スクリプトは事前提出されたものですので、ビデオの音声とは異なる場合があります。

Bye Bye Katakana English

YANAI Kazuki (Osaka Prefectural College of Technology)

First of all, please listen to this sentence. I've found this sentence in a magazine on my way coming here today.

「今年のウィンターファッションのトレンドはトラッドなジャケットにアメカジスタイルをコーディネイトしたミックススタイル」

This sentence means that this winter's trendy fashion is a mixed style of trad jacket and American casual. And most of the words in this sentence are “Katakana” which have been made from English. Does anyone understand it as English? Sentences like this, which include Katakana, are often seen in everyday life in Japan. I'm sure that we find Katakana everywhere.

In Japan, many students start learning English from the age of 12, so we spend the best part of 10 years learning it. However, most of us can't use English as well as people from other countries who are the same age. Why is this so? Do you think that it is just because Japanese people tend to be shy? You may be right, but I do not think this is the only reason. I believe that there are many other reasons.

I studied English in Australia. During my time staying with many people from all over the world, I got some ideas of what the causes of our uncomfortable English communication are.

First, “Katakana,” which helps us to read foreign words like English, must be one of the reasons. “Katakana” is sometimes used for English classes and self study. Although it might be thought that we are making study easier by using “Katakana,” the pronunciation of English and Japanese is totally different, so it actually makes our English conversation worse.

For example, in the first few months of my stay in Australia, I had some difficulty in telling natives what I wanted to say. When I wanted to ask someone for directions to “Eagle Junction,” which is the name of a station in Australia, and I asked a person “Could you tell me how to get to Eagle Junction?”, he seemed not to understand what I wanted to say. I guess my pronunciation of “Eagle” was wrong. I often met with similar situations during my stay. “Eagle” can be translated into Katakana, “イーグル” and it is an everyday word in normal conversation in Japan.

Secondly, it is thought that the Japanese education system causes many problems for communication. In many countries other than Japan, conversation skills are focused on. However, in Japan, reading and writing skills are mainly focused on and few chances are given to students to communicate orally. Therefore, Japanese normally lack the time in which to train their conversation skill. When I was in junior high school, I didn't have any time to talk or speech in English and no one cared about correct pronunciation. We were just taught how to translate English sentences or words into Japanese.

For these reasons, it is hard for us to communicate with foreigners in English. And considering that other Asians have better abilities at using English than Japanese people, I feel that it wouldn't be so difficult for us to have conversations if we started learning to communicate properly.

In my opinion, developing classes by focusing on speaking and listening to English rather than reading and writing, which we are currently doing, will make our communication skills better. I'd also like to propose to limit how much students and teachers can talk in Japanese in the classes during the English lessons, and provide students with more time to express their own opinions in English. I think this will surely develop speaking skill.

What's more, I don't think that just changing the education system is enough to improve our skill. We need to introduce opportunities to learn communication skill into our private time too. Let me tell you one of my ideas.

I believe that language cannot be learnt by only studying at school with teachers to which English is also a second language. We must also learn the sense of values and cultural background of native speakers in order to understand their language. So the best way is to go abroad and make friends there. But this is a huge challenge for many people. However, chatting with people in English face to face using web cameras is a great idea for people who can't go abroad. For example, you could use Facebook or a different social networking service to find someone with a common interest to you and then contact them using Skype. It is pretty simple, isn't it? You can practice both your listening and speaking skills in a natural way. It will make studying English much more enjoyable and efficient.

Once we stop feeling a resistance to communicating in English, it will become part of our lives. And I do believe that many Japanese will then cross the border and flourish all over the world.