In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks. Japan recognizes the problem, but doesn't know what to do about it. Basically, English education has yet to succeed. [1][2]
This is the thing about Japan. They can make these moves that are incredibly progressive and ambitious -- visionary even, yet, they really have no idea how to go about doing it.
As it stands, they don't have enough teachers that can program, so teachers from other subjects will be filling in picking up the material from textbooks as they go along.
From what I've witnessed from my school years, I guarantee you the smarter students will be correcting their teachers and making a mockery of them. It happens whenever there is an English native speaker in a Japanese English class (guilty as charged), and it will happen whenever there is a real programmer in one of these "programming" classes -- at least for the foreseeable future.
"In Japan, English is already mandatory, yet, English fluency sucks."
Spoken fluency sucks. Reading and writing English is much better.
When I lived in Japan, and eventually achieved some basic fluency in speaking Japanese, communicating with my coworkers often consisted of English vocabulary, in sentences using Japanese pronunciation and grammar.
The reason for this is simple. They had plenty of access to English written material, and needed to read and understand it in order to do their job (computer science research).
But they had very little interaction with native English speakers on a day to day basis, so few opportunities to practice real time conversation. Which is the only way I know to actually become fluent speaking a second language.
You are correct that almost everybody is familiar with English, but that's not speaking it, let alone being fluent. To a degree, English already is part of the Japanese culture and language. But it's a different English. Some of it is compatible, but native speakers are the one's graciously degrading (to use a web programming term) to meet their level, and not them meeting you at a level you're accustomed to speaking.
Of course general familiarity is not a bad thing but is to be expected when they're taking classes everyday. The goal is for fluency, competency, and the capacity to be competitive at a global level. They're far from it, and that is why the system has yet to succeed.
The level of English in Japan is very low generally. Among engineers it is higher but mainly for reading and writing, and even then it's generally not fluency or anywhere near good enough to read or write comments on HN and (probably) not attract downvotes, more of the level to be able to get just enough from technical documentation so that you can get on with your day.
That's not true for all but the vast majority. I don't mean any of that as a slight - my Japanese is terrible, you wouldn't find me on whatever Japan's version of HN is. (That the level is so low is perhaps a valid criticism of the education system or society in general but certainly not valid against any individual).
Source: I'm a partner of an East Asian folkperson, living in Japan, giving a spousal perspective whilst reading a site in my native language. I save struggling with a foreign language for study and finding the login button on Japanese websites (harder than it should be[1]), I can understand why a Japanese engineer would be doing similar.
Ah, your point about English has got to be very important, it's significant that Japan is the world's worst at teaching English as a second language, and that has to be fatal for this domain.
It seems that he is serious. You knew that already. Perhaps you disagree? Perhaps you can present your own findings and contribute to the discussion?
Based on my own fairly limited experience in Japan, English as learned in school doesn't seem to translate (a ha ha) into effective English conversation. It seems that an academic rigor is taught (no bad thing, of course) but practical conversation skills are neglected.
Yeah, English ability in Japan is really limited overall. My mom (who's a Japanese national) was surprised/disappointed at my cousins' English ability after taking six years of English classes (the norm, I think).
From what I understand, part of it is just English being vastly different from Japanese, and the other part is the Japanese school system being really terrible at language teaching.
> my guess that English is taught some 2-3 hours per week
Neat, but your guess is wildly wrong, and you should therefore discard your conclusions. Japanese mid/high-schoolers take about as many hours of English as they do math, science, or Japanese, and most study further hours at cram schools.
The fact that very few Japanese people can speak conversation English despite an extremely rigorous education is what people are talking about here - not whether Japanese people "should" (in a normative sense) speak English, as you're trying to imply.
English is de facto required in Middle and High School in Japan, and many parents pay for extra tutoring. Many of the best corporate positions require you have a minimum fluency.
In other words: I have no idea where you got that idea.
> Even Japanese, a language used by 125 million, has similar issues, my Japanese coworkers frequently switch to English during technical discussions.
Are you Japanese yourself? If not I don't think it's strange that they would adapt their way of speaking with a foreigner, especially since most technical words in IT are coming from English anyway. For other fields, health for instance, it's totally possible to never heard English in months/years. Japanese is well alive, and English is more a social marker than anything else. Most Japanese have very bad command of English if at all and can live their whole life never using it.
I think you're unfairly generalising. I certainly never expect fluent English from people who don't have English as their first language. I do expect that people who studied a language for years at school should remember some, particularly if those school days were less than a decade ago. This is orthongonal to my suspicion (which I cannot prove) that English education in Japanese schools may emphasise formal rigour over conversation practice.
Now that I think about it, in the UK the comedy archetype of an idiot going abroad who expects everyone to speak English is well-known and a figure of fun. Which would suggest that people broadly don't expect everyone overseas to speak English.
I would be curious to know how many people in US or UK consider themselves fluent in a foreign language for a class they took for a few years in middle/high school.
I certainly remember enough of my schooldays French (last lesson would have been about 22 years ago) to ask simple questions, give directions, interact with shopkeepers, ask people how their day went, that sort of thing. I do not consider myself fluent. Of course, living and working in the UK, I do get opportunity to use it every so often, which helps a lot I expect.
I had a chat with a bunch of Japanese university students last month. They told me the same thing. They told me their English classes weren't too bad when it came to grammar, but they hardly ever practiced speaking the language. I can't even imagine learning a language without speaking it!
He also just described English education in Japan. Students just complete problems, and even those that do well never learn to speak English just through these classes.
Japan is a rather stubborn outlier, but even they still make an effort to learn. There's no getting around the fact that English is the language of science and commerce such that many people choose to learn it even if it's not their mother tongue. No need to get in a huff about it.
At least in Japan, learning English lets you speak to all foreigners. The expectation is that everyone who can't speak the native language at least can speak English.
This leads to most English being spoken in the country having no native participant. Having too idiomatic English will probably lead to harder communication.
And what is the real value of learning japanese? (apart from being an english teacher in japan) sure is fine as a hoby, but for a professional, I believe the japanese are the ones that should learn english, and don't take me wrong, my native tong is spanish and english my second one, but I see english as the universal language to learn.
It's a very useful language, but I doubt a Japanese classroom is a good place to become a good English speaker and user.
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