chil_lie23
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One, the fact that they are trying to teach English to kids that is old a out dated. Second, a lot of the Japanese not being good at English has to do with what the hear on radio and TV. Until they change those Katakana English that is used on TV. Japanese as a whole will not change.Third, I think that JHS kid learn grammar part of English, when they can barely speak it, is wrong. They should have at least 3 more years of speaking, and then go into grammar part in High School.
F.Gulda
I don't say it's the best we can have, but at least some of us are able to read and write technical articles in Engilsh after only six years of study, which is something considering the vast differences between English and Japanese. That is also the main purpose of public English education in Japan. I think it is accomplished pretty well.
Some people expect everyone to be good at it just because everyone studies it, but everyone doesn't get A's in English class, just like everyone doesn't get A's in science or any other subject and only some of us can become scientists.
Of course there are always problems however we do it, and it would be nice if we could all speak it with more fluency, but time and money we can spend on English education is limited so we need to sort out priorities for public education. Spending less time on grammar and making us (only some of us) better at speaking broken English won't be of much benefit to Japan. Without grammatical knowledge, we can only discuss weather after all.
Anonymous
The real question you should ask is if many Japanese people want to be able to speak, read and write English considerably. The answer to that question is no. They neither want to nor need to use English. Most Japanese will never be in a position where they need to speak the language and they won't probably speak more than 100 English words in their life time besides what English classes demand. So, English is just another irrelevant thing to their lives which they learn in school, like the definition of pi. Thus, there are few motivated learners, which means there are few who grow up to be a competent English speaker.
What I'm saying is not that the English education in JHS and HS is perfect(certainly there are some parts of it that can be improved or made to reflect the reality of the world), but motivation is the biggest contribution to Japanese kids' study of English. I think teachers should motivate those kids before they try to teach anything. Inspire them first and the rest will be taken care of.
Aya
The absolute biggest problem, in my opinion, is that the Japanese teachers usually have teaching qualifications but often don't speak English with any real level of fluency (I'm sorry but "Let's write journal!" is NOT grammatical English). When native English speakers are brought in, as with a program like JET, they rarely have any real teacher training and many of the Japanese teachers they work with are reluctant to use them as anything but human tape recorders. The classes tend to be large, with 30-40 students, and there are few chances for them to actually practice English. Japanese is often the dominant language in the classroom even during English lessons. Then the students leave school and enter a world where English isn't required or used, so they don't get much if any practice outside the classroom and don't develop an attitude that English is useful or important for much of anything beyond tests.
I know many people like to blame the problems with the system on the native English speakers brought in from abroad who have no teaching qualifications, but honestly, even foreign teachers with teaching certifications wouldn't be able to do much if the rest of the system didn't change.
rhubarb
I'm far from modern English education in Japan, but one thing I still remember is there was a weirdly strict English teacher in my Junior high-school. He was fussy enough to make it incorrect when we didn't end a sentence with ".(period)" What we studied was not a language, but very square formula called "English", which we never realized a way of communication. I think this kind of mean, ridiculous and non-practical approach scared many students and as a result, tends put more distance between students and learning English.
Come to think of it, Japanese and English have very little in common. Considering its vocalism, structure and focusing on being frank/ open (Japanese much focuses on politeness/ reserved), it should be a very challenging foreign language for the Japanese, that's for sure...
Moreover, being strict, being ashamed of making mistakes are a large part of Japanese culture.
From my point of view, I don't think education itself should be blamed for the Japanese staying slow English learners.