Japan's Eternal English Language Problem

As Proficiency Hits An All-Time Low, the Old Excuses Return

When I was growing up in Tokyo in the 1960s, the only Japanese adults I knew who were fluent in English had either grown up abroad or attended bilingual schools in Japan. For the rest, English fluency was beyond reach, and no wonder: their teachers were Japanese who could write English but not speak it. They taught English like Latin—as a written langua…