English for Japanese as business communication tool

What surprised me first when I started working at a foreign capital company in Tokyo was most Japanese employees’ English levels are not enough for international business communications. English resumes of job applicants were the same; there I often found grammatical errors such as article and sentence constructions etc.

It reminded me of an old memory with Ms. G.P. - an Italian language expert working for a very traditional big Japanese firm - on struggling with English training for Japanese employees. Once-a-week and three-month-long English course facilitated by her demonstrated remarkable progress for the participants, average TOEIC score of whom improved by 130 points from the previous score.   Ms. G.P. not only highlighted common mistakes by the Japanese business persons on the grammar and expressions but also encouraged them to speak up with self-confidence away from shyness-a well-known Japanese trait.

Listening to and reading English of people of many nationalities for whom English is a second language, I noticed their English is not as good as expected or imagined. If I dare to confess my honest impressions of their English, knowing the risk of generalization:

French people have strong accents and intonations affected by their great mother tongue;

Spanish people also have very unique pronunciations;

Germans and Swedish people speak fluent English, which, however, is different from that of native English speakers (British, Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders etc.);     

Indians’ English sounds powerful but is a bit hard for me to follow their unique pronunciations;

Singaporeans’ English forces me to concentrate on, every second, the words they intend to pronounce;

English spoken by Japanese people, to the contrary, sounds flat and, therefore, seems relatively easy to understand for listeners (I hope…).

In summary, knowing the real business world’s practice where various types of “English”- or “Intercultural English” or “International English”- are used as a communication tool, I believe the Japanese need not necessary be over sensitive with correct pronunciations such as L and R etc., which we were strictly instructed in school. To the contrary, in my observation, Users of English of diverse countries take it for granted that there are various kinds of “English” so that the listeners should try to understand the variety of English speakers to reach our common business goals.

At this point, in terms of English speaking, what dose counts for the Japanese is to speak up with self-confidence supported by the basic yet correct grammar.  When you speak English with passion, energy and self-assurance, your English will be understood in most cases, no matter how you pronounce; Forget about speaking “Cool” or “Perfect” English which native speakers demonstrate at private English schools or on the TV commercials in Japan.

One last thing to bear in mind is that we have far more opportunities, in our daily business, to write English by e-mail than to speak in person or by telecommunication. Reading and Writing skill is, therefore, more important to smoothly and effectively communicate with global counterparts. It is good, therefore, to review English grammar text book used in your school days many years ago.

Even if creating valuable contents in your mail, you will immediately lose credibility of the contents by leaving, in the final mail version, bad grammars with lots of misspellings...

With the tips noted above, Japanese business persons can improve their proficiency in English by step-by-step approach and will be the ones to survive as promising talent in multinational companies.