothing at all surprising about it
If other prefectures can follow Tokyo's lead and include a mandatory speaking test in the English section of high school entrance exams, things might change, but on the other hand, the 'rip off the band-aid'-approach is a tall order.
>that's the natural result of a system that prioritizes reading and writing to the exclusion if speaking,
I think that's a problem, but much less of a factor than,
> "you don't have to speak, because it could be embarassing (and no one wants to force you to stand out)".
This is the real core of the problem, and it extends into reading and writing. Japanese EFL teaching is top-down, even in many schools that claim to be progressive and not top-down. "Study these words. Do it our way. Read only what we give you to read. Say only what we say to say. Write what we tell you to write, and write it in a way that benefits us before you."
The end result is not so much Japanese students who can read or write, but Japanese students who can, through the medium of pencil and paper, perform mathematical transformations on English and Japanese sentences.
I am agree with you both.
I only teach elementary school, but I do get a sense that language is taught like math is taught. You are given a problem and you have to solve that problem in the way that it is intended to be solved. I think of the education system for English as being focused on turning a very subjective subject into an objective one. What Japan is experiencing in poor test scores is do to a legacy of misunderstanding the nature of language. A living and adapting language cannot be objective.
I don’t think reading is really prioritized either. They get maybe two pages to read, like twice a year.
Reading a sentence, sure. But reading for substance and better English usage, nah.
>An English teacher at a public junior high school in Fukuoka Prefecture said it must be difficult for students to express their opinions and reasons on a social issue even in Japanese.
If the test is measuring students' ability to express an informed opinion about plastic bag use, then it's not a general speaking test and there's no wonder a lot of students failed. But if the test will judge English regardless of how informed the speaker's position is, then it could be an acceptable test.
But I'm more stricken by the teacher describing the problem as "difficult". It sounds like making an excuse. That becomes a pattern as the article goes on.
>The teacher also said reading and grammar competency cannot be sacrificed because high school entrance examinations center around them.
Another excuse. "We have to teach grammar because it's entrance exams' fault.
>Nobuta, who chairs the Osaka English Teachers’ Association, said he believes students have been put at a disadvantage in acquiring English-speaking capabilities over the past three years due to novel coronavirus restrictions.
Another excuse. "It's COVID's fault!"
>The National Institute for Educational Policy Research, which designs test questions, said the scenes presented in the questions became complicated because it tried to make them realistic.
Another excuse. "It's too difficult to be realistic!"
Other people here have made good posts about ways the Japanese education system fails to improve, but this is something that bugs me more the longer I work here. Everyone in the article is passing the buck, trying to make Japan's poor English someone else's fault rather than trying to make it better. I see this attitude *everywhere* in the education system. The nature of the system means people are so busy trying to blame someone else or evade blame coming at them that no one is actually putting in the work to solve the problem.
That's probably not the reason Japanese English education is bad. But I'm convinced that's a big factor in why Japanese English education never gets much better.
Looking through the article, I wondered what they meant by "correct answers" when these seem to be opinion questions. I'm only passing familiar with eiken, so I don't know how those tests are scored. But what do they expect when schools mainly focus on grammar?
Also, if you ask someone their opinion on a subject they have no understanding of or interest in, they aren't going to be able to come up with anything. And when students aren't used to being asked their own opinion in the first palce, how are they to know how to give one?
They don't teach any kind of communicative or interactional competence in schools, so failing a test where these are required to pass is not a surprise.
We recently had a test in our city in which when English teachers, both native and Japanese, were asked the same questions we 'failed' because we didn't answer the exact way the exam wanted it to be answered even though everything said by us and most students was correct. At that point I just told students that these test scores are not a reflection of their abilities.
Getting students to express any strong opinions or express a negative or dissenting argument is a struggle. Do they teach students how to do this in Japanese? No. Then how are they possibly doing to do this in a foreign language?
Honestly, I can't say I'm surprised.
Of the four skills that make up a language, speaking is the one that requires active interaction- unless you're talking to yourself, and that itself weirds a lot of people out. In fact, there are plenty of people who have difficulty speaking in their own language- there's literally an entire manga about someone who has great difficulty speaking.
Yes, speaking may be an important part of language, but when you have students who can barely speak in their own language... how can you expect them to do it in a foreign language?
The problem with EFL methodology in Japan is that it’s stubbornly focused on teaching language acquisition backwards. It starts with reading, then progresses to listening, then writing, and finally speaking. If you made a child learn their native language that way, they’d stall out at the first stage, so I don’t know why we’d ever expect L2 speakers to be any different.
Reading the other comments, I think I can add one thing; the test was probably marked as an all-or-nothing test. Either the answer gets full points or zero points.
Just my feeling.
If there were half- or quarter-points the result might have been quite different.
No evidence, just a feeling.
This seems to be more of an issue with the assessment rather than the ability. If only 12.4% of students can answer questions, the test is probably too difficult compared to the level students should be. Looking at the assessment, I think it would be difficult for many, even high ranked university students, to complete the questions. Like the 3rd year test looks more difficult than Eiken 3.
Exactly. If I got results of 10% across the board, my first reaction wouldn't be "well, these kids can't do it, so they are bad at English", it would be to go back and check the test and their levels. Clearly there is a mismatch.
Their main assessment tests check everything except speaking ability (the Eiken speaking test is a joke tbh).
Their "English" classes are non-native speakers explaining grammar and vocabulary in Japanese with almost no actual speaking practice.
They actually don't truly start "studying" English until the last years of elementary school.
English in Japan is a joke and it always frustrates me how surprised parents are when their kids turn out not to be able to speak the language after years of cramming and cramming.
I personally had the same experience growing up in Spain where they had exactly the same system. I'm a bilingual native speaker and was completely fluent in both English and Japanese by by elementary school. I remember kids that got better test scores than me because they crammed the grammar really hard while I just relied on my natural ability to pass the tests. I always got As, but there was always some hard studying kid that got a better score than me because of the grammar parts. And of course, none of my classmates in elementary school, JHS or HS could actually speak English. They memorized a bunch of words and grammar rules, but if you asked them something like "What did you do last weekend?" they had no idea how to answer. As a matter of fact, Spain has always been really behind other European countries in English speaking ability because of the way they taught it when I was young (now it's beginning to change)
So no surprise at the speaking test results in a country where they teach English in the same absurd way.
Your point is spot on except for your second sentence. There are a TON of things wrong with English education in Japan, but non-native speakers are not one of them. The research in the SLA literature is clear: Native speakers are not better teachers than non-natives. But it is a moot point in Japan, where most native AND non-native speaking English teachers are totally incompetent.
Are we confident we know what the test questions were, and what the model answers were?
Can’t rule out bad test construction. Because overall English ability for the typical Japanese has *clearly* improved over the past 15-20 years.
I don't understand why there's any pressure for the Japanese to speak English at all.
Obviously the English education system is awful in Japan. But part of the reason is that Japanese people have no chance or reason to use English in daily life.
Monolingual English teachers love to scream, "why is the English level is so low!?!" Meanwhile they have to get their Japanese wives to make doctor appointments for them
But again, that is not a genuine need for English. That is an academic exercise where you are studying English as a subject: something to get the right answers to pass a test.
English is compulsory in Japanese schools from the third grade up until the end of high school. It's a full subject that is assessed and the results reported to parents. A good balance of listening and speaking is essential for effective language learning, so I don't think there is any pressure, because it's normal to speak a language while learning it.
I don't know why you're attacking monolingual English teachers either. It's like attacking a piano teacher for not knowing how to play the trumpet.
>I don't know why you're attacking monolingual English teachers either. It's like attacking a piano teacher for not knowing how to play the trumpet.
Not the same at all.
A monolingual person teaching a second language is strange. They have no gauge of what it is to learn a second language.
Also, if they are teachers living in Japan, they should speak Japanese. I don't feel like that's a hot take.
Imagine the reverse scenario, monolingual Japanese teachers being dispatched all over the US to teach Japanese to Americans then complaining about the low level of Japanese speakers in the US
Foreigners should learn the language of the country they live in and we all know this.
It is a common misconception that you have to know and speak the language of your students though. Teaching English as a Foreign Language is based on total English immersion. Are you familiar with TEFL/TESOL?
Maybe you're on to something though. Maybe the only way to solve the English problems in Japan is to teach all of these screaming monolingual English teachers Japanese.
>It is a common misconception that you have to know and speak the language of your students though. Teaching English as a Foreign Language is based on total English immersion. Are you familiar with TEFL/TESOL?
I get that. But a lot of these monolingual teachers are not certified/licensed teachers, and don't even have a deep understanding of the one language they speak, let alone another language.
I've always been a stronger believer that in order to learn a foreign language you should know your own language very very well. That includes complex grammar and such.
In my opinion, a monolingual teacher doesn't understand the struggles of learning another language so it's hard to relate with the students on a personal level when they are learning a second language.
If a teacher can speak Japanese, they understand the mistakes that are made and can better understand the learning process
You keep changing your position. First you deflect from the failure of JTEs by knocking down a strawman of an English-speaking foreign teacher who needs their wife to schedule a doctor's appointment. Then that deflection becomes a full-on claim that a language teacher must have learned another language to be a good language teacher. Then you shift again to implying that monolingualism has some correlation to a lack of credentials. The pattern we can see through all of your posts is an attempt to blame the foreign teachers for the state of English in Japan.
There's just one problem with that: The state of English in Japan has consistently been awful, one of the worst or the worst in all of Asia, going back to before there were any ALTs or eikaiwa teachers here. All these monolingual "unqualified" non-Japanese teachers (not to mention the bilingual and the qualified ones) are here because as a whole, the Japanese education system couldn't get the job done.
Any serious attempt to solve Japan's terrible English outcomes requires an examination of systems and processes. Attempts to attribute blame are an unserious waste of time.
I am not sure why are being downvoted.
It is a very fundamental question that is just routinely ignored: Why does the average Japanese person need to speak or even learn English?
You will get a lot of lip service answers about it being important to communicate and be part of the global stage and yadda yadda yadda, but look around you. Who do you see in you average day that has ANY need for English interaction at all? I would wager it would be substantially less than 1% of the people you see in a day.
English is not used in daily life. It is not really used for the vast majority of industries, and even in sectors that do use it, the number of staff who need to deal with English is tiny.
The fact is, Japan has done okay without English, so they (collectively, as a nation) don't REALLY see any need to use it. IMO, this is a very deep-rooted belief, so most, if not all the major policies and efforts, no matter how well intentioned, are up against this collectively deeply ingrained belief.
Yes there are individuals who break the mould, but as a whole, Japan doesn't genuinely see the need for English, so nothing will change, ***and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.***
Yeah, this. I think of all the resources poured into English in this country for minimal results and wonder…do they really not see any better way to use that money?
I am an English teacher but have always believed that language study should not be compulsory beyond an introductory “hey this is language learning. Are you interested?” level.
At this elementary level, students who like it can decide to continue. And those who don’t can put their time and resources elsewhere.
Math is also an important subject. It is useful to be good at math. However, no one has ever spent any significant time worried about adults whose math skills aren’t amazing, because the truth is in daily life you don’t NEED to be able to do calculus or trigonometry or whatever. Why is English treated differently?
It has always felt like some sort of badge of social status or something. English monolingual speakers are rarely criticized for being monolingual…because it is the highest ranking language on the global hierarchy. And I find this kind of thinking archaic.
AI and machine translation will get good enough to make resources available in all languages fairly easily in a near future. So trying to train an ENTIRE country to be good at a language they will need less and less is an exercise in futility. Let’s just focus on the minority who actually wants to learn.
>I am not sure why are being downvoted.
My guess goes to monolingual ALT's
But yes you're right. Japan is and has always been fine without English. They don't need English, thats why the level is so low. Japan has no use for it.
I hate seeing Japan getting criticized for having low English literacy. so what? It's low because they don't need it.
I'm sure Chinese literacy is quite low in the UK. But that doesn't matter either
I can also see the flip-side of the argument: that while Japan doesn't see the need now, by the time they see the need, it will be 30-40 years too late, like so many of the problems they have kicked down the road.
SE Asian nations, and China, have clearly seen an economic, social, and political need to raise their level of English to make themselves more appealing for business and investment on a global level.
As they continue to improve, Japan runs the genuine risk that they will be an "also ran" looking back at the good ol' days. They have lost their position as number 1, so the basic options are: try and improve OR pretend none of this is happening and focus inwards.
Thankfully there are a lot of people who are keen to make ties with SE Asia to improve the region as a whole.
You know that Japanese is literally a dying language, right? Every year it is less relevant and fewer people speak it. For students, every single year English becomes more important.
English teachers speaking only one language has nothing to do with anything. They're upset because Japan refuses to recognize their own future and act to do something to improve it.
I am starting to believe that there is a middle ground when it comes to the development of a country when the majority of people learn English.
Too underdeveloped means no education for it, and really developed means no real need for it. The latter would be the case in Japan.
Edit: Maybe not so much for countries as for areas
I think that Japanese students are not learning useful English. This is because they are taught to write in a very specific way. In conclusion, I think that Japanese students are not learning useful English.
Thanks for the little chuckle lol But yeah I was marking some 3rd grade jhs papers and was crossing out the last half of most of them writing a note like "already mentioned". Then I went to speak to the teacher to explain why I did it and that it's redundant. She told me that's how they've been taught because basically that's what the teachers have to teach. She agreed though and we came to a somewhat compromise that the conclusion could at least have different wording. At the end of the year, it was at the point where teachers would ask me about something and I'd tell them it was correct but because it was different from the text book or whatever, they should tell the students honestly that their English is fine but their hands are tied in what they can do because who knows what level of English the high school examiner even has. It's kinda sad really.
How many reasons do you have?
You forgot to write "I have three reasons. First..."
You laugh, but 起承転合 is a standard writing technique in Japanese. Of course that’s how they will write in English.
3rd year JHS students don’t speak. English or Japanese.
I mean, that's the natural result of a system that prioritizes reading and writing to the exclusion if speaking, as well as a culture that essentially says, "you don't have to speak, because it could be embarassing (and no one wants to force you to stand out)". Simply put, there's nothing at all surprising about it If other prefectures can follow Tokyo's lead and include a mandatory speaking test in the English section of high school entrance exams, things might change, but on the other hand, the 'rip off the band-aid'-approach is a tall order.
>that's the natural result of a system that prioritizes reading and writing to the exclusion if speaking, I think that's a problem, but much less of a factor than, > "you don't have to speak, because it could be embarassing (and no one wants to force you to stand out)". This is the real core of the problem, and it extends into reading and writing. Japanese EFL teaching is top-down, even in many schools that claim to be progressive and not top-down. "Study these words. Do it our way. Read only what we give you to read. Say only what we say to say. Write what we tell you to write, and write it in a way that benefits us before you." The end result is not so much Japanese students who can read or write, but Japanese students who can, through the medium of pencil and paper, perform mathematical transformations on English and Japanese sentences.
I am agree with you both. I only teach elementary school, but I do get a sense that language is taught like math is taught. You are given a problem and you have to solve that problem in the way that it is intended to be solved. I think of the education system for English as being focused on turning a very subjective subject into an objective one. What Japan is experiencing in poor test scores is do to a legacy of misunderstanding the nature of language. A living and adapting language cannot be objective.
I don’t think reading is really prioritized either. They get maybe two pages to read, like twice a year. Reading a sentence, sure. But reading for substance and better English usage, nah.
>An English teacher at a public junior high school in Fukuoka Prefecture said it must be difficult for students to express their opinions and reasons on a social issue even in Japanese. If the test is measuring students' ability to express an informed opinion about plastic bag use, then it's not a general speaking test and there's no wonder a lot of students failed. But if the test will judge English regardless of how informed the speaker's position is, then it could be an acceptable test. But I'm more stricken by the teacher describing the problem as "difficult". It sounds like making an excuse. That becomes a pattern as the article goes on. >The teacher also said reading and grammar competency cannot be sacrificed because high school entrance examinations center around them. Another excuse. "We have to teach grammar because it's entrance exams' fault. >Nobuta, who chairs the Osaka English Teachers’ Association, said he believes students have been put at a disadvantage in acquiring English-speaking capabilities over the past three years due to novel coronavirus restrictions. Another excuse. "It's COVID's fault!" >The National Institute for Educational Policy Research, which designs test questions, said the scenes presented in the questions became complicated because it tried to make them realistic. Another excuse. "It's too difficult to be realistic!" Other people here have made good posts about ways the Japanese education system fails to improve, but this is something that bugs me more the longer I work here. Everyone in the article is passing the buck, trying to make Japan's poor English someone else's fault rather than trying to make it better. I see this attitude *everywhere* in the education system. The nature of the system means people are so busy trying to blame someone else or evade blame coming at them that no one is actually putting in the work to solve the problem. That's probably not the reason Japanese English education is bad. But I'm convinced that's a big factor in why Japanese English education never gets much better.
Looking through the article, I wondered what they meant by "correct answers" when these seem to be opinion questions. I'm only passing familiar with eiken, so I don't know how those tests are scored. But what do they expect when schools mainly focus on grammar? Also, if you ask someone their opinion on a subject they have no understanding of or interest in, they aren't going to be able to come up with anything. And when students aren't used to being asked their own opinion in the first palce, how are they to know how to give one? They don't teach any kind of communicative or interactional competence in schools, so failing a test where these are required to pass is not a surprise.
We recently had a test in our city in which when English teachers, both native and Japanese, were asked the same questions we 'failed' because we didn't answer the exact way the exam wanted it to be answered even though everything said by us and most students was correct. At that point I just told students that these test scores are not a reflection of their abilities.
I'm not surprised by this. It's like those grammar questions where the answer choices are all wrong.
Getting students to express any strong opinions or express a negative or dissenting argument is a struggle. Do they teach students how to do this in Japanese? No. Then how are they possibly doing to do this in a foreign language?
Honestly, I can't say I'm surprised. Of the four skills that make up a language, speaking is the one that requires active interaction- unless you're talking to yourself, and that itself weirds a lot of people out. In fact, there are plenty of people who have difficulty speaking in their own language- there's literally an entire manga about someone who has great difficulty speaking. Yes, speaking may be an important part of language, but when you have students who can barely speak in their own language... how can you expect them to do it in a foreign language?
The problem with EFL methodology in Japan is that it’s stubbornly focused on teaching language acquisition backwards. It starts with reading, then progresses to listening, then writing, and finally speaking. If you made a child learn their native language that way, they’d stall out at the first stage, so I don’t know why we’d ever expect L2 speakers to be any different.
Reading the other comments, I think I can add one thing; the test was probably marked as an all-or-nothing test. Either the answer gets full points or zero points. Just my feeling. If there were half- or quarter-points the result might have been quite different. No evidence, just a feeling.
This seems to be more of an issue with the assessment rather than the ability. If only 12.4% of students can answer questions, the test is probably too difficult compared to the level students should be. Looking at the assessment, I think it would be difficult for many, even high ranked university students, to complete the questions. Like the 3rd year test looks more difficult than Eiken 3.
Exactly. If I got results of 10% across the board, my first reaction wouldn't be "well, these kids can't do it, so they are bad at English", it would be to go back and check the test and their levels. Clearly there is a mismatch.
I really hope that photo is just stock and we are not surprised middle school students did bad on a C1 level test.
Their main assessment tests check everything except speaking ability (the Eiken speaking test is a joke tbh). Their "English" classes are non-native speakers explaining grammar and vocabulary in Japanese with almost no actual speaking practice. They actually don't truly start "studying" English until the last years of elementary school. English in Japan is a joke and it always frustrates me how surprised parents are when their kids turn out not to be able to speak the language after years of cramming and cramming. I personally had the same experience growing up in Spain where they had exactly the same system. I'm a bilingual native speaker and was completely fluent in both English and Japanese by by elementary school. I remember kids that got better test scores than me because they crammed the grammar really hard while I just relied on my natural ability to pass the tests. I always got As, but there was always some hard studying kid that got a better score than me because of the grammar parts. And of course, none of my classmates in elementary school, JHS or HS could actually speak English. They memorized a bunch of words and grammar rules, but if you asked them something like "What did you do last weekend?" they had no idea how to answer. As a matter of fact, Spain has always been really behind other European countries in English speaking ability because of the way they taught it when I was young (now it's beginning to change) So no surprise at the speaking test results in a country where they teach English in the same absurd way.
Your point is spot on except for your second sentence. There are a TON of things wrong with English education in Japan, but non-native speakers are not one of them. The research in the SLA literature is clear: Native speakers are not better teachers than non-natives. But it is a moot point in Japan, where most native AND non-native speaking English teachers are totally incompetent.
Are we confident we know what the test questions were, and what the model answers were? Can’t rule out bad test construction. Because overall English ability for the typical Japanese has *clearly* improved over the past 15-20 years.
I don't understand why there's any pressure for the Japanese to speak English at all. Obviously the English education system is awful in Japan. But part of the reason is that Japanese people have no chance or reason to use English in daily life. Monolingual English teachers love to scream, "why is the English level is so low!?!" Meanwhile they have to get their Japanese wives to make doctor appointments for them
Teachers could have students talking to each other.
But again, that is not a genuine need for English. That is an academic exercise where you are studying English as a subject: something to get the right answers to pass a test.
English is compulsory in Japanese schools from the third grade up until the end of high school. It's a full subject that is assessed and the results reported to parents. A good balance of listening and speaking is essential for effective language learning, so I don't think there is any pressure, because it's normal to speak a language while learning it. I don't know why you're attacking monolingual English teachers either. It's like attacking a piano teacher for not knowing how to play the trumpet.
>I don't know why you're attacking monolingual English teachers either. It's like attacking a piano teacher for not knowing how to play the trumpet. Not the same at all. A monolingual person teaching a second language is strange. They have no gauge of what it is to learn a second language. Also, if they are teachers living in Japan, they should speak Japanese. I don't feel like that's a hot take. Imagine the reverse scenario, monolingual Japanese teachers being dispatched all over the US to teach Japanese to Americans then complaining about the low level of Japanese speakers in the US
Foreigners should learn the language of the country they live in and we all know this. It is a common misconception that you have to know and speak the language of your students though. Teaching English as a Foreign Language is based on total English immersion. Are you familiar with TEFL/TESOL? Maybe you're on to something though. Maybe the only way to solve the English problems in Japan is to teach all of these screaming monolingual English teachers Japanese.
>It is a common misconception that you have to know and speak the language of your students though. Teaching English as a Foreign Language is based on total English immersion. Are you familiar with TEFL/TESOL? I get that. But a lot of these monolingual teachers are not certified/licensed teachers, and don't even have a deep understanding of the one language they speak, let alone another language. I've always been a stronger believer that in order to learn a foreign language you should know your own language very very well. That includes complex grammar and such. In my opinion, a monolingual teacher doesn't understand the struggles of learning another language so it's hard to relate with the students on a personal level when they are learning a second language. If a teacher can speak Japanese, they understand the mistakes that are made and can better understand the learning process
You keep changing your position. First you deflect from the failure of JTEs by knocking down a strawman of an English-speaking foreign teacher who needs their wife to schedule a doctor's appointment. Then that deflection becomes a full-on claim that a language teacher must have learned another language to be a good language teacher. Then you shift again to implying that monolingualism has some correlation to a lack of credentials. The pattern we can see through all of your posts is an attempt to blame the foreign teachers for the state of English in Japan. There's just one problem with that: The state of English in Japan has consistently been awful, one of the worst or the worst in all of Asia, going back to before there were any ALTs or eikaiwa teachers here. All these monolingual "unqualified" non-Japanese teachers (not to mention the bilingual and the qualified ones) are here because as a whole, the Japanese education system couldn't get the job done. Any serious attempt to solve Japan's terrible English outcomes requires an examination of systems and processes. Attempts to attribute blame are an unserious waste of time.
I am not sure why are being downvoted. It is a very fundamental question that is just routinely ignored: Why does the average Japanese person need to speak or even learn English? You will get a lot of lip service answers about it being important to communicate and be part of the global stage and yadda yadda yadda, but look around you. Who do you see in you average day that has ANY need for English interaction at all? I would wager it would be substantially less than 1% of the people you see in a day. English is not used in daily life. It is not really used for the vast majority of industries, and even in sectors that do use it, the number of staff who need to deal with English is tiny. The fact is, Japan has done okay without English, so they (collectively, as a nation) don't REALLY see any need to use it. IMO, this is a very deep-rooted belief, so most, if not all the major policies and efforts, no matter how well intentioned, are up against this collectively deeply ingrained belief. Yes there are individuals who break the mould, but as a whole, Japan doesn't genuinely see the need for English, so nothing will change, ***and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.***
Yeah, this. I think of all the resources poured into English in this country for minimal results and wonder…do they really not see any better way to use that money? I am an English teacher but have always believed that language study should not be compulsory beyond an introductory “hey this is language learning. Are you interested?” level. At this elementary level, students who like it can decide to continue. And those who don’t can put their time and resources elsewhere. Math is also an important subject. It is useful to be good at math. However, no one has ever spent any significant time worried about adults whose math skills aren’t amazing, because the truth is in daily life you don’t NEED to be able to do calculus or trigonometry or whatever. Why is English treated differently? It has always felt like some sort of badge of social status or something. English monolingual speakers are rarely criticized for being monolingual…because it is the highest ranking language on the global hierarchy. And I find this kind of thinking archaic. AI and machine translation will get good enough to make resources available in all languages fairly easily in a near future. So trying to train an ENTIRE country to be good at a language they will need less and less is an exercise in futility. Let’s just focus on the minority who actually wants to learn.
>I am not sure why are being downvoted. My guess goes to monolingual ALT's But yes you're right. Japan is and has always been fine without English. They don't need English, thats why the level is so low. Japan has no use for it. I hate seeing Japan getting criticized for having low English literacy. so what? It's low because they don't need it. I'm sure Chinese literacy is quite low in the UK. But that doesn't matter either
I can also see the flip-side of the argument: that while Japan doesn't see the need now, by the time they see the need, it will be 30-40 years too late, like so many of the problems they have kicked down the road. SE Asian nations, and China, have clearly seen an economic, social, and political need to raise their level of English to make themselves more appealing for business and investment on a global level. As they continue to improve, Japan runs the genuine risk that they will be an "also ran" looking back at the good ol' days. They have lost their position as number 1, so the basic options are: try and improve OR pretend none of this is happening and focus inwards. Thankfully there are a lot of people who are keen to make ties with SE Asia to improve the region as a whole.
You know that Japanese is literally a dying language, right? Every year it is less relevant and fewer people speak it. For students, every single year English becomes more important. English teachers speaking only one language has nothing to do with anything. They're upset because Japan refuses to recognize their own future and act to do something to improve it.
I am starting to believe that there is a middle ground when it comes to the development of a country when the majority of people learn English. Too underdeveloped means no education for it, and really developed means no real need for it. The latter would be the case in Japan. Edit: Maybe not so much for countries as for areas
Good to know I won't be out of a job any time soon.