Deepa Mohan wrote:
<snip>Indeed I tend to agree with Rishab; <snip>
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>i just returned from 2 weeks in china, where the english - where it
appears - can be even stranger. but i found the original article pretty
silly, as it somehow assumes japan _should_ be careful about english. sure,
they teach all kids bad english. how many schools in an english speaking
country teach their kids _any_ other language to any degree of competence?
<snip>
Actually, Japanese english is in a class by itself... From a practical
standpoint, though, English is the prevalent global lingua franca these
days, so doesn't it make sense to teach it well enough so the students can
actually use it to communicate with people from outside their culture? I
mean, the Japanese are not learning English to talk to each other - they all
speak the same language. Unlike, say, India, where city kids whose 'mother
tongues' are all different use it to talk to their school friends. Most
English-speaking countries don't share the same need (that 'non-English'
cultures do) to make sure their students can communicate in a different
language. Possibly unfortunate, but true.
Incidentally, the Japanese Ministry of Education mandated English language
course in the curriculum (their education system in other respects is one of
the best in the world, IMO) to make their workforce more competitive. So
doing it the way they're going about it now defeats the purpose. In fact,
many Japanese employers ask their employees to attend "Eikaiwa" or English
Conversation schools because the version they learned in school is so
unusable. The Eikawas are big business in Japan now, and most employ native
English speakers. I know there are equivalents in China that are growing in
popularity as well. As for China, the government seems to be making serious
efforts to improve the quality of English language education, if only to
improve the 'employability' index in export-oriented service industries.
That's a big step for China- it meant abandoning some deep-rooted
ideologies.
cheers,
divya
