Why majority of Japanese can't speak English?
My foreign friends ask me whether we have English subject in school or not. Sure, we do have it. But we still remain poor. Some claimed it in their blogs by citing comparative TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication) score data among Asian countries. It said we are 27 out of 30 countries or 30 out of 30 countries. So far, I could not find origin of these data yet. I do not believe until I read these data but I could sense we are the one of these countries of poor ability of English.
I am wondering why Japanese can't speak English even our English subject has started when we are Junior High school. Japanese people learn English for 6-9 years on average.
Based on my experience, roughly there are three major reasons behind poor English language ability of Japanese people. First reason is educational system, secondly, attitude, and the last might be our environment.
Our English education might contain several challenges. These are age issue, time we learn per week and, methodology.
Learning English is at the age of 13 is quite late. 3-4 hours per week was the length of time we learned in the school. It is too little if we intend to speak in English.
Focus was grammar and reading. We listened cassette tape (not CD yet!!) and follow after non native English teacher besides never study abroad. For me, I hardly recognized my English teacher's pronunciation, dog and doll !!
Attitude toward learning
It is easy to say that do not be shy to commit mistakes. However, most of Japanese, we are avoiding mistakes. More than shyness, actually few chances of speaking out leads few trial in their speaking practice.
When I was a junior high school student, I did not want to pronounce in front of classmates. If my sentences were grammatically incorrect, I started to repeat these in mind. I tend to reflect these over and over again, which made me so tired. That is so-called vicious cycle.
No urgent
We live in the country where we could survive without using it daily In the job market, nowadays we often require to submit the score of English proficiency test. However, English is not commanding language in the most of work places. How we can see the situation after learning hard this. There is a question, are we motivated enough to learn this?
We have to have own sources of motivation if we want to improve it.
It was the after the University I started studying English in serious manner. Soon after my graduation, I experienced 3 weeks abroad for volunteering. Then, I was totally stressed out not expressing myself well. My promise after the event was to reach my English upto the level I express myself freely. Well, I am still on the progress.
No remedy for improvement?
Yeah, there is no remedy for it unless we are totally motivated doing so, more chances to speak and drastic change of English education methodology. How long does it take to come all these together? I have no idea however, Whether true or not, I heard nowadays elementary school is going to have English subject from grade 4. It might be starting point of changes.
What I thought I need to do several things in order to get better my English are Improving Japanese language. It seems like long way around however, if we are not good at commanding our native tongue, how we will be a good speaker of other languages.
Having friends from different nationalities is one of these resolutions. It creates necessity of speaking. If we want to get close to that person we might be motivated to practice more to have nice conversation with her or him.
After reaching certain level, we can have a field of expertise. Then we can dig in that field to talk and discuss it in English.
I hope 10-20 years from now there is no admiration just speaking in English. If people go through 12 years educational system, people at least express even simple stuff in English. And hopefully, we will have more chance to learn languages of neighboring countries.
My foreign friends ask me whether we have English subject in school or not. Sure, we do have it. But we still remain poor. Some claimed it in their blogs by citing comparative TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication) score data among Asian countries. It said we are 27 out of 30 countries or 30 out of 30 countries. So far, I could not find origin of these data yet. I do not believe until I read these data but I could sense we are the one of these countries of poor ability of English.
I am wondering why Japanese can't speak English even our English subject has started when we are Junior High school. Japanese people learn English for 6-9 years on average.
Based on my experience, roughly there are three major reasons behind poor English language ability of Japanese people. First reason is educational system, secondly, attitude, and the last might be our environment.
English education in my generation
"This is a pen." It was the phrase which I learned very beginning of Junior High school days. Most of my friends were excited at the learning English because it was something new to us and made them realized that they were finally becoming a Junior High School student. Excitement being Junior High School student came from that way. However, it is obviously we do not use in conversation.
"This is a pen." It was the phrase which I learned very beginning of Junior High school days. Most of my friends were excited at the learning English because it was something new to us and made them realized that they were finally becoming a Junior High School student. Excitement being Junior High School student came from that way. However, it is obviously we do not use in conversation.
Our English education might contain several challenges. These are age issue, time we learn per week and, methodology.
Learning English is at the age of 13 is quite late. 3-4 hours per week was the length of time we learned in the school. It is too little if we intend to speak in English.
Focus was grammar and reading. We listened cassette tape (not CD yet!!) and follow after non native English teacher besides never study abroad. For me, I hardly recognized my English teacher's pronunciation, dog and doll !!
Attitude toward learning
It is easy to say that do not be shy to commit mistakes. However, most of Japanese, we are avoiding mistakes. More than shyness, actually few chances of speaking out leads few trial in their speaking practice.
When I was a junior high school student, I did not want to pronounce in front of classmates. If my sentences were grammatically incorrect, I started to repeat these in mind. I tend to reflect these over and over again, which made me so tired. That is so-called vicious cycle.
No urgent
We live in the country where we could survive without using it daily In the job market, nowadays we often require to submit the score of English proficiency test. However, English is not commanding language in the most of work places. How we can see the situation after learning hard this. There is a question, are we motivated enough to learn this?
We have to have own sources of motivation if we want to improve it.
It was the after the University I started studying English in serious manner. Soon after my graduation, I experienced 3 weeks abroad for volunteering. Then, I was totally stressed out not expressing myself well. My promise after the event was to reach my English upto the level I express myself freely. Well, I am still on the progress.
No remedy for improvement?
Yeah, there is no remedy for it unless we are totally motivated doing so, more chances to speak and drastic change of English education methodology. How long does it take to come all these together? I have no idea however, Whether true or not, I heard nowadays elementary school is going to have English subject from grade 4. It might be starting point of changes.
What I thought I need to do several things in order to get better my English are Improving Japanese language. It seems like long way around however, if we are not good at commanding our native tongue, how we will be a good speaker of other languages.
Having friends from different nationalities is one of these resolutions. It creates necessity of speaking. If we want to get close to that person we might be motivated to practice more to have nice conversation with her or him.
After reaching certain level, we can have a field of expertise. Then we can dig in that field to talk and discuss it in English.
I hope 10-20 years from now there is no admiration just speaking in English. If people go through 12 years educational system, people at least express even simple stuff in English. And hopefully, we will have more chance to learn languages of neighboring countries.
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿