Quote Originally Posted by Tagihi View Post
Dosent japan has english in school? i mean rest of the world has english at school basic stuff so you can atlest communicate with others.
As if learning a language at school is sufficient to be proficient at it. School will never be able to make someone speak a language. For that, you need motivation beside "I need to do my homework or I will not pass my exam". And that's the only incentive for many persons out there.

Why would I learn a language if I have no use for it?

I'm French, did 10 years of English and 9 years of German at school, I can speak English but I fail at German. Why? I have no use for German in my daily life, I don't watch/read/listen anything German-related etc. I did not practice enough after university.

While most of my English "skills" are coming out from movies, music, medias, books, games, internet in general, etc. And I am using English on a daily basis.

in the current system they have no incentive in being proficient at english because still not so many foreigners here nor many foreign programs on TV (after JP program, the most popular is Korean). I think I saw Glee once on TV but it7s a super odd hours...
It's only not about TV programs or foreigners. It's also about work. Being proficient at English is necessary to get a decent job in many EU countries, it's not in Japan. It's even funny to see lot of JP CEO's, high executives or managers+ in big corporations unable to speak English even at a business level (not even asking to be fluent or anything, just at a business level). They just don't care and think that Japanese is enough and others should adapt.

Now have a look at countries from the middle east or most of Europe. English is the language used in business, if you don't speak English, it will be really hard to have an important position in a global company. Even in France, employees with an important role in a company will always try and speak some English (even with our horrible French accent ;d).