is it true?

[steven]

I think you're right about that, and that is actually good advice. I've heard of many stories from Japanese people trying to talk to English speakers while in Japan or on vacation somewhere and when they couldn't communicate with speech they wrote down what they wanted to say and everything worked out. The average Japanese probably couldn't care less about writing in English... I think that most of them just want to communicate when they go on vacation somewhere or when they see a foreigner who's kinda lost.

[willgoestocollege]

I believe that most English speakers are not bilingual or multilingual. Do you guys agree/disagree?

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by willgoestocollege

I believe that most English speakers are not bilingual or multilingual. Do you guys agree/disagree?

I don't think there's much "agree" or "disagree." Most English speakers are at least bilingual. There are 232M English speakers in India. 79M in Nigeria. Etc.

But most native English speakers are monolingual, yes. The native countries are Canada, England, Australia, NZ, USA, and a few small nations (Liberia, Belize, etc.).

Of these, I think Liberia, Canada, and Belize (and other small nations) are the only ones with any significant number of bilinguals.

[dogsbody70]

I don't know but I feel we in England do not study languages from an early age-- Because English is now used world wide-- we tend to be lazy.

I think that is bad. Young children pick up languages easily and naturally so our education system fails in that way.

Others may disagree of course. I have noticed that many scandinavian people are taught English form an early age and are excellent speakers.

[RobinMask]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

I don't know but I feel we in England do not study languages from an early age-- Because English is now used world wide-- we tend to be lazy.

I think that is bad. Young children pick up languages easily and naturally so our education system fails in that way.

Others may disagree of course. I have noticed that many scandinavian people are taught English form an early age and are excellent speakers.

How young do you mean by 'young'?

We were taught Spanish in years 5 and 6 (ages 9-10), and French from years 7 to 9 (ages 11-13). To me that seems pretty young, and a somewhat valid attempt by the government to install the basics of foriegn languages into children.

I do agree though that it isn't enough. . . there is a mentality of 'is everyone else speaks English then why should we learn their language?' This is especially evident in the teenage age group, I can say honestly we picked up Spanish a lot easier than French because we were more willing to learn. So maybe you're right, that learning at a younger age is better.

[evanny]

well we had to start english at 4th grade and russian/german in the 6th grade up until 12th grade.
so yea..i guess it is true and if you are from a small country your best bet is to learn other languages and not count on others to do so.

[WingsToDiscovery]

Yeah, at least where I was in America, I was introduced to Spanish in like 2nd grade. So I was around 7 years old, and we'd have a teacher come in and have Spanish lessons taught to us at a conversational level. I think that's a fairly young age, and more so than other countries may think of us.

But back to Japanese speaking English, already from what I've experienced this is true (although I don't want anyone to think I'm some guru when I'm not.) The only English I was able to convey all day yesterday was "ATM" and "okay." The rest of it was 100% Japanese on their part and about 3/4 English and 1/4 gibberish on my part

[steven]

I think that linguistically speaking the term "young" means like UP TO 7 years old. At about 8-9 you are considered an adult (again, linguistically).

I personally think the reason behind this is that your own language isn't quite fully developed enough to be getting in the way of your second language yet. The goal of all language learners (who want to speak fluently) is to basically have two independent languages-- you don't want your L1 (mother tongue) influencing your L2 (second language) too much. Whether you realize it or not, that is a huge part of it.

There is a way to bypass that part of the brain that causes your mother tongue to get in the way of your L2 acquisition, but it is a very difficult process which takes some people longer than others and requires an amount of immersion (a lot of direct exposure to the L2). I've read many times that something like 3% of language learners seem to have this down from the get go, even when learning their second language as an 'adult'.

It is my opinion that English education in Japan falls WAY short of this concept. Likewise, Japanese education in America can be just as bad and was in my experience (but not standardized like English is in Japan).

Textbooks and the like tend to be written in one's mother tongue (as written language would be EXTREMELY hard to learn from immersion). The textbook approach might be neccessary very early on, but I'm beginning to wonder about that recently. Using textbooks and things like that are great for learning a lot in a short time. The problem is, people usually only get so far. At least I've noticed that certain people give up on language learning quite systematically (in high school it was the 3rd year, in college it was the 2nd/3rd year).

I think that generally expectations set by textbooks are a little bit overbearing. A native speaker of a language can't hold a conversation in 2-3 years, so I think it's a little bit much to expect an L2 learning to pick it up in a year or 2.

Immersion is a lot more taxing on the learning and takes a lot more time than textbook learning, but once something is learned it is quite solid (as it is learned by hearing something over and over until you are confident enough to use the phrase yourself). With this style of learning, you often see someone who is struggling suddenly go from really bad to being able to hold a conversation comfortably within a month or two's time span. This is not unlike a native's own acquisition. Natives usually transform, langauge wise, into a person who can barely speak, to an annoying little kid very quickly .

So in other words, to repeat myself, "young" (linguistically speaking) is generally considered to be that small window of 0-7 or so. I personally believe that "young" (again, linguistically speaking) is a state of mind that you can train yourself into having. This also seems to account for those 2-3% of "adults" who seem to somehow "get" their L2 from the very start.

[Akihiko]

In Kyoto it's very small. But if you move towards massive cities such as Tokyo ,etc you'll find much more English-friendly speakers.

[WingsToDiscovery]

Originally Posted by steven

I think that linguistically speaking the term "young" means like UP TO 7 years old. At about 8-9 you are considered an adult (again, linguistically).

I agree, and that's why Spanish has actually stuck with me even though I haven't used it in a practical sense in over 3 years now. Starting young, I built a foundation and as I got older I was able to just able to add on to it. Now I can speak conversational Spanish with hardly any mistakes.