mezbup wrote:

これでなぜ日本人が世界で一番英語が話せないか、わかるのではないでしょうか。

Note, though, that this line is silly.  The reason Japan is ranked so much lower in English than, say, other Asian countries like China or Korea is bad statistics rather than actual English ability.  Usually it's because the type of people who are taking internationally recognized English proficiency tests are different.  You get a lot of professionals taking them in China or Korea, and then in Japan you get a lot of professionals... and a lot of high school students and house wives that are just doing it for fun to test their own abilities.

Then you get newspapers in Japan pointing out that the average TOEIC score in China is 840 but the average in Japan is 480.

That's basically how the myth of 'the Japanese are worse at English than everyone else' myth got started.  English ability in Asia is a lot more uniform than Japanese news articles would have you believe.  Virtually everyone in Japan eats up the story though.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 March 26, 5:06 am)

I can't seem to find the figures online, but I originally heard them in a lecture of an English Professor big-shot from Tokyo (I can't remember his name, unfortunately) who was asked by the Kyoto Board of Education to give advice for changes in English language education in Kyoto.

Japanese people take the TOEIC way more than any other country, with Korea being second.  Japan and Korea together take the test more than the rest of the world combined.  Japanese people also take the test over and over again to test their improvement, which is rare in other countries.

At any rate, the professor had done surveys in Japan showing the reasons that most people take the test in Japan and there were a substantial portion that did it just for fun/to test their own abilities/because their teacher told them to.  He also knew a lot of history about the perception of English teaching in Japan as pushed by the media, and showed ridiculous news stories in all the big name papers that used bad statistics.

And, well, even if we grant that Koreans also take the test in large numbers, they are the only other country that does.  Which means that if TOEIC is a useful way to compare English ability it would only be useful to compare it to Korea rather than the rest of Asia or the world, who take the TOEIC in a far different way.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 March 26, 6:10 am)

Where do you live and why would the population of Koreans Chinese and Japanese where you live are representative of the whole?

I've been to Korea twice, and I've even taught a couple English classes there as a guest teacher.  So I've spent about three weeks in Korea total.

I've been to China too (though, only for a few days since I spent most of the time in Tibet... there's a *cough*country*cough* where nobody speaks English, haha)

Saw a lot of cultural differences between Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese (for example, Koreans and Chinese are more talkative to people they don't know), but I didn't see anything that made it obvious that one country was considerably better than any of the others in terms of the average person's speaking ability.

I've been to Europe too, where it IS obvious that the English ability is higher than Japan... and China and Korea.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 March 26, 6:54 am)

Tzadeck wrote:

The reason Japan is ranked so much lower in English than, say, other Asian countries like China or Korea is bad statistics rather than actual English ability.  Usually it's because the type of people who are taking internationally recognized English proficiency tests are different.  You get a lot of professionals taking them in China or Korea, and then in Japan you get a lot of professionals... and a lot of high school students and house wives that are just doing it for fun to test their own abilities.

I have handled overseas student admissions now for several years, and among those who apply to my UK uni, there is a colossal difference between the English language skills of Chinese and Korean compared Japanese applicants. So we're looking at a group of students with very good grades (GPA3.8+ or 90% plus average if from China) who actually all want to study in an English-speaking country... no housewives etc.

I could fill up every single spot in our program with Chinese and Korean students who have sufficient English language skills, which is an IELTS compound score of 6.5, "Competent user: has generally effective command of the language despite some inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings. Can use and understand fairly complex language, particularly in familiar situations" (hello IELTS people: "inappropriacy" is not a word.)

We have 10-15 students every year applying from Japan. In three years, I have been able to admit ONE student who had a good enough score, and I later got flak from the people who taught this particular student because his English was terrible. I have never come across a Japanese applicant who had a verbal GRE higher than in the 70th percentile, and that just doesn't cut it for most serious graduate programs.

The real shame is that these Japanese students are outstanding in every other respect, because no matter what people say, Japanese school education is still extremely good. Their math skills blow every European student away, but not just that, they have great ideas for research and they also look very well-educated in every respect except... English-language skills. I've had countless Chinese students with terrible English, but a few were totally fluent even though they had never left China before coming to the UK. I have two Korean students who sound almost like native speakers after three years here. And obviously I would have rather more Japanese than Chinese or Korean students, if only to chat occasionally for a minute after class.

I really don't know what the problem is, but I tend to think it's a mixture of terrible English instruction in high school, "let's rent-a-foreign-friend" attitude to 英会話 classes, lack of self-esteem and engrained perfectionism, and the same nonsense 日本人論 that teaches them that their intestines are shorter/longer (I forgot which one) than those of non-Japanese people. But in my little non-random sample, the Japanese are speaking the poorest English.

AlexandreC wrote:

I don't think there's any truth to this.Where I live, or in any other place I've lived for that matter, I can't see a significant difference between how well Koreans, Japanese and Chinese speak English. It has everything to do with how long they have been learning the language in an English environment, how young they were when they arrived, or how much they have allowed themselves to fray beyond Asian-only social circles.

You can think there's as little truth to it as you want. However, I see it every single day of my life. I go to a university of 40,000 students and of that 15,000 are Asian. Lots of Chinese, lots of Koreans, some Malaysian and about 10 Japanese.

I guess I say they have the worst English because they don't have a presence in English speaking countries like Chinese or Koreans do. You really wanna defend them and say they are better? It doesn't make sense. I don't mean individually, I mean it as a whole they are the bottom of the pile when it comes to English. If you're saying "that's not true!!!!" then you are implying they are better than either the Chinese or Koreans... Are you really willing to so far as to say that? Cos I certainly am not.

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

Also, I should note that Japan is pretty much a first world country, and people aren't exactly desperate to leave it for greener pastures

Haha, I think you mean 'is a first world country.'  (^_^)v

Irixmark, your example is more interesting, but of course it's biased (all the people you've dealt with are the people who have applied to your university; it's not a random sample of people so by definition it's biased).

For example, three of the Japanese high schools I've worked at do exchange programs where Japanese schools live abroad for a year and students from abroad come here.  In the case of high schools it's biased because on the Japanese side of this exchange who can go is pretty much decided based on who wants to go.  Not a lot of students are willing to go since they're worried about entrance exams (interestingly, this means that the best students don't go), or they don't want to leave their friends, or their parents are too nervous, etc.  So who goes to England or China isn't really based on academic ability or English or Chinese knowledge--just by who wants to go.

But, for example, a lot of the students who come here are from China and they are chosen to go because they are outstanding students in China.  Getting a position is tough.  There is a ton of competition, and usually the students have had to work hard to get a chance to go abroad and therefore studied English as well as Japanese very hard, since it's part of the selection process.

So, the Chinese exchange students I've had all had very good English compared to the average Japanese student.  But, of course, thanks to the way Chinese students are chosen for the abroad program, this is not an accurate reflection of average English ability in China.

In your case, you seem to imply that the average GPA by country is different (since you mention that China's is quite high).  That could be one way that the students coming to you are biased.

Or there are a million other ways that I couldn't speculate on, and you could only know about in limited way if at all.  For example, perhaps the students from Japan are encouraged to study abroad by their teachers because they are outstanding in the subject they want to study, not in English.  Whereas there could be more of a tendency in China or Korea for teachers to encourage students to study there because their English ability is so good. 

Incidentally, I'm not saying that the Japanese are as good at English as the Koreans or the Chinese.  I'm saying that it's not clear that the Japanese are measurably worse at English than the Chinese or the Koreans.  In fact, if I was forced to speculate I would guess that probably Korea and China are doing better at English education. But I'd prefer not to speculate if I don't have to.  Because I'm not sure.

At any rate, it's certainly not true that Japan has the worst English in the world, which is what the quote actually says.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 March 27, 1:23 am)

Irixmark wrote:

TOIEC scores in those countries by non-residents:
UK 690
US 680
Canada 652
Singapore 640

Average TOIEC scores always make me proud of my Japanese ex-girlfriend (despite the fact that she's mad at me right now, haha).  She's 20 and got a 935 on the TOEIC despite not going to high school or college.  Smart girl, who sadly has not had an easy life or good opportunities.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 March 27, 7:55 am)

nadiatims wrote:

a couple of points:

According to wikipedia, english education starts in 3rd grade of elementary school in Korea. Until very recently (they started piloting english programs in elementary schools in Hirosima a couple of years ago), in Japan it starts in junior high school.

Korea is still a poorer country than Japan (reflected in prices), so there is likely a higher motivation to learn english for upward mobility.

Korea is a smaller country, so there is less of a domestic market for things like entertainment.

I don't see how anyone could possibly speak english fluently just using what they learn in the Japanese junior and high schools. The vocabulary is way too low. I believe they are exposed to less than 1000 words over the 3 years of junior high school. Even if they truly do learn all those words, it is still totally insufficient. I don't know about high schools, but even if high school raised that to say 5000 (which I find unlikely) expecting fluency or high comprehension is totally naive.

And looking back, there was a notable lack of japanese students at my University in Sydney (where probably a quarter or more of the students were asian).

The Japanese university exchange students (20 or early 20's) I meet -- I participate in a language group -- generally tell me they've been studying English for about 10 years. Despite their sometimes laborious pronunciation and fluency, I'm consistently amazed by the size of the vocabulary (perhaps because of loan words in Japanese); they sometimes lack the simplest words, but they know a huge amount of complex or technical words.

They're both missing the point.

"We compiled the textbooks based on the belief that it is necessary to increase students' opportunities to speak English in class, instead of simply listening to their instructors," one textbook publisher said.

Increasing the students opportunity to speak in class doesn't address the fundamental problem. The amount of knowledge taught over the 6 years of schooling is totally insufficient.

"The goal is not to teach classes in English, but to improve students' abilities to use the English language. So there is no need to change the format of our textbooks."

This guy is right, but is wrong in his conclusion that the textbooks needn't be changed. They are totally lacking in content.

Under the new system, over 6 years japanese students will in theory learn 3000 words (I say in theory, because really it means they will be exposed to 3000 words). And now they've introduced english in elementary schools, they'll get 1 hour a week for 2 years (adding up to 70 hours in total), based on a vocabulary of 500 words (Most of which I suspect overlap with the 3000 they learn later). In reality the elementary school homeroom teachers who teach all subjects mostly can't speak english.

When are the people in charge of the curriculum going to actually think about the logistics of language learning?

nadiatims wrote:

In reality the elementary school homeroom teachers who teach all subjects mostly can't speak english.

Fluency is not required to teach the Japanese elementary school English curriculum. Not by a long shot.

Seriously, the 8 years of experience with English that HR teachers have is more than enough to teach Yumi-chan to say "I like strawberries".

Erm...
It's not like English will magically teach itself. Even with proper teachers, without self-study, exposure and a gazillion other things you won't get far. And even with teachers who barely speak the language, the other factors balance it out. In primary we had this teacher who could barely tie a few sentences in, but that didn't stop a quarter of the class from getting to a good level. It did serve as a good excuse for the ones who didn't learn anything though... 8 years of German classes with more-or-less capable teachers and my class's level was around A2 at most, and that's kinda the norm for language classes.

(and even with some of the best teachers in the country and about 11 hours of intensive English per week, there were still a handful of students in my highschool who stuck to minimum conversational level. Have no idea how they passed the school's admission test in the first place...)