BY AGATSU KIMURA
"'School English' is composed of only reading and writing, hence it is useless actually because we do not have conversation." Influenced by such complaints, the Ministry of Education has changed the curriculum to include listening comprehension and spoken English. The education authorities try to teach students English which is used in daily life, and it is happy news for the Japanese people, who are said to be poor at English dialog.
It arouses, however, the suspicion as to whether this trial will go well. It is certain that school English emphasizes reading and writing, but that does not necessarily mean that the English we learned is useless. Even if you know only school English, you can talk with native speakers. You can read English books. Some can communicate better than those have studied abroad. It is important whether you study English zealously or not. How many people who think school English is futile can say that they studied English hard? There is no easy and instant way to master foreign languages.
In public junior high schools students study English three hours a week, spending one hour, called the "Jet Program," to have pleasant conversations with native speakers. Though they will get used to communicating, anybody can exchange greetings and chat. Many people persist in colloquy, but it is clear that reading and writing are the rudiments of talking. Conversation is a work of English composition in the mind, and students in middle-level classes of cram schools (they make up a quarter of the top high school students) cannot make a simple sentence such as "What did he eat?" (Nakamura, Chuichi. Dangerous Colleges 2000 edition. Sangokan.) It is doubtful that listening and speaking should be more valued than reading and writing.
Most Japanese business persons speaking English and supporting the country's foreign trade studied the foreign language at school. They can speak English because they have mastered school English as the basis and keep studying it zealously. They are professionals produced with textbook English, which lays stress on reading and writing.
Furthermore, thanks to the diffusion of the Internet, those two essential abilities are in demand much more for reading homepages and writing e-mail. The occasions for sending e-mail may surpass those for speaking with native speakers. In such conditions, it is stupid to decrease the time for these two skills.
Did you know that Japanese, who are said to be good only at reading and writing, do not attain prominence in those fields? Japanese have never excelled in grammatical structure and written expression, in the reading comprehension section of TOEFL and TWE (Test of Written English). It is not only in listening but in all English skills that Japanese are inferior.
Of course, reading and writing are not all the skills that we need to study. It is evident that listening and speaking are cardinal for taking leadership in the international society. Poor ability in listening and speaking is one of the reasons that Japan lacks the initiative in sports and politics.
Four skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking, all effect each other. The important thing is the curriculum displaying the proper balance of those qualifications and one's own vital effort. We will have to pay attention to internationalism a great deal more. We should accept English (or other foreign languages) positively in expressing our own ideas. We must not ignore the truth that we can reach a level high enough to have conversations if we master the junior high school textbook English.