4 ms·

>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

by drops 9y ago

>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?

JMCQ87 9y ago
Do you think that's an outrageous idea? I imagine lots of (young) Japanese people would look for better working conditions abroad, if they only had better English skills.
- hulahoof 9y ago
  I did think it was outrageous, however I didn't consider it from this angle. 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..
  - mahyarm 9y ago
    The level of english has been like that even when they were in economic boom times 30+ years ago. I don't think it's any specific conspiracy.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > I imagine lots of (young) Japanese people would look for better working conditions abroad, if they only had better English skills. 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.
EliRivers 9y ago
It seems that he is serious. You knew that already. Perhaps you disagree? Perhaps you can present your own findings and contribute to the discussion? 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.
- Kurtz79 9y ago
  I find the attitude of people from English-speaking countries that the rest of the world should speak fluent English quite puzzling. 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.
  - EliRivers 9y ago
    I think you're unfairly generalising. I certainly never expect fluent English from people who don't have English as their first language. I do expect that people who studied a language for years at school should remember some, particularly if those school days were less than a decade ago. This is orthongonal to my suspicion (which I cannot prove) that English education in Japanese schools may emphasise formal rigour over conversation practice. 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.
Matthias247 9y ago
I have no idea about "deliberately", but I also experienced a far lower typical level of english than what I would have expected. 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.

by drops 9y ago

JMCQ87 9y ago

Do you think that's an outrageous idea? I imagine lots of (young) Japanese people would look for better working conditions abroad, if they only had better English skills.

hulahoof 9y ago
I did think it was outrageous, however I didn't consider it from this angle. 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..
- mahyarm 9y ago
  The level of english has been like that even when they were in economic boom times 30+ years ago. I don't think it's any specific conspiracy.
ekianjo 9y ago
> I imagine lots of (young) Japanese people would look for better working conditions abroad, if they only had better English skills. 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.

EliRivers 9y ago

It seems that he is serious. You knew that already. Perhaps you disagree? Perhaps you can present your own findings and contribute to the discussion? 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.

Kurtz79 9y ago
I find the attitude of people from English-speaking countries that the rest of the world should speak fluent English quite puzzling. 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.
- EliRivers 9y ago
  I think you're unfairly generalising. I certainly never expect fluent English from people who don't have English as their first language. I do expect that people who studied a language for years at school should remember some, particularly if those school days were less than a decade ago. This is orthongonal to my suspicion (which I cannot prove) that English education in Japanese schools may emphasise formal rigour over conversation practice. 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.

Matthias247 9y ago

I have no idea about "deliberately", but I also experienced a far lower typical level of english than what I would have expected. 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.