<p>But, when we’re talking about numbers of students being taught the language, the fact that EVERY Japanese student is being taught English, and only a self-selected sample of Americans are learning Japanese, you start to see why I’m arguing the failure of the sytem.</p>
<p>Maybe fewer expatriate Americans are learning Japanese at the level the Japanese are learning English, but when you consider that every Japanese person has had 7+ years of instruction in English, and yet few show any real English ability, I think there’s a problem. Again, we’re talking about numbers of people actually learning the language and achieving any sort of ability. Since every single Japanese student will take English, and a very small percentage actually learn anything, I find that far more frightening than the maybe 1% of Americans learning Japanese not becoming as proficient as your neutral ground Japanese examples.</p>
<p>But again, maybe the goal isn’t actually to teach the language. Sure doesn’t seem like it where I teach.</p>