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Shohei Kobayashi
Professor. Claudia Skutar
English 2089: Intermediate Composition
10 June 2013
The 4th Essay Assignment
In the last few decades, English has developed as the de facto global language, advancing
mutual communication among people from different countries. As long as the ongoing
internationalization of the entire world does not cease, it is expected that the importance of
learning English will be more encouraged than ever. In order to thrive in this global world, nonnative English speaking countries are continuously making an effort to strengthen their average
English proficiency via improving the quality of their education systems. Japan is one such
country which enthusiastically debates how to cultivate competent linguists who can contribute
to the country’s prosperity in the international market. However, despite a total six years of
required training in junior and senior high school, the majority of Japanese are rarely proficient
at English. For example, the mean score of a Japanese on the global standardized English test
TOEFL – Test of English as a Foreign Language – was the second lowest (70 out of 120 on a
2012 version) among all the thirty Asian countries participating in this test (web).
The majority of Japanese themselves are fully aware of their weakness towards the English
language, and many of them believe that the existing English education in Japan is mostly
responsible for their difficulty in learning English. Nevertheless, it is precarious to conclude that
the quality of the current English education in Japan is the one and only cause for a Japanese’s
incompetence towards English as the average linguistic ability in a county is attributed from
multiple factors. Considering Japan’s salient achievements in other aspects such as its worldwide
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economic power and high-tech industries, it is reasonable to suspect that particular hardships are
imposed upon Japan with respect to learning English compared to other non-native English
speaking counties. Without accurately discerning what barriers are preventing Japanese from
learning English effectively, it is difficult for them to take appropriate measures for true
improvement of Japan’s national English proficiency. The objective of this discussion is to
scrutinize the status quo of the English education in Japan and investigate what difficulties a
Japanese owns in regard to learning English from a societal, historical, linguistic, academic, and
cognitive viewpoint. By identifying such difficulties, this discussion will ultimately provide
possible solutions for the true improvement of English competence in Japan.
On the most visible level, the role of English in a country can be observed firstly from a
societal point of view – that is, how it is viewed on a day-to-day basis. In this regard, it is
noticeable that the overwhelming majority of Japanese are never in need of training their English
skills as long as they are living in Japan, simply because they do not face the situation of being
required to use English at all. According to the linguist Kachru, the world English“es” belong to
one of three concentric circles of its usage: the inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding
circle (Mackenzie, 268). The inner circle is composed of countries where English is spoken as
the native language for a substantial majority. The outer circle consists of postcolonial countries
where English is still spoken as a second language and is employed for a wide range of
educational and administrative purposes. The expanding circle comprises of countries where
English is learned as a foreign language and is used for international communications such as
business, diplomacy, tourism, and so forth. The more inward a circle a person belongs to, the
more opportunities he or she will have for using English in his or her everyday life. According to
this model, Japan is classified into the expanding circle in which a people have the least amount
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of chances to speak English; thus, in this sense, it is no wonder that Japanese are unlikely to
become accustomed to speaking fluent English.
Aside from the influence of societal hindrances, the level of ease of English usage can also
be observed by contrasting English from the native language of Japan. In general, it is said that
the linguistic diversity between English and Japanese tends to disadvantage the speaker of one
language from learning the other. In general, the difficulty of learning another language greatly
varies depending on what a learner’s native language is. Thus, it is impossible to say with
certainty that there is a language that qualifies as the most difficult or easiest. However, it is
expected that the languages that are more closely related to a person’s native language are
certainly easier to learn than ones that are not. Although there are many linguistic differences
between English and Japanese whose discussion is beyond the scope of this argument, one of the
most prominent differences is the number of sounds that the two languages have. Whereas the
Japanese language only has five vowels: “a,” “i,” “u,” “e,” and “o,” the English language has at
least ten vowels or more – although this number heavily varies depending on what region
English is spoken in. For example, the Japanese people, who have only limited experience in
English, typically cannot hear or speak the words “right” and “light” distinctively because there
is no specific difference between the “R” and “L” sound in Japanese. What it means is that,
because of this handicap, a Japanese person often needs to work harder to become a fluent
English speaker. All in all, the linguistic diversities between English and Japan are one of the
most influential barriers that prevent the speaker of one language from learning the other.
The English education in Japan is often criticized for its excessive emphasis on grammar
and vocabulary rather than communicating with it, which is widely believed to be the main cause
for preventing a Japanese from learning practical English. As Aspinall points out that Japanese
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leaners, who spend years studying minute details of English grammar, are unable even to order a
cup of coffee in English (257). This obsession with written English has a root in the history of
learning English in Japan which can be traced back to the end of the nineteenth century. At that
time, the strong Western countries were building their colonies throughout Asia, and Japan had
to modernize itself as quickly as possible in order to sustain its independence. Concretely
speaking, the Japanese people needed to absorb the advanced technologies of Western countries
via reading and translating important documents written in English. Stated differently, for the
sake of modernization, input skills such as reading were more stressed than output skills such as
speaking. Eventually, the significance of written English changed its role from only being a
medium for transcription to also a tool for measuring an individual’s academic competence.
Kikuchi and Browne convey that, “even after the nationalistic movement of this period ended,
English was widely adopted as a screening process for elite education” (173). To conclude, the
historical origin of English education in Japan still has a lingering influence on how Japanese
learn English today.
The influence of historical background on the average English proficiency in a country
can be further examined by referring to, for example, Singapore who earned the highest mean
score (98 out of 120) in Asia on a 2012 TOEFL (web). Historically, Singapore had been
colonized by England from 1819 to 1957. During the long period of colonization, local residents
– especially the intelligentsia – were educated in the language of English. As a result, advanced
Western knowledge and technologies were only able to be conveyed in English. This history of
having been compelled to use English instead of their mother tongue still has a great influence
upon today’s Singapore. Contemporary Singapore is a multilingual country: English, Tamil,
Pekingese, and Malay are spoken; however, English is most commonly used in business and
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education. In essence, there is a certain historical and social background that leads the people of
Singapore to achieve a high score on the English test. As a matter of fact, the top five Asian
countries achieving the highest scores on TOEFL are all former colonies of English speaking
countries: Singapore, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, and the Philippines (web). If a Japanese person’s
ineloquence in English would be looked at from this type of angle, then it would indicate that
Japan never surrendered to Western colonization unlike the many other Asian countries that did
at that time.
When it comes to understanding how the higher education system in Japan discourages a
Japanese from learning communicative English, it is important to clarify that a Japanese college
employs a totally different admission system from an American one, particularly with respect to
screening prospective students. While an American admission office looks into a prospective
student’s volunteer experience, extracurricular activity, essay, recommendation letters, sport
achievements, scores of standardized test, and so forth, a Japanese college only requires wouldbe students to take the national standardized test and entrance exam which each college designs
on an individual basis. Simply put, a student can be accepted into the best colleges if only he or
she performs well on these papers tests. Although both admission systems have pros and cons,
Japanese high school students tend to care less about those subjects which are not directly related
to the national standardized test and entrance exam. To this extreme, numerous Japanese students
regard their high school as only a preparatory institution to study for these important tests.
It would seem that the Japanese government’s goal and students’ personal interest are
conclusively in discord. The Japanese ministry in charge of the national education system
publishes a set of educational guidelines every once in ten years that pronounces how each
subject is supposed to be taught in schools. As previously stated, the traditional English
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education in Japan mainly focused on grammar and vocabulary; however, in the past few
decades, the guideline states that oral communicative skills such as speaking and listening have
to be more stressed than grammar and vocabulary (Kikuchi, Browne 177). Contrary to the
Japanese government’s goal, though, the majority of Japanese high schools still emphasize
grammar and vocabulary in order to meet the favor of students. When it comes to accessing a
student’s English skills, both the national standardized test and entrance exams are designed to
test a student’s passive interpreting skills such as grammar, vocabulary, and translation, partly
because evaluating a person’s verbal communication skills is more difficult and expensive. Thus,
a number of Japanese high school students believe that their studying oral communication skills
is a waste of time (Kitagawa and Oba, 511).
It is widely believed that children benefit more from learning another language as early as
possible, because younger children can absorb language in a shorter period of time than older
children can. The Japanese government seems to be such a believer, as seen by the newly
executed policy in 2011 in which every Japanese student is required to begin to learn English at
the fifth grade – a requirement starting two years earlier than it used to be (Kikuchi, Browne
177). Despite the fact that adults tend to overestimate a child’s ability to acquire language, the
efficacy of early linguistic education has never been proven. Stated differently, unless a person
was raised in a multilingual society since early childhood, children do not learn another language
until they likewise learn their native language.
The Japanese government created the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program in
1987, which now employs over 5500 native speakers of English as Assistant Language Teachers
(ALT) (Kikuchi, Browne 173). Concretely speaking, each school is recommended to employ an
ALT in order to furnish students with more opportunities to communicate in practical English.
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Lastly, a number of Japanese falsely believe their English skill would have been much
better if only they had been immersed into a more effective system of English education. In other
words, the cognitive discrepancy between the Japanese’s excessive expectations for the English
education system and its actual capability makes the system seemingly very ineffective. As
previously explained, the Japanese are levied with social, historical, linguistic, and
administrative disadvantages with regard to learning English. Nevertheless, the influence of
these hardships is often underestimated or ignored. No matter how effective an educational
method is implemented, the most desirable outcome is not necessarily brought out. From this
viewpoint, it is too optimistic for a Japanese to think that he or she will be able to speak English
fluently by only completing a school curriculum. In order to become an adroit English speaker,
each Japanese individual must work additionally harder than other non-English native speakers
and overcome their hardships.
Verbal communication skills such as listening or speaking are exceptionally hard to train if
people are not in the situation to use them routinely. As English grammar and vocabulary are still
relatively easier to train in Japan, it is more rational for a Japanese person to develop their strong
points (grammar and vocabulary) rather than making up for their shortcomings (verbal
communicative skills).
Of course, the traditional English education system has its flaws. For example, the
traditional system often centers its methodology on only analyzing the parts of the English
language while discussing them in Japanese. This teaching method is called bilingual education:
a form of education in which information is presented to the students in two (or more) languages.
Bilingual education has its own advantages such as helping students to understand detailed
sentence structures or explaining a delicate shade to the meaning of a word. However, this is not
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always the most effective way of learning English. Speaking from my personal experience in my
Japanese high school, an excessive bilingual education is similar to decrypting a secret code,
because each English sentence is carefully analyzed by grammatical terminologies in a learner’s
own native language. As a result, the students of this method are the least likely to be acclimated
to the target language itself.
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Work-Cited Page – 5 references

Aspinall, Robert. “Using the paradigm of ‘small cultures’ to explain policy failure in the
case of foreign language education in Japan.” Japan Forum 18.2 (2006): 255-274.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 June 2013.

Kikuchi, Keita; Charles Brown. “English Educational Policy for High School in Japan:
Ideals vs. Reality.” RELC Journal 40.2 (2009): 172-191. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 2 May. 2013.

Kitagawa, Fumi and Jun Oba. “Managing differentiation of higher education system in
Japan: connecting excellence and diversity.” Higher Education 59.4 (2010):507-524.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 June 2013.

Mckenzie, Robert M. “The complex and rapidly changing sociolinguistic position of the
English language in Japan: a summary of English language contact and use.” Japan
Forum 20.2 (2008): 267-286. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 June 2013.

“Test and Score Date Summary for TOEFL iBT Tests and TOEFL PBT Tests.” Editorial.
http://www.ets.org/toefl. Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. January 2012 – December 2012.
Web. 8 June. 2013