Language and Japan
Why Japan Fails at English
And what you need to know if you work with Japanese companies, or plan to visit Japan.
Published in
7 min readFeb 14, 2022
That the Japanese are terrible at English is a widely heard stereotype that has a substantial basis in reality. One only needs to go onto YouTube to see English lessons in Japan satirized in comedic fashion.
Comedy aside, according to the 2021 results of the EF English Proficiency Index, Japan has one of the lowest levels of English competency globally. (Full report and methodology here.)
Yuko Tamura laments that the English levels of most Japanese people are remarkably low because of three reasons: 1) teachers have poor English skills, 2) everything is dubbed, and 3) Japanese people are overly perfectionistic and are scared of making mistakes, which is a mentality that hampers language learning.
