TOEIC in Japan : People go crazy getting high score.

Have you ever heard of TOEIC before ? I would say that those whose mother language is not English would say yes because it is supposed to be able to measure your English skill, although it does not look working well actually. So this time, I'm going to telly you how TOEIC test works in Japan, including good things and bad things. I hope you are able to find out how it works.

What is the TOEIC ?

TOEIC is abbreviation of "Test Of English for International Communication". It is supposed to evaluate your English skill, and it is popular internationally, especially in Asia.  However, be careful for its name. If you hear of this name, you imagine that it is a test to your reading, writing, listening, speaking skills. It's not actually, and it test only reading and listening skills. It is becoming a important problem right now in Japan, which I am going to write about and needs to be changed immediately in terms of education restructure as well as required English skills.

TOECI is a very popular English test. But why is that ?

English skill has already become one of required skills when you get a job in Japan. Not all companies, but many Japanese companies are doing business all over the world. Especially, electronics, car, and steal companies are selling a lot of their products around the world, although electronics companies are not doing as well as they used to do a few decades ago. Regardless say, companies which is a Japanese brach of international companies take English skill for granted, and speaking English is common sense. Recently, many Japanese companies are requiring English skill for their job applicants and are using TOEIC to see applicants English skill. It is not only job application but also requirement of promotion. Some companies require certain score of TOEIC for promotion. So this is why TOEIC is very popular and many people are desperate for high score. If you go to language block of bookstores in Japan, you will see many books specialized for getting high TOEIC score. So this is environmental driven study rather than self driven study. So many people do study English for TOEIC but not for being able to use English for communication, despite that TOEIC is a test for international communication ironically.

Good points of English

No matter how you study, studying English itself is a good thing to be able to become international person and expand your opportunity in the future. It's better than nothing actually. As I mention, reading and listening skills are evaluated in TOEIC, so it is useful when you read books written in English and listening English news, although watching movies without English subtitle is obviously a different story because English used in TOEIC is a beautiful and correct in terms of grammar as well as accent, however English in movies are different. If you want to be able to do it, you will need to learn slang and get used to wide variety of accent of people. Anyway, if you study English for TOEIC, your will be able to get foundation of English skill in terms of reading and listening.

What is a problem with TOEIC ?

Many people have already notice a problem of TOEIC which measure skills of reading and listening. The problem is that high score of TOEIC does not necessarily guarantee high speaking skill. It's obvious from the nature of the test. For example, one of my colleagues is doing very good at TOEIC and his score is almost perfect but his speaking sucks actually because he studies English only for TOEIC. Many companies are facing a problem that they hire applicants with high TOEIC score but applicants are not able to speak. Here is another problem which is responsibility of interviewers. Interviewers evaluate English skill just by TOEIC score and do not test speaking test. In my opinion, if companies really want people with high English skill, interviewers definitely needs to do free conversation in English in order to see if applicants tell what they want to say in English. If companies announce that they do it during interview, then applicants like university students practice speaking desperately. As a result of that, English skills of applicants would go up totally, which is a very good point for Japanese economics in the future. Needless to say, there would be one concern of if interviewers are able to do conversation in English.

How do we improve it ?

My opinion is that speaking skill should be introduced to entrance exam of high school, university, and job interview. In current situation, reading skill is already tested for all, but other skills are tested at small percentage of all. This is nature of human being but if something is required for entrance exam or interview, then people usually practice it and become better at it. Let's take advantage of nature of human being. In order to do this, many improvements are necessary. For example, many English teachers in Japan are able to teach English grammer but are not able to talk in English. That's really ironic but it's is a fact unfortunately. So they need to be trained. Regarding speaking skill, it would be very difficult to quantify its skill actually, which is depending on how its skill is evaluated. Especially it is hard to be introduced in entrance exam because entrance exam test should be tested fairly. So it would be easier to introduce it at job interview first of all because job interview is people to people matching test, and if interviewers say yes, it's ok.

Here, I briefly explain the situation of TOEIC in Japan, and I hope you can understand what is happening in Japan about English.

Cell phone development history and future

If I compare current cell phone market of Japan to past situation of that, it totally changed in terms of line up of cell phone decices. 2 years ago when I left Japan for U.S, almost cell phone devices came from Japanese makers. Now it changed and there are cell phones from Tiwan, U.S, and Korea makers. It's big change actually, which I was very surprised at when I came back to Japan.

Japanese cell phone market had been called "Galapagos" from outside Japan and foreign makers could not enter the market. It is because Japanese cell phone market was unique in terms of device preference as well as quasi internet web service and the market had developed separately from foreign countries. A good point was that Japanese makers could dominate the market and made system to make money for them, but a bad point was that Japanese makers were used to this unique market so they could not penetrate into foreign market where other cell phone makers already dominate. Because of that, once foreign makers can sell their cell phones well with new idea in the Japanese market, then Japanese makers can not do anything to beat them because they felt safe due to the fact that the market is unique and others can not enter. Regardless to say, Apple has been a game changer since they announced iphone. 

Device type

Loot at a picture below, this was lineup of cell phone devices a few years ago. Almost all cell phones are wallet type. If you open a cell phone, you can see display at one side and key pad at the other side. It was very popular type of cell phone in Japan. At first when cell phone service started in Japan, many types of cell phones were available because makers themselves tried to see what type of cell phone sells well. Even for people, cell phone itself is a new devices, so people tried to determine which type of cell phone is preference in terms of usage. To my knowledge, many people did not like to use a type of a device which display is not protected by cover because people were afraid of a display being scratched when they carry it, although now its type is popular in current market of smartphone. That's why people liked wallet type of cell phone before.

Loot at a picture below, it's current cell phone lineup. A display is on front unlike the wallet type. Originally Japanese people hesitated to use this type of devices, but ironically many people use this type. I guess that it's because people compromise their device type preference in order to use a big screen instead to make its usage comfortable. Devices type changed totally since smart phone came out.

Internet usage

One of reasons that Japanese market was unique is that Japanese cell phone carriers were providing their own internet services due to slow cell phone data access. For example, one of carriers, NTT Docomo, opened a web service "i-mode" which was a small internet service space customized for slow mobile access. People could access internet world, but cell phone speed was slower that it is now, so i-mode is good enough. By using i-mode world, people could do shopping, book a travel tickets with limited internet speed. Now speed of mobile internet is high enough to access internet via cell phone customized browsers. So many people already moved to i-mode to real internet.
People in Japan used to clarify internet and mobile internet which is subset of internet. However, cell phone is almost small computer. With cell phone, you can do whatever you can do with laptop or desktop PC. One of my friend is apple freak, and he has ipod, iphone, Macbook air, Macbook pro, but he told me one time that he uses iphone more than his laptop to access internet even after he goes back home because he feels cumbersome to open laptop and wait its startup and he can do whatever he does every day. And internet speed is very fast,

Mobile Future

What's going to the future of cell phone ? Smart phone itself is easy to predict that it came as a extension of cell phone development. It's small computer, and everybody had hoped that a cell phone become like computer. Now it came, and with your smart phone you can do almost everything you can do with your laptop, although a laptop usually does not implement GPS functionality. It is easy to imagine that smart phone develops in terms of data speed and software improvement in order to make it more useful. So what's come next ? It's definitely going to get out of an idea that cell phone is a small device of laptop with cell phone access. One idea that now many people discuss is called "Internet of things ", IOT in short. This idea is not necessary for cell phone development, but general technology development. The idea is that any devised can be connected via network by sensor network or direct internet access. A smart phone can play important role in IOT.

Here is a example.
Many people measure their weigh on the scale every day. Many people would hope to put your day by day data into your phone seamlessly via network in order to monitor your weight. It could be possible via direct bluetooth connection between your smart phone and the scale or via internet connection indirectly.

Within a few years later, it could be possible. Technically speaking, it's would be possible even now, but human being does not catch up its technology usage.