>The level of English in Japan is shockingly low, despite everyone studying it for 6 years at school. I honestly think it is kept deliberately low
>I honestly think it is kept deliberately low
Is this guy serious?
>I honestly think it is kept deliberately low
Is this guy serious?
In my former job I had regular meetings with japanese engineers, as my ex-company had contracted a big project to a big japanese company. I was fresh out of university (in germany), and expected that conversation in english for engineering projects was just standard thing and no big problems should arise. However in those meetings I unfortunately realized, that that's still not the case internationally. We had lots of meetings where the persons on the other end of the phone call could only read out their prepared slides and further discussion was not possible since our questions were not understood. Situations where we had to wait for 20 minutes for simple questions to be answered were also common. And often it was still not obvious after the answer if the other side really understood the question. So the best strategy was to create a written summary with very simply and direct language use afterwards and ask for confirmation again.
That said things got better during the years, and least in my last regular meetings there were some (presumably younger) engineers and project managers on the other side with a solid level of english.
I imagine lots of (young) Japanese people would look for better working conditions abroad, if they only had better English skills.
If you were the Japanese government, what method would you use to keep your professionals?
They are a country that isn't embracing mass immigration, with an ageing population and slowing economy..
AS they don't put intent where the fault is rather at how piss poor people are at doing things. Maybe there is some small part of intent (I live in Japan though and there's a never ending feed of companies that want to teach you proper english everywhere) but I rather suspect that the Japanese education system is just very poor at teaching language in general (and not just English), and that's certainly not limited to Japan.
Based on my own fairly limited experience in Japan, English as learned in school doesn't seem to translate (a ha ha) into effective English conversation. It seems that an academic rigor is taught (no bad thing, of course) but practical conversation skills are neglected.
It is understandable if you are a professional dealing with foreign companies, or if you are involved in the tourism business; that leaves out the vast majority of the population, which is not willing to invest hundreds of hours learning a skill that does not provide any significant benefit in their daily lives.
You are absolutely correct that the English taught is school is nearly useless, considering that in those 6 years my guess that English is taught some 2-3 hours per week.
I would be curious to know how many people in US or UK consider themselves fluent in a foreign language for a class they took for a few years in middle/high school.
Now that I think about it, in the UK the comedy archetype of an idiot going abroad who expects everyone to speak English is well-known and a figure of fun. Which would suggest that people broadly don't expect everyone overseas to speak English.
I would be curious to know how many people in US or UK consider themselves fluent in a foreign language for a class they took for a few years in middle/high school.
I certainly remember enough of my schooldays French (last lesson would have been about 22 years ago) to ask simple questions, give directions, interact with shopkeepers, ask people how their day went, that sort of thing. I do not consider myself fluent. Of course, living and working in the UK, I do get opportunity to use it every so often, which helps a lot I expect.
That's definitely seems to be the attitude of the author, and that of many people I see posting here, or many people I see every day that do not even try learning some local word. I agree that I expressed my opinion like I was generalizing, not my intention.
"I certainly remember enough of my schooldays French to ask simple questions, give directions, interact with shopkeepers, ask people how their day went, that sort of thing"
As probably do most people learning English at school. It's clear that the author is not talking about this level of fluency.
I interpret his words ("The level of English in Japan is shockingly low, despite everyone studying it for 6 years at school") not to mean that he expects fluency.
It's clear that the author is not talking about this level of fluency.
I disagree. I think the author simply says that the level of English is shockingly low. I don't think that we can infer from those words that he's expecting a high level of fluency.
> I find the attitude of people from
> English-speaking countries that the
> rest of the world should speak fluent
> English quite puzzling
I've noticed the opposite attitude. At least among western countries, the opposition to forcing kids to learn English seems to be far more prevalent among Americans and Brits than among non-anglophones.
In my country, English is mandatory in both primary and secondary education and this is not controversial in any way. It is considered common sense. You mention a lack of significant benefits to people's daily lives - of all the things kids learn in school, what is more useful than learning English? Very basic math certainly as it is necessary to function as an adult, but not much else. I don't remember what the anatomy of an arthropod is like nor do I need this information and I learned a ton of stuff like that in school, while being able to speak (and even more so read) English has opened many doors for me and been useful in so many ways. Academically, professionally and privately.
For anglophones, they and their kids are going to speak English and be fine in the modern world either way. So it is easier for them to virtue signal by dismissing the importance of learning English and supporting some misguided idea of "language equality". A lot of anglophones also don't notice the incredible amount of information in English and the incredible amount of people who speak English to some degree because they take it for granted, causing them to underestimate the usefulness of the language.
Japan may be an exception because it is culturally isolated compared to, for example, the EU. But still, I can't help but think investing more effort in teaching kids English would likely be more useful than at least some things they learn in school, even in Japan.
Also, fluent vs nearly useless is a false dichotomy.
And that is just talking about jobs. Wast amount of knowledge and entertainment is not translated to smaller languages and discussion happen in English. Especially in less popular areas.
Includes science and technology btw. If you can not read English blog or documentation, then you will be limited as a programmer.
It should be ok to criticize foreign school system when it seems to unperform.
Neat, but your guess is wildly wrong, and you should therefore discard your conclusions. Japanese mid/high-schoolers take about as many hours of English as they do math, science, or Japanese, and most study further hours at cram schools.
The fact that very few Japanese people can speak conversation English despite an extremely rigorous education is what people are talking about here - not whether Japanese people "should" (in a normative sense) speak English, as you're trying to imply.
It's a combination of the program being incompetent and students feeling no tangible benefit from studying.