Even though the economy is in recession, like now, market of ESL(English as Second Language) learning industry（英語関連業界） is growing in Japan and is expected to be continued expanding in the future as long as Japanese considers English as one of the most essential skills.
According to research by YANO Economic Research Institute（矢野経済研究所）, the market size of whole the ESL industry was 700 billion yen(including other foreign languages, like French, Italian, Chinese etc) in 2020. And even though with the spread of Covid 19, market of online learning has expanded.
From this research, we can see that ESL remains one of the highest interests among Japanese.
As you can see a picture below, if you enter into a book store in Japan, you can see a lots of textbooks only for English learning. It means, demands for these English tools/know-how are so much high and needed in Japan.
Once you see this picture above, you might think ” Oh, Japanese are so diligent. They study English so much hard..!!!”
And I wanna say “YES! We do study so much hard! but unfortunately it doesn’t mean we all speak English so well.”
This is literary sad truth, because we normally study English from junior high school till university/college, almost 9 years. However, quiet lots of people feel they don’t know English well or don’t know how to speak.
One day I read an article about the topic “Japanese and English learning”, and there’s written that Japanese doesn’t have enough confidence to speak out ” I can speak English!”.
This is the thing. We are addicted to perfect English. We consider we have to speak English perfectly some day. For now, we continue studying, and you realize ” already I’m in my seventy…..”
Why are most Japanese addicted to the idea ” We need speak English perfectly” ?
For now, in my opinion, this is because our English learning education was based on American(or UK) English.So from junior high school to now, we try not to speak English, trying to avoid any mistakes until we can speak like American do.
But I think we have to look outside more, there are so much people who are not from America or UK, but from Russia, India, Ecuador, Guatemala, France, and they do speak English just in order to communicate each other. And they use their knowledge of English as far as they know. If they make mistake, they don’t care!
It’s time to stop worrying whether English sounds American, but have to start to enjoy using English and be sure that it’s not needed perfect English in this era, as diverse world.
It was my personal opinion towards ESL learning in Japan^^
Thanks for reading.