It is true that more and more Japanese people focus on English in nowadays and the number of people who can speak English in Japan is increasing. However, if I compare Japan with other Asian countries, I feel that the revel and speed of globalization in Japan is way behind.
My Chinese and Korean friends told me that it is essential to have an experience studying abroad if they want to get a good job in their own countries. On the other hand, having a good English can be an advantage but it is not necessity in Japan. We are all Asians, but why does this happen?
I have an English teacher's license for junior high and high school in Japan and also have an certificate of J-SHINE program which allows people who passed the test to teach English at elementary schools. Also, I studied English at Florida State University as an exchange student when I was in my University and met a lot of international students from all over the world and I talked about English education with them. Through my experiences, I would like to give you some insights about the real situation of Japan in terms of English.
I categorized problems into 3 groups below.
1) Japanese Education
It has been said for long time that Japanese can read and write English pretty well but their speaking ability is not great. I would say this is true and this is related to a Japanese education system.
Japanese start to learn English from junior high to University. That means average Japanese have been studying English for 10 years. However, as I mentioned earlier, Japanese schools focus on grammar a lot for passing exams and less focus on speaking. A lot of teachers cannot speak good English, so it is obvious that students cannot neither.
There are some schools which realize the importance of speaking and change this old education system, however, the movement is still small. I think it is inevitable for Japan to change this too much grammar focused education system if we want to join global countries.
2) Japan is too comfortable
There is a shocking fact about young Japanese people. According to some newspaper articles, the number of young Japanese people who are interested in going abroad is decreasing! I cannot believe this because I was one of the people who really really wanted to go abroad and tried to get every kind possibilities. I joined an university program to stay in Australia for one month when I was first year in my university and volunteered an cultural exchange program and went to Dover city when I was second year of my university. I studied very hard to get the position as an exchange student and actually I got the chance. I visited my friend in Taiwan and Italy.
According to these articles, young Japanese feel so comfortable to live in Japan and cannot find the reasons why they need to go abroad. They can eat variety of foods, experience great service, and top of that, no need to take a risk of expose themselves to somewhere can be dangerous for them.
I experienced so much great things through my experiences visiting foreign countries. Also, I could more appreciate about my country after I visited other countries. I just feel that young people are just loose their greatest chance to see the amazingly beautiful places all over the world, meet wonderful people from different background, and grow themselves with global readers outside of Japan.
3) Japanese culture
As one of the features of an island, the number of foreigners are few in Japan. Japanese interact mainly with pure-Japanese, so they don't know how to communicate people who have different culture. This also made them being comfortable to be "one of them" and not standing out. Also, we put value in politeness, so we think that saying our opinion in public might destroy the peaceful atmosphere. (This is why Japanese people are quiet at the meeting.)
In addition, Japanese have been taught that team work is very important. Therefore, we try to help each other. We think that coworkers are like family, so we help each other even in a business situation and that is why Japanese still keep the hierarchy. On the other hand, a lot of countries compete each other to get the good position. These culture causes a huge gap between global companies and Japanese companies. I love Japan and I think we need to keep our beautiful culture. However, we also need to change our attitude so that we don't loose the relationship with other countries.
More and more Japanese people start to shift to globalization, but we needs to push ourselves harder. After I moved to America, I started to realize that Japanese people have high potentials to compete with global readers. Not only we have great technologies, but also we are very precise, responsible, trustworthy, and hard working. If we realize the importance of globalization and take an action to change current situations, how the world sees us would be totally different. I believe that it is going to happen in the future and I would like to be the part of the change.
My Chinese and Korean friends told me that it is essential to have an experience studying abroad if they want to get a good job in their own countries. On the other hand, having a good English can be an advantage but it is not necessity in Japan. We are all Asians, but why does this happen?
I have an English teacher's license for junior high and high school in Japan and also have an certificate of J-SHINE program which allows people who passed the test to teach English at elementary schools. Also, I studied English at Florida State University as an exchange student when I was in my University and met a lot of international students from all over the world and I talked about English education with them. Through my experiences, I would like to give you some insights about the real situation of Japan in terms of English.
I categorized problems into 3 groups below.
1) Japanese Education
It has been said for long time that Japanese can read and write English pretty well but their speaking ability is not great. I would say this is true and this is related to a Japanese education system.
Japanese start to learn English from junior high to University. That means average Japanese have been studying English for 10 years. However, as I mentioned earlier, Japanese schools focus on grammar a lot for passing exams and less focus on speaking. A lot of teachers cannot speak good English, so it is obvious that students cannot neither.
There are some schools which realize the importance of speaking and change this old education system, however, the movement is still small. I think it is inevitable for Japan to change this too much grammar focused education system if we want to join global countries.
2) Japan is too comfortable
There is a shocking fact about young Japanese people. According to some newspaper articles, the number of young Japanese people who are interested in going abroad is decreasing! I cannot believe this because I was one of the people who really really wanted to go abroad and tried to get every kind possibilities. I joined an university program to stay in Australia for one month when I was first year in my university and volunteered an cultural exchange program and went to Dover city when I was second year of my university. I studied very hard to get the position as an exchange student and actually I got the chance. I visited my friend in Taiwan and Italy.
According to these articles, young Japanese feel so comfortable to live in Japan and cannot find the reasons why they need to go abroad. They can eat variety of foods, experience great service, and top of that, no need to take a risk of expose themselves to somewhere can be dangerous for them.
I experienced so much great things through my experiences visiting foreign countries. Also, I could more appreciate about my country after I visited other countries. I just feel that young people are just loose their greatest chance to see the amazingly beautiful places all over the world, meet wonderful people from different background, and grow themselves with global readers outside of Japan.
3) Japanese culture
As one of the features of an island, the number of foreigners are few in Japan. Japanese interact mainly with pure-Japanese, so they don't know how to communicate people who have different culture. This also made them being comfortable to be "one of them" and not standing out. Also, we put value in politeness, so we think that saying our opinion in public might destroy the peaceful atmosphere. (This is why Japanese people are quiet at the meeting.)
In addition, Japanese have been taught that team work is very important. Therefore, we try to help each other. We think that coworkers are like family, so we help each other even in a business situation and that is why Japanese still keep the hierarchy. On the other hand, a lot of countries compete each other to get the good position. These culture causes a huge gap between global companies and Japanese companies. I love Japan and I think we need to keep our beautiful culture. However, we also need to change our attitude so that we don't loose the relationship with other countries.
More and more Japanese people start to shift to globalization, but we needs to push ourselves harder. After I moved to America, I started to realize that Japanese people have high potentials to compete with global readers. Not only we have great technologies, but also we are very precise, responsible, trustworthy, and hard working. If we realize the importance of globalization and take an action to change current situations, how the world sees us would be totally different. I believe that it is going to happen in the future and I would like to be the part of the change.
