Here, I will try to show the usefulness of the English I learned.
Japanese Edition
English and I
When I was in elementary school, there were three classes in each grade and these classes were named A, B, and C until the Pacific War. So when I began to learn English at middle school, I had already known the three capital letters, A, B, and C. I was able to feel good about the English class because of this elementary knowledge.
English education in Japan, which focuses too much on grammar, is notorious. But English grammar education was minimized and English composition was not taught during the Pacific War. I learned only the techniques for translating English into Japanese. Some of the best students may have bought grammar textbooks and studied before the college entrance examination, but I didn't.
When I was in my second year of middle school, Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers. The streets overflowed with American soldiers for about two or three years. I was able to get chocolate from the soldiers by using poor English, which I had learned in only one and a half years. An English conversation boom occurred because starving people could get food if they could speak English a little. After a few years the soldiers began to leave Wakayama, and the boom ended.
I think that If I had continued to run after the soldiers for three years, my English conversation skill would have greatly improved. But I was not able to run after them because I had to go to school. I think now it was fortunate for me that I didn't memorize much soldier's slang except a few words such as "Hey!", "Come on!", and "huba-huba!". A few years ago, I said "Hey!" to call a waiter in a restaurant in Canada and I blushed with shame.
While I was working for a chemical company, I sometimes deciphered English technical literature without the grammatical knowledge. Because the structure of the technical literature was relatively simple, I was able to do so. When I began to operate a computer, the Japanese operation manuals were terrible. I was not able to understand the manuals that were translated from English by translators who did not know anything about the computer. Then I got the English manuals and deciphered them myself and was able to understand the meaning of the contents in the manuals. I thought it was quite fortunate that I had learned English at school.
After graduating from school, our generation was sometimes required to get information from English writings but seldom required to communicate with foreigners in English. But I thought constantly "I would like to speak English" and talked of it occasionally to my friends. Their answers were all negative. For example: "You are too old to learn English conversation," "Even if you start communicating with your personal native English teacher, you will not become able to communicate with other English speakers," or "Even if you do not learn English conversation in Japan, you will be able to speak English well when you live in an English spoken country." Recently an article in a newspaper said that people who have not had the chance to use English are about 76.3%, but people who feel, "I should have studied English more" are 85.7%. It is interesting that the Japanese desire for English learning has not changed for a long time.
We, the general employees, occasionally saw a foreigner at our office until the 1970's. One foreigner we saw was a guest of an executive of our company who was accompanied by an interpreter. We occasionally listened to the guest's lecture which was translated by the interpreter. Since 1980's we had become used to seeing a young employee collaborating with foreigner(s) without the interpreter at our office. I suppose that the gap between the school English and the business English became clear at this point.
The young employees perhaps made desperate efforts to learn English conversation at that time, and they were able to collaborate with the people who speaks English. So I thought they had learned some necessary fundamental English at school, even if it had not been the best. In those days a friend of mine said, "I can talk about business with foreigners in English, but it is difficult to talk about other things which have no relation with business." I think that he was able to talk business without worry of pronunciation because they knew necessary common knowledge and vocabulary about their busineses in advance.
After retirement, I visited my son in Switzerland and was able to enjoy a train trip for four days with my wife. This trip was realized using my poor English. We usually say we learn impractical English at school, but now I think that we have learned practical English, yet we seldom have the opportunity to use it. It is evident that we cannot speak English fluently if we haven't uses it for a long time. I was stimulated by this trip and began to learn English again. I am learning conversation, composition, and grammar now. I think that English which I started learning late in my life was effective except conversation. As a results, my English deciphering began to improve to a reading level. The problem is the listening ability. To begin the conversation, I, 60-year old, was too old.
I think I learned practical English fit to my age at school. Today's young generation learned English better than our generation has learned. And now I hear English will become a compulsory subject in elementary school. Maybe English education will become perfect. My anxiety is the school hours of other subjects which will be reduced by English. I think we have to know how the working people are evaluating the usefulness of each compulsory subject taught at school and to make it statistic data. The school hours of compulsory subjects should be divided by this data.
Uploaded
Septmber 1, 2006
Corrected october 1, 2007 by an English teacher
N.O.