What is the English level of the Japanese students and teachers like?
In general, very poor. Japan consistently comes out near the bottom of world English proficiency surveys. For example by looking at the 2010 data of the TOEFL tests you can see that Japanese native speakers are near the bottom of the list, only beating speakers of languages such as Bambaria, Kikuyu, Khmer, Kurdish, Lao, Uighar and Wolof. When compared to ‘English as a foreign language’ (EFL) speakers from developed countries the Japanese are pretty much at the bottom. Their English skills are below other East Asian countries such as China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. Of course Japanese is a very different language from English, but then so is Chinese and Korean, and these other countries are higher on the English league tables, despite not being as rich (per person). Here’s a summary of some of the factors that contribute to the poor English speaking ability of the Japanese: • Many Japanese people aren’t interested in learning English. They have no plans to ever leave
