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Today we explain why many Japanese do not speak English and how they can learn to speak English.

Japan is an island nation. Why is it that so many people do not speak English despite being an international city?

Don't you all wonder?

One reason why Japanese people are not good at conversing in English is that they do not have many opportunities to practice. There are many other reasons.

Let me introduce some of those reasons in two parts.

Today is the first part!

They don't feel the need for English

One of the reasons why Japanese people are not good at English is that they do not need English to live in Japan in the first place.

Outside of Japan, there are many occasions when English is unavoidably necessary because some books, etc. are not translated into their native languages.

However, as long as you live in Japan, there are few opportunities for Japanese people to need a language other than Japanese.

They may have started learning English because they need it for work, but they may not be motivated to learn English because they feel that they do not need it in real life.


English and Japanese are too different

One of the reasons why Japanese people have difficulty learning English is that English and Japanese are “distant” languages.

A study by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), an American international organization, found that Japanese is one of the most “distant” languages from English.

Learning Japanese is in the “III. exceptionally difficult” category, the most difficult for English speakers.

In other words, English is likely to be a “very difficult” language for Japanese speakers as well.


Lack of input

One study suggests that English speakers need 600-750 hours of study to master Spanish and Italian, which are “near” languages, whereas they need as many as 2,200 hours to master Japanese, which is a “far” language.

Suppose that it takes the same 2,200 hours for a Japanese person to master English.

However, the amount of time spent learning English in Japanese school education from elementary school to high school is about 700 hours under the existing curriculum guidelines and about 1,000 hours under the new guidelines.

It may seem like a lot of English has been learned at school, but in fact, the study time itself is less than half of the time needed to learn English.


Lack of output

It has been pointed out that “English classes” in Japanese schools originally focused too much on learning vocabulary and grammar, with little speaking training.

Even outside of school, living in Japan, there are few opportunities to actually engage in English conversation.

One possible reason why many Japanese do not speak English is that they do not have enough opportunities to practice.


It is painful to hear this from Japanese people...

It may be a simple question for foreigners.

But there was a national character and a good reason.

If you understand the reason, you may feel a little closer to the Japanese people.

I would be happy if you could keep this in the back of your mind!


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