r/japan • u/Garbage_Plastic • 9d ago
Very Low Proficiency: Japan Drops into Bottom Group in English Ability Ranking
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h02620/331
u/Spirited-Lifeguard55 9d ago
It’s very weird that they teach it as a second language in all Japanese school’s curriculum for kids starting from a young age, and yet none of them can speak fluently as other countries doing the same thing?
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u/kamatacci 9d ago
It's being taught incorrectly yet with incredible consistency all across the country.
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u/LeRobber 9d ago
It feels almost intentionally bad.
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u/TheJapanMistake 8d ago
There is a cultural thing about it being embarassing to speak proper english during class, so a lot of students avoid it to avoid being bullied for "showing off"
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u/Sutar_Mekeg 8d ago
I once asked my students to please make as many mistakes as possible. If they did, we could fix 'em together. If they didn't make any, they couldn't improve. I can't say that this turned the whole class around, but I did get more effort out of some.
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u/LeRobber 7d ago
EXACTLY. English requires a ton of mistakes, even for babies and people learning only it.
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u/Melonpan78 6d ago
THIS. I've been teaching Japanese students for most of my career and almost without fail, ALL of them will produce the following sentences:
- 'Almost Japanese people eat rice.'
- 'After work, I back my home.'
- 'I will trip to Hawaii next month.'
It blows my mind how, from Sapporo to Okinawa and everywhere in between, these glaring errors have become so consistent and ingrained.
In my job, I've had to 'unpick' a lot of learnt errors, and the look on some of my students' faces when they realise that what they've been taught is wrong. From utter rejection to downright suspicion, not knowing whether their gaijin teacher is being serious or pulling their leg.
It is heartbreaking and infuriating.
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u/Ill-Tank-4702 3d ago
I think it's worth mentioning that the reason they're all making the same mistakes isn't necessarily because they're all actively being taught the same incorrect English and are having these mistakes deliberately ingrained, it's just because they aren't proficient yet and all have the same first language (L1 interference). Like in two of the examples you gave, they're missing prepositions, which don't exist in Japanese, so it's common for Japanese learners of English to struggle with them. So I'd argue it's their default starting point that would always have needed to be corrected rather than necessarily a learnt error. Obviously it still suggests that English education in Japan is generally poor, but it's not really surprising they all make the same mistakes.
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u/Any_Calligrapher8537 9d ago
Let me tell you how it goes and we'll see if you still think it's weird afterwards.
Imagine a football team, they sit inside a classroom learning all about the formations, strategies and tactics of playing football. They know all the names of the plays, the best teams and the greatest players. They memorise the badges of the other teams and what colours they wear.
But they never actually play football.
Would you think it weird that this time is terrible at playing football?
Welcome to English education in Japan.
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u/grinch337 8d ago
Right, in other words, they teach English as a subject instead of as a language.
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u/Any_Calligrapher8537 8d ago
Bingo.
All the Japanese education system needs to do is look to a country that does it successfully and copy that. That's it..
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u/Orkaad [福岡県] 8d ago
Or to make a comparison with martial arts, aikido. They nerver spar.
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u/kidshibuya 7d ago
And their coaches are people from western countries that have only watched football on TV and took that job because they literally cannot get any other.
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u/MyriadFX 9d ago
I’m working as a new ALT and what really surprises me is that there is no speaking element of English tuition. Students in my school don’t take speaking exams. In classes of 40 students it’s so difficult to get the students speaking.
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u/bacon_nuts 8d ago
I was put in charge of a set amount of lessons at my school (with supervision). I ended up almost exclusively doing speaking practice. If the kids were writing, it was stuff to say later, they mostly ended up interviewing each other, or giving group presentations. I got sick of the only speaking practice being the "repeat after me" with the new grammar.
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u/WindJammer27 9d ago
I think the problem is deeply rooted in Japanese social and cultural norms.
The best way to learn a language is to actually use it. You will make mistakes, but those mistakes help you to learn. But Japanese people hate making mistakes and potentially looking bad, which prevents them from ever trying. So they are taught English but it doesn't stick because they never actually bother to use it.
The English teaching curriculums are also designed around getting the students to pass exams, rather than making them actually proficient in English.
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u/Famous__Draw 8d ago
Its about how much English they absorb outside of the classroom. I see everybody is blaming the education system and that's partly to blame, but the major blame lies on Japan simply having no English exposure in daily life.
News, media, TV program: 100% Japanese.
Direction, names, places, ministries, govt documents and websites: 100% Japanese
Product labels (even for dangerous goods which can cause fire): 100% Japanese.
For Japan, the world simply doesn't exist outside of the Japanese language.
For a Japanese person, there is no point in learning English, and no matter how good the teacher is, a 1-hour class can't teach anything if it's not applied in daily life.
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u/Jhoosier 8d ago
I was watching a variety show one evening and everyone was making fun of this guy for missing a quiz questions about an English word. His response was, "Of course I can't speak English, I'm Japanese!"
Everyone laughed, but I couldn't help but think of all my students who probably heard that or similar.
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u/sudopm 7d ago
Exactly. It legitimately has nothing to do with not being taught to “speak”. Comprehension is the backbone of speaking and japanese don’t have that because they just don’t consume english media. They have a very developed domestic media market and just don’t branch out and interact with english much at all.
an hour a day of a “class” is not whats teaching most people english around the world is the actual total amount of comprehensible exposure to the language
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u/TheSorrryCanadian 9d ago edited 9d ago
Native english who's also lived in non english native developing countries, and then Japan.
My theory is that higher education countries are the worst with languages. They focus only on grammar from the beginning. Americans, Australians, British, Japanese, Chinese, suck at 2nd languages, but I bet they can 'read' better and know individual words.
Developing countries tend to just speak english without the primary focus on perfect grammar first, and they speak so much better for it.
I think languages are taught terribly in developed countries.
Edit: I didn't mean certain European countries learning English, that's a different category
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u/limbo-chan 9d ago
I don't think this is true for European countries.... Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland for instance all have very high English literacy and fluency rates
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u/Amazing-Spinach5693 9d ago
Helps that we dont dub over every single thing.
Like all english in japan is dubbed over.11
u/paulct91 9d ago
...Yes. Seriously a Japanese originated show, Detective Conan (AKA 'Case Closed', English Name), had a Soccer/Futball episode with actual 'native' English speakers voiced by clearly badly English defecient accent Japanese voice actors. So, the foreigner English speaking characters all had Japanese-Englishisms. It was so weird as it was supposed to be foreigners fixing soccer matches for profit and it just sounded so off with Japanese-English accent ruining the vibes of the 'foreigners'.
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u/alkaiser142 [埼玉県] 8d ago
But think about all the owarai geinin who would lose work if they no longer dubbed every piece of western media! s/
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u/limbo-chan 8d ago
Absolutely, this is a huge point! In Finland I would say this is a large reason for high English fluency rates and language acquisition as Finnish kids are growing up. During the older generations time, popular English songs used to get completely dubbed into Finnish, but these days all the younger generations just listen to English music and watch shows/movies in English. It helps a ton.
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u/DJpesto 9d ago
While that is true. English and at least Danish, Swedish, Norwegian - are not that far apart.
I am Danish, and have been trying to learn Japanese for talking to my Japanese wifes friends and family. It is a completely different thing to learn a language that is so different.
That said - if I had structured classes and homework in a school multiple times a week I think I would grasp it a lot faster than once pr. week in an evening class...
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u/limbo-chan 8d ago
Yes I am aware, I know Swedish. But Finnish and English are polar opposites - linguistically speaking Finnish is closer to Japanese than it is English. Yet Finns are very fluent in English. There is obviously a lot of things at play here, but I just pointed it out as the original statement was "higher education countries are the worst with languages" which is just not true.
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u/LifeInJapan1999 9d ago
In America is that you never need to know a second language and since English is the lingua franca of the world they never really need to learn anything else. I never began learning a second language until adulthood. Most people who have a second language have it because their parents speak it.
Unfortunately for Japan, they cannot get away with this world view, since the moment you leave Japan the amount of things in Japanese quickly disappears.
English though, English is everywhere.
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u/gotwired [宮城県] 9d ago
It doesn't really disappear for Japan though because Japanese rarely actually leave Japan and almost never do so out of necessity.
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u/LeRobber 9d ago
You do not understand how many years of english language training japanese students get.
The curriculum is just braindead.
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u/Silent_Fudge_3978 9d ago
In America is that you never need to know a second language and since English is the lingua franca of the world they never really need to learn anything else.
It's much the same in the UK and Australia.
Unfortunately for Japan, they cannot get away with this world view, since the moment you leave Japan the amount of things in Japanese quickly disappears.
Yeah, any time I say anything about Japanese peoples' English ability to a Japanese person, they say something about how you don't go to the UK or US and except people to speak Japanese there, and I have to point out that it's not a valid comparison: English is a global language of trade, and Japanese just isn't, just like German isn't despite it also being a strong world economy. China now is at or close to the #1 economy in the world, but again, Chinese is not a global language of trade, English is.
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u/paulct91 9d ago
This isn't true entirely, in American publis schools usually they do try to get people to learn a second langauge but... there isn't much push to do even Spanish let alone distant country langauges. I think maybe middle school (7th & 8th grades) have one or maybe two langauges, usually at least Spanish and high school (9th-12th grade) have again Spanish one or two levels and maybe... maybe if they got lucky other langauges to choice from, not mandatory but, I think some have a year or two of langauge learning as a graduation requirement.
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u/Dry_Row_7523 8d ago
I went to a below average public school in the southern US and we still had 4 languages available, French Spanish German and Latin. Generally if you were a reasonably good student they pushed you to take at least 4 years of language because it helps a lot with university admissions.
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u/bee_hime [沖縄県] 8d ago
most japanese people are 100% content to never leave japan anyway. they don't see any reason to because "everything they need is in japan". that and salaries aren't really "international travel" friendly.
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u/Silent_Fudge_3978 9d ago
This is easily disproved by looking at many European countries, especially Germany which is very much a peer nation to Japan in many ways (in both good and bad ways too). Germany is #4 on the list. In my experience, every college-educated German I've ever met spoke excellent English.
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u/Garbage_Plastic 9d ago
To be fair, Japanese is culturally and structurally one of the most distant languages from English, or other Latin-based languages
Korean is the easiest, linguistically-closest language for a Japanese to learn (and vice versa), but even then, they are less similar than English to Russian.
Learning any other Latin-based (and even some Proto-Indo-European languages) by English natives, would be easier than Japanese learning Korean.
I do share your criticism of language pedagogy, but it is difficult to agree with generalisations that overlook deeper linguistic differences and barriers.
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u/LeRobber 9d ago
English is syntactically rigid but morphologically simple, while Japanese is morphologically complex but syntactically flexible.
English has very low morphological complexity. We use very few endings to indicate tense or number (e.g., adding -s for plural or -ed for past tense). Most of our "work" is done by auxiliary verbs (will, have, did) and prepositions (to, with, at).
Japanese builds meaning by stacking various suffixes onto a verb or adjective root. A single Japanese verb can carry the weight of an entire English phrase (indicating tense, negation, causation, passivity, and politeness all in one word).
This means Japanese learners have a VERY irregular prepositional and auxiliary verb memorization-resisitant hump to get over.
If you move a word out of place in English, the sentence usually becomes ungrammatical or changes meaning entirely. This makes English syntax inflexible.
This is because Japanese uses particles (like wa, ga, o, ni) to mark the grammatical function of each word, so you can kinda order things a lot more ways.
Also, you aways have to say a lot of bits of the sentence in English that you can just omit in Japanese. This makes lots of simple sentences VERY different between the two langauges. You have to do so much stuff in exactly the right order, that you're going to do it too slowly if you don't literally speak it and engage that part of your brain...but you don't really speak it that much in the curriculum.
Its just horrifically bad curriculum implemented everywhere on a moderately different language.
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u/Conscious_Shame_9164 9d ago
Chinese is rather distant and yet English proficiency in Taiwan is pretty good and (anecdotally) getting better.
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u/HeroicPrinny 8d ago
I studied Japanese first and now Chinese. Now I understand why Chinese people are so much better at English. The word order and logic of throwing together a sentence is very similar to English. I feel more able to speak Chinese than I ever did with Japanese despite spending way more time studying it.
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u/Garbage_Plastic 9d ago
I am also critical of JP’s outdated pedagogy compounded by social and economical challenges.
I was just pointing out the potential danger of english-centric view on the “second-language”.
Chinese (and Vietnamese) exhibit a fair bit more superficial structural similarities to English. Also, more versatile pronunciation palette and tones than extremely limited Japanese.
On top of that, I could argue JP has turned somewhat more introverted as a nation. Less people travelling overseas and even holding passports than before. It’s the manifestation of complex layers of problems and barriers in my opinion.
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u/unrealhoang 9d ago
But that can’t explain the discrepancy between Japanese and Korean in English proficiency. Same for Chinese and Vietnamese (vn have a bit more adv since they use roman script).
The only difference is culture. Japanese seems to take pride being BAD at English, feels cute or something. Idols on TV giggling at butchering English.
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u/PaxDramaticus 9d ago
Chinese
I have met loads of Chinese people who speak excellent English. Your theory is, I'm sorry to be blunt, complete rubbish. It's not education that inhibits foreign language learning, it's when a country's cultural economy becomes inward-looking enough that people feel satisfied not looking outside their borders for information.
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u/CaptainGustav 9d ago
Most Chinese people with good English proficiency are concentrated in certain developed regions; they only appear numerous due to China's massive total population. In most areas, people have virtually no English classes and, consequently, do not speak the language at all.
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u/theintersecter 9d ago
I spent 8 years in China and seven here. The level of English proficiency I've seen here per capita is way better than China, albeit about even when looked at the whole population.
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u/LeRobber 9d ago
No, its just japan. They do the same thing poorly everywhere with fervor in english language in school
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 9d ago
The problem is that those kids only learn English at school. But 90% of the time, none of them practice it outside of school hours. None of their daily activities & conversations involve the English language. In short, no incentive for them to actively pursue it.
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u/Lebenmonch 8d ago
Anyone who is here that got serious about learning Japanese understands exactly why they never learn English.
Learning a language is all about exposure, and there will never be enough time at school to get the exposure necessary to learn English.
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u/AMLRoss 8d ago
There is no real curriculum. The government hires dispatch companies like interac to send "teachers" to schools. Often one teacher to two or more schools. Meaning they only teach one class once a month. Those teachers are often, and best case scenario, native English speakers with little to no experience or qualifications. Worst case non native speakers.
So who do the students see the rest of the time? Japanese teachers who in many cases don't even speak the language.
There are a million ways to fix this, but they don't want to.
Easiest would be to hire qualified and experienced teachers and ask them to create a full curriculum with testing. But doing that would be too much of an investment.
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9d ago edited 19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zen1 [アメリカ] 9d ago edited 8d ago
Let’s Dansinglish!
The elementary schools I taught at in the 2010s used this insane program and I still know some of these by memory because they had to listen to them multiple times every week for 2 1/2 years (IIRC six different elementary schools in the town; I rotated throughout them all, and they ALL used the same lesson plans for english, maybe for other subjects too)And of course, most of the homeroom teachers had zero English ability (this town had an English program at elementary long before it was national so teachers would get transferred in from other schools where they weren’t expected to teach English )
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u/Moritani 9d ago
Wow. The lyrics, the accent, the dancing, the kids' looks of utter bewilderment. Everything about this is just awful. A cinematic marvel.
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u/Zen1 [アメリカ] 8d ago edited 8d ago
The most frustrating part of this is how the kids would learn by rote, and so they would assume that those gestures were associated with those phrases in ordinary English. It was really really hard to get them to stop doing all those waves every single time they were speaking 😂
I don’t know if anybody made it this far in the playlist but the reggae one is definitely my favorite https://youtu.be/sARqdiAjId0
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u/Squiddy_ 9d ago
Holy shit when I was an ALT one of my teachers loved this. I always would wonder what the people in this video were doing now aha
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u/BadIdeaSociety 9d ago
I don't mind the Englishisms of Japanese English. I wish more of them would just embrace the quirks and use it with people in the international community.
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u/Jace678 9d ago
It’s like another person said. Japan, at least culturally, doesn’t care enough about learning English. No matter how many people say they do or that Japanese people want to, it’s not a significant number to warrant an actually change to the current system.
The current mindset is: I don’t know English and I don’t care enough to change that. That’s obviously not what everyone thinks but as a society, it is.
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u/throwaway_acc0192 9d ago
This is a pen
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u/Famous__Draw 8d ago
Ball knower. Reminds me of "foreigners saying this is a pen and spreading covid" propaganda about how foreign voices spit out more particles in air. Everyone says Japan's living in 2050, I would say more like 1900.
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u/Melonpan78 9d ago
I teach English to a juku (cram school) English teacher, whose level is pitiful considering her job. I'm fond of her, but it angers me that to get my job in Japan, I had to jump through all manner of ridiculous hoops, while a non-native speaker can do it with such a poor grasp of the language.
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u/Due_Bar_7247 9d ago
Yeah I quickly learned that the few Japanese people who were/became native English speakers were born in English-speaking countries and spent half their school life there.
The funny thing is that despite their terrible language ability they expect others to be perfect in Japanese otherwise we’re just stupid foreigners. It’s really unequal the expectations they have.
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u/Sufficient_Coach7566 8d ago
My Japanese is much better now, but I will never forget what happened many years ago.
Was in some club and ended up chatting with a drunk Japanese guy, he was maybe mid to late 20s. I was speaking in Japanese and his reply was: "You're Japanese is so shit!" In that horrible accent that a LOT of Japanese guys try to use when they attempt to sound like a native English speaker and use curse words.
Mind you, that guy's English was probably below the "order a pizza" level. To this day: fuck that guy.
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u/Due_Bar_7247 8d ago
I did half of my undergraduate degree in Japanese, but because my grammar is fucked when I am speaking even though I convey my message they don’t care they’ll still dunk on me lol
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u/OneBurnerStove 8d ago
I think the crazy expectations of language acquisition they ascribe onto us is the same they place on themselves. Hence why many just say 無理 and give up when it comes to speaking english.
If it doesn't come off perfect they don't wanna talk or try.
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u/fizzunk 9d ago
Imagine seeing all this effort and money poured into English education, only to basically be rubbing shoulders with Afghanistan. A country that's been in almost 5 decades of political and regime instability.
At this point just blow everything up and start all over again.
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u/gotwired [宮城県] 9d ago
Afghans are probably better at English, but wouldn't do so well on tests because of low literacy rates. The (admittedly few) Afghans I have met all have been polyglots, but only had rudimentary writing skills.
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u/FrenchLadyNerd 8d ago
My friend from Afghanistan speaks near fluent English and says all her classmates did too… because they need to for a better future. In Japan I think there’s no functional pressure or need to learn, so why would they?
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u/2railsgood4wheelsbad 9d ago
The trouble with this ranking is that it doesn’t guarantee like for like comparisons. It just compares samples of each country’s population that choose to take EF’s test. Access to the test is going to be quite different in Afghanistan and Japan. I’d guess that only fairly well educated Afghans are in a position to take it whereas test takers in Japan are probably from a broader, more representative demographic. So Afghanistan’s true average ability is probably much, much lower than Japan’s.
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u/PaxDramaticus 9d ago
whereas test takers in Japan are probably from a broader
I can see how that would be a comforting conclusion to jump to, but I see no evidence indicating we should jump to it.
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u/Flashy_Bluejay_1370 9d ago
I’m American, my kids are American. They get marked down regularly (they’re 1st and 3rd year junior high students) for English tests that they’ve done correctly. Honestly, with the weak yen and anti-foreigner sentiment, we’re leaving this winter anyway.
It’d be better for my kids if the schools didn’t even try to teach English. It’s confusing them and then they get mad when they’re incorrectly marked wrong lol I’ve found many English teachers here don’t actually know or speak English. But it’s not gonna be my problem here soon. I know that sounds shitty, but they have a massive pool of ALTs that they literally just have desk warming or being human tape recorders. Waste of money tbh.
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u/Any_Calligrapher8537 9d ago
Can you give me an example of things they've been told are wrong? I could use a good laugh!
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u/Flashy_Bluejay_1370 9d ago
Mostly apostrophes and adding or forgetting random words.
For a lesson on schedules that my son told me about:
Teacher: “Example, ‘I like play basketball on weekend.’”
Student (in Japanese): “How do I say I went to school?”
Teacher: “I go school in morning.”
He knows you aren’t supposed to correct the teacher, so he tries to help his friends only if they ask. But then they all get marked wrong for adding unnecessary words… like “to” and “the” lmaoMy daughter has pretty much given up entirely. English/LA was her favorite subject in the US, so it’s killing her. One test question on an environmental passage was “how can we help the sea otter?” So she wrote, “we can help sea otters by~”. When she got it back and it was marked wrong, she asked why. The teacher said “the sea otter mean one sea otter. Not many, many sea otter. See ‘the’? One sea otter.” And my daughter knew “the” meant otters as a collective, but just bit her tongue and came home to complain to me lol I get what the teacher was saying, but my daughter is 15 and I don’t need her developing bad habits before college.
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u/Any_Calligrapher8537 9d ago
Wow... They were actually MUCH worse than I was expecting. I've been teaching here for 20 years on my own little place and I focus on just being natural and being able to communicate. And I've heard horror stories about bad teachers... Marking entire paragraph as 0 because of a missed comma or question mark...
Even marking things incorrect if the shape of the letters was different to the standard....
Sometimes I can't believe what I'm hearing..
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u/toryn0 9d ago
why dont you say anything to the teachers though…? like theyre teaching them horrible habits
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u/Flashy_Bluejay_1370 9d ago
Last year, my daughter had an awesome English teacher. Phenomenal. I adored this woman. She was at the junior high for my daughter’s 1st & 2nd years. The teacher this year just happened to get both my kids, son on his first year & daughter on her last. And she’s just… not great. So the great teacher got rotated out and this one got rotated in.
I actually think the majority of English teachers here are good. I think there’s quite a few older ones, though, that genuinely don’t know English and since the teachers move around every few years, those teachers stall or regress the English learning.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel like it’s my place to call out a teacher. Especially since this lady isn’t the homeroom teacher for either of my kids. And who would I tell? Yeah, I often meet teachers (not English) that speak amazing English, but otherwise, nobody at the school would probably understand my concern. And I think Japan has a teacher shortage anyway, right?
We’ve run into plenty of other English teachers just by participating in international and local events. So far, I’ve only met 3 teachers that I wouldn’t feel comfortable teaching English to anyone. Otherwise, I think they’re great. I probably sounded too negative in my original reply. I just meant that I can see why the comprehension is declining. Even the good English teachers are relying more and more on AI and translators so the kids are SOL for actual learning and retention.
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u/toryn0 8d ago
but it is your place when theyre literally teaching them wrong - like in teacher parents meetings
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u/Technical_Estate_529 8d ago
Bruv wot. That's like saying it is not my place to correct the maths teacher if they teach 1+1=-173
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u/Flashy_Bluejay_1370 8d ago
I don’t have an education degree in Japan. I’m not a teacher. And if she can’t translate in the parent teacher conferences, I doubt she’ll understand what I’m trying to tell her about the grammar points. Plus, it would just make my kids’ lives harder.
If we were staying, I’d probably do it. But since we’re outta here in a few months and my kids are the only English speaking students in the entire town? Yeah, the school is gonna care about English accuracy as much as the entire Japanese educational system at large. I just see the teacher getting confused and offended, then changing absolutely nothing. I might be a little jaded by Japanese work politics lol
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u/bacon_nuts 9d ago
Sometimes the kids are just taught straight up wrong grammar.
In English we can say "it's fun for me to play baseball". I wouldn't say it like that, I'd say "I like playing..." or "I enjoy...", but whatever.
So we can swap out "fun" for a few words, like enjoyable or exhilarating. But my teacher used "happy", which doesn't work at all. So I had a whole class writing:
It's happy for me to watch anime.
It's happy for me to eat ramen.
It's happy for me to play soccer.
No. "I'm happy when I watch anime" is correct. But just being an ALT, we come to a class and thats the teaching plan. Can't change it now. It's not even an error in the textbook, just teacher stuff. So I tell the teacher and they're just like "oh... It's ok - this is easy for them". Basically being told they don't have time to fix it and to stay in my lane. So then when I mark it, I can't even mark it wrong. I don't get it. If I were teaching Japanese and had a Japanese ALT I'd run everything by them and ask them if it made sense. Not the entire lesson plan, just the main grammar points.
It's honestly draining seeing kids try to learn English and be taught shit that just doesn't make sense.
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u/Any_Calligrapher8537 9d ago
Totally get it ... Well I've never taught at an actual school but I hear stories like this sometimes. Kids being taught gibberish but their teachers being so confidently wrong about it.
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u/Wild-Ad9269 6d ago
I've been studying japanese for a few months now (will probably quit after learning how xenophobic and arrogant they became). And i think one of the biggest problems is that japanese needs a much higher amount of guesswork than other languagues like english, there's hundreds of sentences that don't specify a subject or many other details within the sentence that cannot be ignored in proper english. Maybe if they were to take foreigners who speak the languague more seriously and had not spent hundreds of years using kata...
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u/CapExtension9002 9d ago
Just a couple of examples off the top of my head.
Putting a comma after "so" and "because" - "Because, it is fun."
Another one is overusing "must" where "have to" is more appropriate - "My mom told me that I must help her out with the dishes."
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u/DidntTapDat 9d ago
yup not surprised, teachers here are kinda morons
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u/Flashy_Bluejay_1370 9d ago
I’ve had homeroom teachers occasionally try to pull in an English teacher for parent teacher conferences only to realize it doesn’t help any of us. They normally do it the very first conference, realize it actually slows us down, and then just do the conferences in Japanese with me going forward. The few times it’s happened, the teachers haven’t been able to translate anything the home room teacher is saying. It’s been… enlightening.
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u/NoProfessional4650 8d ago
Yeah my wife and I made it clear that we’d never send our kids to a public school in Japan. Either they go to ASIJ or we don’t move there. Seems like the right choice hearing your experience.
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u/redchairyellowchair 8d ago
I'm leaving in the next few months too! Hi five feels like we've noticed the same shit. Lucky my daughter hasn't even entered school yet but don't want her to start here
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u/HangryTern8150 9d ago
Landing in the bottom group is less surprising when the opening lesson is basically “I don’t speak English,” like the movie giving away its twist in the first scene.
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u/niceguyjin [東京都] 8d ago
I went to watch my kids' elementary school open day, which happened to have a 4th grade English class run by the homeroom teacher. He kicked it off with Wakawaka, the soccer world cup song, and played it twice coz why not. The kids were really losing interest by now, so he struck back with none other than the ABC song. And, you guessed it, he played it twice. Mind you, not because anyone asked him to, or wanted it, he was just obviously grinding down the clock. Then the meat of the lesson: days of the week. He mumbled through all seven, not forgetting to mix up Tuesday and Thursday, but actually forgetting to do any drilling or pronunciation work. Then 15 minutes to write the days in the book. Then came the grand finale, what day do you like? I like_____. For literally about 1 and a half minutes.
This was an open day.
Zero fucks.
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u/volsung808 8d ago
I just finished 5 years there and my schools in my prefecture were literally some of the ONLY schools to even edge past the “standard” scores. And the rest were so far dramatically behind it wasn’t even funny.
5 years of meetings, trainings, lessons, coaching, specialists, and everyone “bob sensei (fake name) what can we do to improve, how are your schools successful?” And five years of literally every suggestion being shot down, told the kids won’t understand, it’s impossible, or sheer disbelief in anything I said and just “follow the backwards ass stupid book we have”…
They will not change, for better or worse and in this case worse, and it’s a bitter edged sword in Japan in general of their culture… Japan will Japan for however long Japan will be Japan, until the last person just fades away.
I had friends all over SE Asia, actual teachers, ALTs, and in between. All countries dramatically higher on English scores, and if I showed or demonstrated any of their lessons, plans, or curriculum the “Japanese professionals” would literally blank state, say that’s impossible, or say nothing… then proceeded to do the same thing that’s not worked at all, give you another two hour lecture on some stupid bullshit, and another google account because idk why… basic teachers and classrooms outside of cities don’t even know how to open email and are sorely under equipped but yeah another gmail account and yet another online English game is gonna solve it this time.
Or straight up plagiarism… literally had a few meetings where the non English speaking English expert (no joke) spent hours teaching us how to literally steal and rip and copy content from places online.
I love Japan, I loved my time there, it’s precious to me, met my fiancé there, lifelong friends, etc. But my god it’s not the shining utopia internet makes it out to be and the English teaching is beyond appalling. And it was a tough pill I had to swallow fast… they will not change full stop ever they do not care.
Do what you can in your own day to day circle and try to make it better but you’d have better luck breaking down a concrete wall with your bare hands then getting them to ever change or adapt to anything ever. The systems are just so bizarre there. I could go on and on but this is way too long already.
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u/kamatacci 9d ago
Here's my theory. In 2016, give or take, they completely revamped the elementary school English. Before, English was mainly just taught to 5th and 6th graders and not in an overly structured way. It was the basics and a few fun projects mainly just to get them comfortable with the language. Junior high school rolled around and they essentially started from zero but with a bit of foundation behind them.
Now, they start English from third grade up, essentially pushing the 5th and 6th grade lessons back, and the new 5/6ers get the old first year JHS lessons. On paper, this is good. But it's being taught by unprepared Japanese teachers (not to mention ALT companies racing to the bottom) and it's being taught a bit too seriously. All the other subjects are pretty fun and hands on like English used to be, but now it's heavily tests, worksheets, etc. Nothing else is really taught like that in ES. So many students just want nothing to do with that, and Japanese teachers would never force them to do work. They just let them be.
Then when JHS rolls around, the schools assume they learned those first few lessons (you know, the fairly important ones) and they move on with no review. So many students tuned those out, and unless they get their act together really quickly, they will forever be behind. Schools only care about finishing those textbooks on schedule and would never spend time reviewing old stuff, nor would they care if students are struggling or simply stopped giving a shit.
The last JHS textbook I worked with did not teach who, what, where, when, why because apparently the ES schools had that covered. Apparently, because it was a miracle if a single student in the class knew those terms. The textbooks just used those words, expecting the students to know them, and didn't even list them in the glossary (despite including such words as "apple" and "cat"). To so many Japanese people, knowing flashcards = knowing English.
I know I'm shitting on the schools a lot, but they have bigger problens as well, namely being overworked and underpaid. And the parenting of so many Japanese children is just atrocious. Now, the over dependence of AI is really going to hurt them more going forward. There are other problems, but them changing how they teach ES English (and not fixing it despite a decade of clear decline) is really going to haunt this country.
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u/LeRobber 8d ago
They teach it pretty bad past that too, by people who don't speak it.
It's bad bad.
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u/Ocluist 8d ago
I’m currently in Japan and, having traveled extensively around the world, it’s easily one of my favorite countries. At the same time, it has probably the lowest level of English proficiency I’ve encountered in any major developed country I’ve visited.
I was actually remarking to a friend today that you could spend months traveling around Tokyo and never come across an English-language book for sale. Likewise, even in places that regularly serve international visitors (hotels, train stations, restaurants, and other tourist-oriented businesses) it’s not uncommon to encounter staff who are unable or unwilling to communicate in English.
So seeing Japan rank this low in English proficiency doesn’t surprise me. In the long term, I think it presents a real challenge for Japanese businesses operating internationally. In an increasingly interconnected economy, difficulty communicating with customers, partners, and talent outside Japan can become a meaningful competitive disadvantage.
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u/Hat_Maverick 8d ago
The only people in tokyo who could understand English were the Indian and Phillipino immigrants working the konbini and mcdonalds. All Japanese had 0% understanding.
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u/TheRedPillMonk 9d ago
They're even less likely to care with AI translation.
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u/TrumpChildOnahole 8d ago
Which is still not going to be used in live international business meetings because it's awkward. But yeah
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u/TheRedPillMonk 8d ago
I don't support it, but it's being used in corporate emails and presentations as we speak. The Japanese are far more open to AI, especially if it can circumvent one of their biggest failings.
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u/rougarou-te-fou 8d ago
I taught ESL for a while and my Japanese students were by far the poorest speakers. They were also very shy and completely unwilling to engage. I varied my activities to reduce social strain, but no matter what I did my classroom was always dominated by Turkish, Korean, and Saudi students while the rest of my classroom, which often were actually majority Japanese, said nearly nothing.
My Japanese students did complete their homework at a higher rate but it never seemed reflected in their speaking skills.
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u/StevieNickedMyself 8d ago
English is the international business language but Japan just doesn't seem to get this. Well, you can see the result.
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u/dada_ 9d ago
What's interesting to me is that in 2011 it was 14th (now 96th). I don't feel like English ability changed that much, so I'm guessing this is more a result of other countries overtaking it, or possibly more countries being included in the survey.
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u/Garbage_Plastic 9d ago
That’s also my hypothesis as well.
But also, fewer incentives. Outbound tourism (even % of passport holders) has dropped significantly over time.
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u/xXx_EdGyNaMe_xXx 8d ago edited 8d ago
Yes, I'm old enough to remember when even Europeans didn't speak English. It was basically only Dutch, Germans, and Scandinavians that had any real level of English proficiency at all. Now you can go to rural Romania and find fluent English speakers. Dozens of countries hyper focused on English education and being integrated into the global English speaking internet also really helped them, Japanese people sticking to their relatively segregated "Japanese internet" harms them significantly more than the garbage education system imo. Anecdotally, I'm from Kazakhstan and every person I know who is fluent in English learned online through osmosis, playing Counter-Strike, using Twitter, watching English subbed anime, etc.
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u/dada_ 8d ago
Yeah I know people from so many different places on earth. It's so nice to have a common language to do stuff around. What's also funny is that everybody who plays games online or organizes communities or events now also has a very finely honed sense of ESL (English as second language) where people will say things that are incorrect but you still get what they mean.
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u/Hentai-Is-Just-Art 9d ago
If anything it was more dreadful when Japan was 14th, just what does it say for the rest of the world if in country #14 there's literally not a single competent English speaker to be found for every 100k people
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u/Cebuanolearner 9d ago
It was the lowest when I was in college like 20 years ago so it's the same as far as iknow
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u/Wowfishes 9d ago
When I was in Japan I had the luck to have a conversation with a British man teaching English in Japan. He complained he wasn't allowed to teach effectively. He told me they almost only learn from repeating phrases and simple answers to those phrases as well as words. They don't learn to actually converse and speak the language.
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u/macross1984 9d ago
No surprise. Japanese seem content staying in their land and not bother to learn conversational English if they can help it.
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u/Keypop24 8d ago
I assume it's because they aren't taught to speak english, but taught to memorize answers for a a test and mark the correct answers
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u/DidntTapDat 9d ago
not remotely surprised, expect it to get even worse with AI as an easy excuse for translation mixed with running away from anything foreign
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u/Hapaerik_1979 9d ago
Some problems are the focus on exam preparation, grammar translation vs. communication, very little speaking time, busy teachers, no professional development, all junior high school students have smartphones now, etc. I can’t imagine it will get any better.
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u/Pretend-Box3390 8d ago
I taught English in Japan 30 years ago. Their focus was not to be able to speak English. Their goal was to produce students who could read scientific journals in English.
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u/capaho 9d ago
It is a sad state of affairs when my dogs understand more English than most of the Japanese people I know.
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u/CommonBig8132 8d ago
It is very sad. I genuinely agree with you because my dog was able to recognize and respond to more phrases than most of my students and teachers could when I was an ALT.
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u/Content_Piccolo1074 8d ago
American soft power is in the toilet, and probably will never recover to anywhere like what it was. Combined with the shitty teaching method, and Japanese kids just have no motivation to learn the language. Honestly, with the way things are going, they should be learning Mandarin.
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u/EdibleStrange 9d ago
They say the hardest part of learning a foreign language is idioms. I find it's best to study examples.
For instance, Japan's informal policy of discouraging English proficiency is a prime case of what English speakers might call "cutting off your nose to spite your face," the meaning of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.
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u/AMLRoss 9d ago
With how things are going, they're even less likely to hire full time English teachers to teach in japanese schools directly. They will keep up the charade of hiring middle companies like interac who will send non native speakers once a week and keep a large portion of the money the government is giving them.
Look online, they are still trying to pay people 25 a month. Those salaries have stayed the same for over 15 years or more.
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u/CapExtension9002 9d ago
English in Japan is taught by people who don't know English well. Go figure. It's like the blind leading the blind kind of situation.
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u/Sufficient_Coach7566 8d ago
My gf's company does English teacher dispatch B2B and also runs children's lessons. She complains all the time: 90% of the teachers are NOT native speakers of English.
It's more for entertainment than education, but they are continuing to grow...they do absolutely no assessments for students.
Also, she is the ONLY Japanese staff that can fluently speak Japanese and English.
Yeah, not surprised...
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u/RocasThePenguin 8d ago
Yeah. It’s pretty horrible. But Japan is sliding in general so this fits the narrative.
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u/Movies_and_Stuff 8d ago
If you’ve ever listened to someone talk about their time as an English teacher in Japan it’s not surprising.
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u/redditteer4u 8d ago
If you’re wondering how much English Japanese students actually study, here’s a rough breakdown:
Elementary School
Grades 3–4: 1 class/week (Foreign Language Activities)
Grades 5–6: 2 classes/week nationwide (official subject)
• 1 with an ALT, 1 with a Japanese teacher
Junior High School (Grades 7–9):
• 5 classes/week
• 1 with an ALT, 4 with a Japanese teacher
High School (Grades 10–12):
• 4–6 classes/week depending on school type
University:
• Mandatory English for 1–2 years
• 1–3 classes/week
Future English Teachers:
• 4–6 English classes per semester (English majors)
Total:
• 1,380 hours for a normal students
• 1,980 hours for future English teachers
And yet they will all say they don't know English.
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u/Tabletpillowlamp 7d ago
Japanese people don't really need English to live a good life. Japan is one of the only rich countries with their own domestic economy. And contrary to what the news say, it's pretty stable.
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u/The_Only_Smart_Alec 7d ago
Honestly, I feel like its a sign of Japan's current education system. It feels like its schools. Old, collapsing buildings with new AC and wifi bolted to crumbling cement walls. The whole structure feels simultaneously dated and "based on vibes". Kids aren't allowed to fail. Elementary kids don't get real grades. There's no incentive to try. I didn't grow up in the age of corporal punishment (and I'm thankful for that) but having what appears to be consequence-free schools is also borderline abusive to the kids.
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u/AlmondsButterfly 4d ago
Really funny that English is in the curriculum, but the teachers themselves don't know how to properly use the language
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u/TheRecordNinja 9d ago
while at the same time catapulting into the top spot for ENGRISH proficiency
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u/Famous__Draw 8d ago
If there was a Katakanized English benchmark, Japan would top it. Japan doesn't really learn English, it learns the Katakana version of English words.
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u/Maleficent-Moose-281 9d ago
Google Translate is essential for Japanese people to communicate with people from other countries.
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u/Gambizzle 9d ago
Lol, Japan’s English is being declared a disaster again based on people who voluntarily took an online test. Many of the countries above it use English as an everyday second language. Groundbreaking analysis.
Cue the cynical ALT pile-on about how this proves everything wrong with Japanese schools.
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u/NoobDeGuerra 8d ago
it's not accurate but it sure paints paints the general state of affairs that is english language education right now. Seriously, it's bad, heck, I've even seen Japanese teachers that cannot speak English tell me they are English teachers, like.... wth
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u/TrumpChildOnahole 8d ago
Weird that Japan is a top 5 economy but has been getting worse at English. You cant rely on Ai translation in real time for business meetings, you'd think if anything you'd want to learn the de facto international language for business.
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u/Haruka-Oh [愛知県] 8d ago
We don't need English because we did it without English.
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u/LostRadio8453 9d ago
There is virtually no incentive for Japanese people to learn English.
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u/Beastmode7953 9d ago
Except interacting with the broader world outside of their country or having opportunities in any other place on the planet
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u/Haruka-Oh [愛知県] 8d ago
Most of Japanese don't interest in them and are thinking no benefits with them.
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u/Stackhouse13 [東京都] 9d ago
doSomethingObviouslyBad();
expectNoConsequences();
// consequences happen
shockedPikachuFace();
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u/Next_Time6515 9d ago
Don’t take it badly. Australians are appalling at second languages unless use it at home.
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u/doedoughs 8d ago
Someone already mentioned it but to me, this is rooted in East Asian bullying culture especially starting in grade school. Just how kids get looked at and picked on here in the states for "being a know it all, geek, try hard", the same would happen to a Japanese child who seemingly enjoys learning English and is actually exceling at learning it. Also, being attention seeking is looked down upon in most East Asian cultures as well (the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hammered) so the environment in which these kids are "learning" English is fubar'd before they even get introduced to their "English teacher" who doesn't even speak a lick of English. Just a fucked situation through and through.
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u/PaxDramaticus 8d ago
"East Asian"? I have met loads of Koreans and Chinese people with excellent English.
It's Japanese bullying culture, specifically a tendency to frame learning another language as antithetical to Japanese identity.
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u/Hefty-Feed1400 9d ago
I’ve written this before, but my daughter’s elementary school English teacher told them on the first day of English class that she doesn’t speak English. What’s the point?