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Global Economy and English

As the world gets smaller and smaller, there is at least one skill that is definitely necessary for you to acquire. That's English. Being able to write, speak, read, and listen to English effectively with not only native speakers of English, but non-native speakers of English is crucial in this new era.

Lately, Rakuten has announced that they will be using only English at their office, and English will be their official corporate language. And there are other companpies that employ such an idea.

This current move is based on the fact that Japan as a market is too small or too inactive to stay focused on Therefore, Japanese companies need to expand their horizons, and dive into other countries in the world.

Although it seems simple and easy, being able to use English is quite hard. One of the reasons for this is the way English is taught in Japan in public schools. English classes are not centered around outputting; writing and speaking.

Like any other learnable skills, English should be practiced very often in a short period of time.

Because of Rakuten's announcement and newspaper articles on this matter, there are many people who feel the urge to improve the current English education. Yet, in order to fundamentally change the way public education is configured today, we need to think of an alternative.

Possibly, we could require all the children of ages 9 to 10 to live and study in an English speaking country. That's just an idea, but we need to actively go out of the country to change the current situation.