![]() Without revising the current education plan, English will remain a weakness for Japan. The Japanese government struggles with appropriate strategies on English education curriculum, leaving considerable room for improvement in the education system. This paper discusses Japan’s idealization of native English speakers and the dilemma of learning how to speak like them while at the same time living in an isolated monolingual nation. Even today Japan remains an essentially monolingual country and average person’s ability to utilize English in any practical capacity is quite limited. At the same time, most Japanese do not hide the difficulty they encounter with learning both written and spoken English. Today, English is considered one of Japan’s most important school subjects, and English conversational skills are regarded as a highly desirable special talent. While English education was limited to the elites at this time, after World War II English education became available to the general public through the newly-implemented public education system. (Contains 17 references.From the mid-1800s, at the end of the Tokugawa feudal period and the beginning of the Meiji era, English has been a singularly important foreign language in Japan which has, since that time, risen to international prominence, mirroring the rise of the English speaking world powers in the west. It is concluded that in both countries multilingualism is not a threat, but that narrow-mindedness and the failure to look beyond ones own borders are far greater problems. Building a monolingual society is an ideological attempt to homogenize the diversity of the community living in a country or a region, to self-represent that. Multilingualism has been unavoidable in a country comprised of immigrants from across the world. the same test was done with 4 monolingual Japanese. ![]() The language (s) that end up as being official or the ones whose speakers have sufficient political clout. country have more exposure to English and less contact with Japanese than people who live in Japan. It is only if there 2 (or more) languages spoken in a country that a decision needs to be made as to which are official. ![]() This is a more recent phenomenon in Japan, but in America, significant multilingualism goes back to the founding of the first colonies. An entirely monolingual country has no need to define an official language, as the question would never arise. Yet both countries are far more linguistically diverse than the typical lay person or government official in either country realizes. In Japan and the United States, there are prevailing attitudes that for speakers of the dominant languages-Japanese and English respectively-there is no need to learn another language, and that all others living in the countries should learn to speak the primary language. While Japan and the United States are typical of monolinguistically-dominated societies, and some similar attitudes prevail in both countries, their approaches to dealing with multilingualism are vastly different. Multilingualism in a monolingual country is frequently seen as a threat to the established monolingual and monocultural way of life. There exists the perception in countries where monolingualism is considered the norm that bilingualism, and certainly multilingualism, are problematic. Japan remains a monolingual country, principally due to the homogeneous nature of society. The TOEIC Listening and Reading Test, 2017). ![]() This paper considers how multilingualism is approached in both Japan and the United States by considering the position and roles of the government, schools, and public. For example, a report shows Japan ranking 40th from 46 countries in mean total scores for listening and reading (2015 Report on Test Takers Worldwide.
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