私失敗の英語か。 (Me Fail English?)
Why don't Japanese people speak more English than they do? It's a hot topic of debate among English teachers around here, and something I've been wrestling with myself for a looooooong time. Now a days Japanese kids start their English education their first year of elementary school and continue up through their last day of high school. You'd think, after 12 years or so, that people's English levels would at least be past the basic level and hovering around intermediate...but you'd be wrong. Very, very wrong.
Just off the top of my head, some possible reasons why English isn't spoken more fluently than it is here could be due to...
- The Japanese Language - Japanese lacks a lot of the sounds and building blocks used in English. Dipthongs and tripthongs and all that shit are non existent. Certain letters are also pronounced differently. "R" sounds more like "L" (which is why many people mistake my name for Lon Sensei). "L" for some reason sounds like "R" (rearry?). "V" inexplicably sounds like "bui" (bolleyball and DbuiD come to mind...). It's by far easier to go from English to Japanese than it is to go the opposite way, and I've noticed it's even easier to go from Spanish to Japanese as the pronunciations used in both language are eerily similar.
- Katakana - Japanese has three alphabets: Hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Katakana is used primarily to write words taken from other languages. The problem is that the katakana version of these loanwords becomes the de facto way to pronounce the word. Pink becomes pinku. Lunch becomes ranchi. My full name is Ronald William Simms Jr., but when pronounce in Japanese it's Ronarudo William Shimuzu Junyaaaa. Close, but not quite right. And it can be hard to change if it's been ingrained in you.
- The Education System - I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of the entire Japanese education system, but I can talk about some things I do know. Now, as you're probably aware, the Japanese government spends a lot of money to bring foreigners from various countries to teach English in public schools. Those people would be JETs. All the non JET positions are taken up by foreigners already living in Japan. The public school system employs what is called team-teaching. The native speaking English teacher is mainly an assistant (ALT), the real class leader is the Japanese teacher of English (JTE). While JTEs generally speak English pretty well, I haven't found any of the ones I've met to be fluent, so this system to me is inherently flawed. To properly learn a language I believe you need to be immersed in it. The presence of a JTE at all times in the classroom doesn't allow full immersion to actually happen. Classes should be taught 100% in English at all times to get students used to hearing English and speaking it, slowly getting them acclimated much like you would a baby or something. But what happens is the second they don't understand something the JTE will jump in with Japanese. So, over time, they might tune out the ALT knowing that if they don't understand they'll just hear things repeated in Japanese later. JTEs also don't seem to want to challenge their students too much (I know I'm generalizing, but bear with me), as if they don't want them to be in a situation where they might make mistakes and embarrass themselves. However, ultimate control over English education belongs to the various school boards and, I guess, the Ministry of Education at the top of it all. In one particular place in Okinawa, for example, English education efforts aren't being totally hampered by the JTEs, but by the school board. Why? Because someone thought it'd be a good idea for elementary school homeroom teachers to create the English curriculum. The problem with that being elementary school homeroom teachers don't actually speak English.
- No Chance to Speak - Eikaiwas exist for two reasons. One, the Japanese school system is clearly failing people when it comes to learning English. Two, most people don't actually get the chance to speak English outside the classroom. Not speaking a language definitely contributes to not learning it. It's one of the main reasons why, despite living here for so long, I still suck at Japanese. I'm too busy speaking way more English than I am anything else.
- Not Really Needed - There's no real incentive to learn English when everyone else speaks Japanese.
If the goal of the Japanese government in making English education mandatory was to ensure everyone in the country knew and could speak a fair bit of English, then they've failed. They need to reevaluate and overhaul the whole program. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of minimize the role of JTEs or get rid of them altogether and let the native speaker teach. And I'd shift the focus slightly away from reading and writing (which is somewhat less of a problem) and more towards speaking. Then again the failings of the education system have given rise to jukus (cram schools) and eikaiwas so hey....maybe there's a silver lining after all.