There is a curious thing that I have noticed, and I wonder if anyone else has noticed it as well. I've taken many Japanese courses at college, and every Japanese teacher I have ever known has always been rather poor at English, even if they have lived in English-speaking countries for many years.
However, I have met a number of young Japanese exchange students who, although only having been here for a year or two, speak very good English! I mean, their vocabulary might not be as large, but they tend to sound very natural.

Is this simply anecdotal evidence that has no basis in fact, or are younger Japanese people really much better at speaking English? If so, I wonder why this might be the case? It disheartens me that my teachers could have lived here for so long, interacting in English every day of their lives, and still not be able to utilize it very well. It makes me wonder about the way English is taught in Japan. If younger people are indeed getting better at English, then that would indicate that Japan has vastly improved it's English education over the years, but it still throws the whole "immersion" thing into question. If older Japanese people and younger are both being immersed in English, why are some of them "getting it" and some of them not? Could it be that methods used for teaching English in the past have actually HARMED the students more than it helped them? What do you think?

I think it could be due to several things.

Firstly, I think as time goes by there is more and more inclusion of English words and phrases into Japanese culture (advertising, etc.) and so younger generations will have more potential exposure to it back at home.

Secondly - although I know nothing about it - it could be changes in the way English is taught in school, but this is purely speculation.

Finally, some young people I have spoken to in Japan say that it is considered pretty cool to be able to speak English. This might be a more recent development which spurs on younger learners, whereas in the past the older generation maybe didn't consider it too much.

I haven't based this on anything, just some ideas :p.

I don't know about the situation in general, but I taught English for a couple years in a Japanese jr. high. I remember one word from one class in particular. That day, my role was to say the English words and have the kids repeat, and by the end of the class, the kids sounded great saying "apple." The next day, I saw them again, and they said "アップル." Seemed like the studious ones had gone home and carefully written down notes in katakana so that they would remember.

Edit: realized some was irrelevant because question about Japanese teachers of Japanese overseas rather than J teachers of E in Japan.

Maybe the Japanese teachers are hanging out with other Japanese because they have cars and Japanese teacher friends at other universities. They're probably spending more time on Skype with their friends in Japan. What would be the natural group of native English speakers to socialize with Japanese teachers? Meanwhile the Japanese undergrads are living with English-speaking roommates, eating in the dining hall, taking classes, etc.

This was an interesting article a few weeks back in the Japan Times that touched on the subject-- they've been writing a lot lately about the lack of progress being made in Japan's English teaching system:

English Chain-Saw Massacre:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/f...124cz.html

Since I don't know the details, I'll throw out a few different possibilities. If the number of young Japanese exchange students you've encountered is small (say two or three), then it would be a mistake to assume any kind of statistical consistency among the population of young Japanese in general. You might just have encountered a couple of more intelligent individuals than you'd met before.

If their pronunciation is really good, there are a couple of possibilities. Some bright 外国-enamored students (especially girls) develop speaking skills mostly on their own, using resources found outside of the classroom, and interacting a lot with foreigners. High school exchange students would be much more likely to be living in total immersion, with mostly non-Japanese friends, and in that situation they would develop speaking ability quickly. College students have a lot more access to Japanese social circles so their English wouldn't improve that much, unless they have a foreign boyfriend.

There is also a significant minority of young women in Japan these days who simply refuse to date Japanese men, and who always seem to have a foreign boyfriend hanging around. Since few foreign men in Japan speak fluent Japanese, these couples interact mostly in English all the time and the women who fall into this category tend to be very fluent, even if they've never lived outside of Japan. When these girls spend a year or two on exchange in an English speaking country, their speaking ability tends to improve exponentially, since they've already got a big head start.

The one thing that's for certain is that they didn't develop their speaking ability in the English language classroom, because academic English in Japan isn't a language. It's sort of a cross between a branch of mathematics and a scholastic aptitude test. But it definitely isn't a language, unless "a source of words to put on tee shirts and pencil cases" qualifies as a "language."

tokyostyle Wrote:That's half of the story. The other half is why do so many Japanese teachers have poor English? Frankly there are many better jobs they could have gotten if they had better English skills. I think that's why the Japanese teachers who's English is good are some of the best teachers. They are the ones teaching because they really love it.

Never a big fan of teachers, one of my Dad's favorite phrases is: "Those can, do. Those who can't, teach." There are exceptions, of course... I've had a lot of really great teachers. But the fact remains that if you can do something really well, you'll probably get the highest paid job doing it that you can. Only if you really love teaching would you choose that over the higher-paid job.

So yeah, it's not surprising to me that Japanese English-teachers don't speak perfect English, just like it doesn't surprise me that most of my science teachers over the years couldn't build a rocket.

wccrawford Wrote:Never a big fan of teachers, one of my Dad's favorite phrases is: "Those can, do. Those who can't, teach."

That phrase is overgeneralizing and in many ways insulting. If someone can't do, and that some is teaching, you should be far away from that someone.

Maybe it's because the teacher's have gone through the rigmaroll of textbook-based learning and the standard education process, so that when they come out at the end to become teachers, they still sound like textbooks rather than real people? Just a thought.

I know Japanese people who can speak English well. My Japanese teachers in the US all spoke it well, as did the graduate assistants who were Japanese. I never ran into the teachers who couldn't speak English. And they were all educated in Japan. The thing is, they were all highly motivated to be there long-term, and to succeed at it. (Doesn't work that way for everyone, I know...)

But I keep reading article after article *in Japanese newspapers* about how broken and awful Japan's English-language education system is. So while there's a bit of a disconnect, what I take away from it is that yes, the basic English education you get over there probably will suck, unless you want to put in a bunch of extra effort to get really good at it.

But that's just like anything else in Jr. High and High School. Expecting to get genius-level education from the same government who can't my mail delivered correctly, or make sure my peanut butter (or imported gyoza) won't kill me is expecting waaaay too much.

Part of it is bad teaching technique, part of it is bad governmental plans on how English should be taught, part of it is not requiring actual fluency in *spoken English* for those idiotic exams (which really is dumb as hell.) But I would wager that there are other underlying factors, too. Not every Japanese kid *wants* to learn English. Just like I didn't particularly *want* to learn French for 6 years.

I've found that 100% of the time, those who are motivated to learn English do. Of my Japanese exchange friends, one hung out mostly with Japanese people and spoke mostly in Japanese while another hung out mostly with English speakers and spoke mostly English. Unsuprisingly, time and time again, those who activly pursue second language aquisition will aquire it.

I know people who have spent 5 years in Japan and still say to-ki-o.

Well I'm pretty sure that in Japan, it's even more true that the average foreign exchange student speaks much better Japanese than the average foreign English teacher. You're comparing people who are in a country for the purpose of learning a language, with people who are in the country mainly for some other reason.
And there are a number of other reasons the one group would tend to have better skill than the other.
Anyway, "immersion" is what you make of it; it doesn't do the learning for you. I think the idea that people will inevitably pick up language automatically through exposure alone is mostly myth.

Ah, lots of good explanations I hadn't considered.

I think it's about the will of the learner, you know that some people live for a long time in Japan and can't speech Japanese.

kazelee Wrote:

wccrawford Wrote:Never a big fan of teachers, one of my Dad's favorite phrases is: "Those can, do. Those who can't, teach."

That phrase is overgeneralizing and in many ways insulting. If someone can't do, and that some is teaching, you should be far away from that someone.

It's too bad that so many teachers are like that, then. Luckily, the ability to do something isn't required in order to teach skills to others. If all the teachers that can't do quit teaching, we'd have a serious shortage on teachers... Or a serious shortage of people actually doing it that are teaching instead.

Respect is for people who deserve it and being a teacher, cop, etc does not automatically qualify you for respect.

I'm not apologizing for my dad's phrase. It is deliberately insulting and that's why he likes it so much. And there's just enough truth in it to explain things.

There were several students who were also English teachers attending the English conversation school I worked at in Nara and some seemed to be at a lower level of fluency than the high school kids they were teaching. They were also often not very receptive to being corrected. I sometimes felt uncomfortable deciding how best to help them and not bruise their ego. They had vocabulary and knew grammar rules. It just didn't show in their speech.

To the original question, I think older Japanese never bothered with lots of English media (movies and TV shows) unless it was dubbed ala Columbo. Now if only the younger crowd can ween themselves off of sub-titles and they'll be on their way.

For the speaking comments: I'm still amazed that they try to teach English using Kana as a pronouncing guide. It would be akin to us trying to learn RTK using only half of the primitives. Imagine using the tree primitive in place of wheat and tracker. Just will not work. And yes, I think my analogy is appropriate. Please note, I've never seen nor studied how the Japanese teach English so if they have a pronunciation guide as in depth as the one described at antimoon.com then my theory is shot.

The older generation is not as computer literate as well. I am starting to learn that the most important second language is computer literacy. I have only had a laptop for a year now and every month that passes and I learn new things I am regretful for not getting one sooner. I previously always just used the free internet at the library. There really is no comparison that internet study is superior to classroom study and the younger generation is taking full advantage of this fact.

wccrawford Wrote:Respect is for people who deserve it and being a teacher, cop, etc does not automatically qualify you for respect.

Being a teacher does not automatically qualify you for contempt either IMO. I've had a lot of bad teachers but also some very good ones. I must admit that I prefer the freedom of self study now whenever possible but I do appreciate the skill and preparation it takes to teach well. It is more difficult than your dad's phrase implies.

Nukemarine Wrote:For the speaking comments: I'm still amazed that they try to teach English using Kana as a pronouncing guide. It would be akin to us trying to learn RTK using only half of the primitives. Imagine using the tree primitive in place of wheat and tracker. Just will not work. And yes, I think my analogy is appropriate. Please note, I've never seen nor studied how the Japanese teach English so if they have a pronunciation guide as in depth as the one described at antimoon.com then my theory is shot.

You're on the money, katakana is their pronounciation guide. It is frustrating for me to go to class everyday and say "March" and have them repeat it correctly, then have the teacher write マーチ on the board and from then on it is Machii. In my opinion, Japan will never get better at English until they solve the fundemental problem of saying katakana = English.

captal Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:For the speaking comments: I'm still amazed that they try to teach English using Kana as a pronouncing guide. It would be akin to us trying to learn RTK using only half of the primitives. Imagine using the tree primitive in place of wheat and tracker. Just will not work. And yes, I think my analogy is appropriate. Please note, I've never seen nor studied how the Japanese teach English so if they have a pronunciation guide as in depth as the one described at antimoon.com then my theory is shot.

You're on the money, katakana is their pronounciation guide. It is frustrating for me to go to class everyday and say "March" and have them repeat it correctly, then have the teacher write マーチ on the board and from then on it is Machii. In my opinion, Japan will never get better at English until they solve the fundemental problem of saying katakana = English.

100% true. I mean, before I learned more than 5 words in Korean, guess what I did? That's right, I learned hangul. Why learn tons of korean words using latin letters when I KNOW that's not how it's pronounced? It makes no sense!

@captal

Bingo. That's what the English Chainsaw Massacre article I linked to above was on about. Using kana as a pronunciation guide for any language other than Japanese is just not a good idea. If I came to Japan and spoke Japanese with a thick Southern American accent, they would look at me like an idiot, and say I was a hick. And they would be right. It's just as "hick" to try to ramrod English or German or any other language through katakana. It just doesn't fit.

Playing the devil's advocate for a bit -- Why should Japanese people learn to speak English? Isn't learning to read English for meaning ultimately more useful for the vast majority of people? If so, then perhaps katakana does help. What part does cultural imperialism play in our frustration with Japanese pronunciation of English?

KristinHolly Wrote:Playing the devil's advocate for a bit -- Why should Japanese people learn to speak English? Isn't learning to read English for meaning ultimately more useful for the vast majority of people? If so, then perhaps katakana does help. What part does cultural imperialism play in our frustration with Japanese pronunciation of English?

For better or worse, English is the world's default form of communication at this point in history. I guess it makes as much sense to make it compulsory as any other class most will never use in real life. May as well teach it correctly if forcing it on kids anyways.

There is no romaji equivalent in Japanese for foreign words but learning English in katakana also makes no sense. It would seem an obvious obstacle to learning for an observant teacher.

Well, yes. But it seems like you'd have to change the textbooks and the national standards and the testing system before you could blame the teachers. No matter how perfect a teacher's English might be, I think he/she still has to teach the alphabet and the vocabulary via katakana in the present system. If the first year jr. high textbooks would let them spend the whole year teaching sounds and sight words and pronunciation before starting grammar in the second year, maybe things would be different. The process of reading alphabet-based languages is too different from reading Japanese to expect kids to pick it up in a week or a few weeks.

what i have found as a detriment to the education in Japan is that really poor and unqualified teachers that passed the "teacher test" get something like tenure. They cant be fired for sucking at life ---Im talking grossly incompetent.


Back in the day, any idiot who could hack their way through English could get those jobs, but now as they (thankfully) retire one by one, they are replaced by actually qualified people.


Not to say that there werent great English teachers in Japan awhile ago, but every year the % of "competent" teachers increases