http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201101210361.html

"Kumiko Torikai: Japan needs new paradigm of English education"

"Few people today would disagree that English is an international common language. But what, exactly, is English that is truly universal, and how should it be taught in Japanese schools? Kumiko Torikai, a Rikkyo University professor and former professional simultaneous translator who teaches English language courses on radio and television, is calling for a major shift in the paradigm of English education in Japan. Following are excerpts of her interview with The Asahi Shimbun. "

Summary: if you can't seem to learn proper English, all you should have to do is make up your own

What do you guys think? Is it a good idea to create a kind of "internationalese", culturally independent English with simplified grammar etc.?

Personally, on the one hand I can see where she's coming from, making things easier for what is in fact a very large proportion of speakers. But on the other hand, I'm slightly (just slightly) offended on behalf of native speakers that the language is treated with such a lack of respect. Lingua Franca or not, I don't think a language can be separated from its culture that easily.

'Engrish' is a terrible term, loaded and condescending. If you're talking about the 'globish' issue, I don't see a problem with it, as long as they don't try to force it one way or another too much between, if I can loosely use the terms as Bakhtin did, centripetal and centrifugal. I only mention that because they're presenting accurate information, but perhaps for rhetorical purposes are coming off a bit strong, and I think the idea of Europeans determining the 'core' components could be bad, I think those will emerge on their own. The ultimate aim is international communication integrated with localised, descriptive pedagogy, no? It'll work out.

Myrddhin Wrote:Summary: if you can't seem to learn proper English, all you should have to do is make up your own

That's not a good summary at all.

After correcting a ton of entries on Lang-8, distinguishing between "the" and "a" or even no article at all is very difficult. Furthermore, I can still read their entries and understand the ideas well enough.

I've also had several entries that I've corrected where it's actually right in another form of English. "I'm going to university next year." sounds awkward as an American but it's perfectly fine in British English.

In real life, my coworker from India speaks English with a normal accent. However, when she speaks to other Indians, she adds an Indian accent to her English so that they can understand each other.

I like what the article's saying, in that there is a growing need to be able to communicate effectively instead of being completely proper, and that by teaching English in that fashion, it will be much easier to communicate with other countries.

I find it mortifying reading that. I totally get it but I can't agree with her. Make Esperanto education compulsory if u want an easy route to everyone being able to communicate. It's a cop out to say this shit is too hard so let's just change it to suit us... It's also a farce to believe school is going to teach you an entire language to the point where you can communicate completely.

A decade or two from now when we're all scrambling to learn Chinese, I'm sure the chinese won't be happy when we are just making our own version of Chinese with no kanji and simplified pronounciation.

If you wanna be able to communicate properly, put in the work to make it happen. It's not magic.

Maybe Simple English is the answer? That's the language Simple English Wikipedia is written in.
I don't pretend to have all the answers.

You can communicate with anyone in Simple English, but it will be hard to communicate anything complicated. Others will not communicate with you in Simple English, either.

mezbup Wrote:I find it mortifying reading that. I totally get it but I can't agree with her. Make Esperanto education compulsory if u want an easy route to everyone being able to communicate. It's a cop out to say this shit is too hard so let's just change it to suit us... It's also a farce to believe school is going to teach you an entire language to the point where you can communicate completely.

I agree, if you're gonna change the language, why not just use Esperanto or something?

Let's cut our losses and all just learn sign language.

Regarding Simple English:
http://xkcd.com/547/
Scientist 1: Do you have any thoughts regarding the particle accelerator's tertiary F.E.L. guidance system?
Scientist 2: We can't put the broken part in the machine. It wouldn't smash the right tiny things together. Then the machine might break...That would be very bad.
Title text: Actually, I think if all higher math professors had to write for the Simple English Wikipedia for a year, we'd be in much better shape academically.

Sometimes I think nestor could do so as well...

Regarding sign language -- you know, there's different sign "languages" too. American Sign Language would probably be quite different than Japanese sign language, spanish, or what have you. Apparently there's even slang and dialects.

Asriel Wrote:Regarding sign language -- you know, there's different sign "languages" too. American Sign Language would probably be quite different than Japanese sign language, spanish, or what have you. Apparently there's even slang and dialects.

As the child of deaf parents I can confirm this. It's a common misconception that sign language is universal when the opposite is actually the case. Even within English, American sign language is very different from British sign language which is very different again from Irish sign language (which is actually closer to American but still significantly different) Because deaf communities tend to be more isolated from each other than hearing communities, dialects tend to form much more easily.

Once I met a Japanese deaf lady and was trying to tell her that I knew sign language but could only communicate with her through writing because our sign languages were completely different

Esperanto is very Euro-centric so it wouldn't be that much easier for Japanese people to learn or pronounce than English, aside from the lack of irregularities.

the whole reason for learning English is to communicate with Westerners, exchange cultural impressions, do business, expand markets, etc.

What's the point of making the Japanese learn Esperanto if Americans and Europeans, who can already speak English (at least to a decent degree), are not interested in doing the same...?

There's no point in teaching Esperanto as long as the rest of the world is still learning English instead. The idea of simplifying a language for international purposes isn't new either, it's known as a pidgin, and English has many. In fact, you can find bible translations of more common pidgins.

thecite Wrote:I agree, if you're gonna change the language, why not just use Esperanto or something?

Here are some good reasons:
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

quincy Wrote:There's no point in teaching Esperanto as long as the rest of the world is still learning English instead.

Well there's no point in teaching a simplified version of a language that no one uses just because your teaching/ learning methods are archaic, but heck.

thecite Wrote:

quincy Wrote:There's no point in teaching Esperanto as long as the rest of the world is still learning English instead.

Well there's no point in teaching a simplified version of a language that no one uses just because your teaching/ learning methods are archaic, but heck.

Huh? If the teaching methods are the problem, then those should be fixed. Why introduce Esperanto, fer cryin' out loud?

I think it would be better if everyone could communicate with everyone in a proper form. Rather than just communicating with people half-assedly.

The argument that it wouldn't be any easier to learn to pronounce, whilst true, I feel is a bit of a moot point because English is still harder to learn to pronounce for Japanese and Esperanto much much much more simple grammar, fewer words and more flexible structure. So, it's a much more achievable task to become fluent - except for the fact there's no materials to use!

Which brings me to my next point - English language learners are spoiled as shit when it comes to the wealth of media WITH exact subs they can get their hands on. Yet hardly any people I know study that way... and I've met a tonne of people who are studying English.

At any rate, I think it would be better to change peoples study methods, attitudes and perceptions rather than to change the English language to suit their perceived "inabilities". I know from my own experience and the experiences of those I've seen succeed, that with the right attitude and methods, amazing things are possible.

That's what oughta change.

Also, the English learning epidemic is nuts... not that wanting to study a foreign language is a bad thing but just wanting to study it because it's something you feel you "should" do isn't the greatest idea.

thecite Wrote:

quincy Wrote:There's no point in teaching Esperanto as long as the rest of the world is still learning English instead.

Well there's no point in teaching a simplified version of a language that no one uses just because your teaching/ learning methods are archaic, but heck.

I don't agree with teaching simplified English either, but it's definitely better than Esperanto.

JimmySeal Wrote:Huh? If the teaching methods are the problem, then those should be fixed. Why introduce Esperanto, fer cryin' out loud?

My point was that if you're going to teach a simplified version of English that no one uses, you might as well just teach Esperanto, which is also very arcane but just as viable as an international language.

<------ Moves that we all become telepaths.

kazelee Wrote:<------ Moves that we all become telepaths.

That would make the world very boring... unless our telepathic communications had accents, slang, and other interesting things.

I already dread the day when universal translators that actually work properly are available. You may be able to communicate with people who speak other languages then, but it ruins all the magic. You wouldn't understand the culture, or the different ways of thinking about the world around you that would come with learning the language.

I was going to jump right in with a rejection of the article, but then I decided I should read the linked interview itself instead of relying on the OP. A lot of what she says about the current English education system really is spot on.

the article Wrote:A: What always stumps me is why people are unaware of what English education is really like today. As parents, don't they ever try to find out how their children are being taught? Don't they ever look at their children's English textbooks? I really don't understand. Even at government council meetings, prominent business leaders complain about the state of English education in schools and lament that students are being taught only to read and write English, so they can't really hold conversations in English. These distinguished individuals become quite annoyed whenever I open my mouth and point out to them, "English education has changed significantly over the last decade or two. The problem today is that conversation skills are being overemphasized. You say students can only read and write but can't converse in English, but that's an old story that is no longer true."

.....

A: Yes, they blame their schools, believing they would have become fluent in English had the schools taught them properly. Let's say a businessman goes to New York for the first time, screws up his courage to speak English to his American business partners, but they don't understand what he's saying. He is disappointed and mortified, and blames the English education he received for his humiliating inability to communicate in English. When he goes back home, still smarting from his unhappy experience, he tells his children, "You'd better work really hard on your English. Don't bother with reading and writing. All you need is to be able to speak English and be understood by English speakers."

In my opinion, however, for years many Japanese businessmen have been able to somehow manage on their own in English in foreign countries precisely because they had been taught in school to read and write. Without that basic training, they wouldn't have been able to function overseas.

Q: Personally, whose side are you on--the people who stress communication skills or those who stress grammar and comprehension?

A: Both. They are both right. The problem today is that kids are doing poorly in both areas. It's about time language experts in both camps stopped quibbling and put their heads together to work out an effective English education system that best matches the needs of Japanese students and will help them do better in both areas. Once the kids have learned the basics, I believe the schools will have fully accomplished their mission. Beyond that, it's up to each individual to further brush up his or her English as he or she wishes.

But then she gets back to the main point of the article, namely that we should teach an altered (simplified) form of the language and that Japanese should need not bother differentiating r/l etc, which I simply can't agree with. First of all, a pronunciation model is needed anyway, so why would you make a special point of not using native speakers? And if native speakers and native audio is used, a good enough accent can be established easily anyway. If a Japanese person wants to communicate in English with say a French, Chinese or whatever native speaker then they'll need to get used to non-japanese pronunciation anyway. Secondly, the English language need not be artificially simplified any further than it already is in the English classroom. English classrooms already simplify English far beyond what is necessary to maintain classroom comprehension in my opinion. They also flat out ignore how English really functions and teach things that are just wrong in a misguided effort to make it easier. It really baffles me how the japanese system can try so hard to simplify things and end up making everything so much more complicated than it really need be. What Japan needs is a system more focused on improving comprehension and gaining knowledge than on output of proscribed grammar as if English is something to be learned by pushing Japanese through some kind of translation filter (simplified or not).

Just last week, I had the misfortune of attending another JET conference, where a guest lecturer -a professor at a Japanese University (I forget which one)- was lamenting the difficulty he's having pushing schools to have more speech competitions as if sending poor Japanese kids (who know barely enough english to hold even basic conversations) to speak in front of their peers is somehow the silver bullet for gaining English fluency. Of course he had the room full of smug JETs in full agreement

arch9443 Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:<------ Moves that we all become telepaths.

That would make the world very boring...

Until parental controls were somehow implemented, it could actually be quite interesting. Since some think in pictures, pixelation might also be necessary.

Why English is dead?

Making a simple language to increase and ease communication between people with different languages backgrounds is a good idea, but such a language should only be used for that purpose.

All languages has already become simpler, right? And alongside that, people's ability to express their ideas and communicate efficiently has decreased, a quick look at an old text shows that the writer could express his thoughts more specifically using more complex structures and vocabulary, which prevents wrong interpretation from the reader and makes the text better to read. Also expressing a specific thought in modern simpler versions of any language will most likely use more words than the complex one.

In short, when languages become simpler, communication between people ,at least of the same mother language, decreases.

[ファブリス]

What? Fifteen occurences of the word "esperanto" and no missionaries have registered yet to extoll the virtues of their beautiful language? Internet must be congested or something.

ファブリス Wrote:What? Fifteen occurences of the word "esperanto" and no missionaries have registered yet to extoll the virtues of their beautiful language? Internet must be congested or something.

Clearly a conspiracy by the media to keep Esperanto down.