"LJ" and investigations math

[vorpal blade]

vorpal,

i think a major difference between japan and say india is that japan has established science and technology in japanese. scientific papers, tech documentation, etc is written in japanese, thus there isn't a pressing need for english. indians need english in order to work in the high tech industries there.

my anecdotal experience at intel was that chinese people actually have a much more difficult time learning english than indians. go figure.

but i can't really say i approve of the japanese educational system. college is not about learning, its about getting a big name on your diploma so you can get into a good company. few professors publish on a regular basis, and the whole system is generally just a formality. their primary and secondary education is much more rigorous than ours however. one aspect i do agree with is that students are split off at the end of middle school. some go on the university track, other go on to the technical school track. makes sense to me.

Interesting comments, bismark.

I used to write to an American who has been teaching English in Japan for years. He married a Japanese lady. I've since lost track of him.

Some of your comments are corroborated by my brother-in-law who served a mission in Japan about thirty years ago. He writes, "Based on the 1978 - 1980 Japan from my perspective, the Japanese are very stressed about school from the time they are in elementary school. To go to the best universities, you have to go to the right high school. To go to the right high school, you must attend certain middle schools - and so forth down to preschool. Grades were very very important to the high school students we were teaching. The students were all stressed about getting good exam scores..... Students in Japan study English for about 6 years. I think they have a hard time speaking English because the common sentence structure in Japanese is so different from the common sentence structure in English." He promised to ask a friend in Japan for his opinion.

Your last comment goes along with the book I mentioned, where he says that "too many people are going to college."

[Whistler]

another thing about Japanese people learning English: many times they don't have a native speaker, which impairs pronunciation. Hence the "teach English in Japan!" jobs for Americans.

[vorpal blade]

another thing about Japanese people learning English: many times they don't have a native speaker, which impairs pronunciation. Hence the "teach English in Japan!" jobs for Americans.

I'm sure that is true, but I wonder if it isn't more of a lack of desire than a lack of qualified teachers. They could easily let students listen to CDs and DVDs of native speakers. Many of us learned foreign languages without native speakers. They could pay more for native speaking teachers if it were really a high priority for the Japanese people. Missionaries offer free English lessons, and they have some takers, but the ones interested are only a tiny minority of the Japanese population. So, it seems to me to be more of an excuse than a real reason. I could be wrong.

[bismark]

my experience was that many japanese people could read english with a decent level of understanding, but they could barely speak anything.

[vorpal blade]

I just thought it was interesting, in the light of the comments made here, that I've heard that the way English is taught in Japan demonstrates a failure of the Japanese education system. I've heard that they learn English through rote memorization, and the purpose for learning English is just so they can gain entrance into a good Japanese university. Evidently they don't really want a knowledge of the English language for the sake of gaining knowledge. What they want to know has already been translated for them. Speaking of the majority, of course.

Interesting. Can you point me towards a source on that?

I haven't done any research on this, so I don't have an authoritative source. Here is some anecdotal evidence from someone in Japan.

It's great to hear from you again.
This might be interesting topic from the culture perspective.
First, [Vorpal]'s opinion is absolutely right in terms of our low quality of teaching and learning English.
Actually Japan is isolated from the other land and there's not so much influence from the other countries with different language, of course not in English, we have grown up without knowledge that English is a communication skill.
We started to study English from Junior high to High School for 6 years on average, but NO ONE could be able to speak and listen English. ?It was just one of the subject to study for big entrance test for good High School and/or University. ? We focus on the reading and writing from?grammar?perspective. ?We spend it for more than 99% of our time, rather than speaking and hearing.

We Japanese may be good to memorize something, but we may not get used to thi! nk and create something.
As I don't have my children to suffer from Japanese school system, I emphasize them for international study experience.