English Proficiency: Japan vs. the Philippines

Here’s a tangential comment I wrote over at Autono Blogger which I thought might be interesting to the readers here.

In response to Autono Blogger’s post–which was itself a response to a recent post over at jarinefl–I stated the following…

I can really relate to your feelings here:

my growing awareness of a belief among Japanese students of English that they can somehow learn English ONLY by being in the presence of an English-speaking foreigner – “English by osmosis” – and that practice (alone or with a Japanese partner), drills (both oral and written), learning vocab, are either irrelevant or can somehow be bypassed when you have a real, live, English-speaking (and preferably blond(e) and blue-eyed because we all know that those are the only real foreigners) “gaijin” to yourself, if even for a few minutes;

My recent trip to the Philippines has me raving about the fluency possibilities for all students in Asia. Some of my students have asked why I think the Filipino people have been so [much more] successful [than Japanese] in adopting English as their second language. I’ll leave the historical differences between the two countries alone this time and simply point out that there are two major differences in their approaches to English education:

1) In the Philippines, the government took the bold step of making English their second national language. Effectively, this means that the citizens are receiving a single, unified message: English proficiency is important for this country and each of its citizens, and we will all start using English. In Japan, we see something along the lines of ‘English is important for your class ranking and college admissions, but not so important that we adults are going to start using it,’ which is the policy equivalent of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’

2) Filipinos speak English with each other. Why would they do such a strange thing? Many reasons, I suppose, but the most important is that knowing both of your country’s national languages can only be beneficial. Furthermore, as socio-economics are closely tied to level of education, English ability is seen as a symbol of status. I’m sure there is an ugly side to this as well, but it drives the younger generations to approach English proficiency as a tool for communication, and one that will open doorways, even in their own society. Nothing even close to this happens in Japan, where English is looked at as a foreign language, to be employed when in foreign lands or in the presence of a foreign ‘visitor.’

Any thoughts?

Technorati Tags: teaching, history, economics, TOEIC, education, perspective, autonomous_learning, learning, community, language, japan, human_nature