Recently, I have seen two trends going on regarding English communication skills in Japan. One is the heightened interest in developing English skills among young children. The other is the high expectation for auto-translation, particularly for English-Japanese.
Both reflect the decadelong but renewed interest for English communication capability in Japan. They also reflect the recognition that we have tried and failed to develop English communication capability among Japanese in general.
Many Japanese have become aware how other Asian countries have surpassed Japan in developing English capability. South Korea and China, which used to have similar problems about poor English capability, have made significant progress, as their youths have had better scores on TOEFL tests than those of Japanese. Differences between these countries and Japan are identified as to when they start learning English and the hours spent learning the language. Thus, the initiative to start early and focus on young children has been proposed in Japan, as indicated by the education ministry's recent guidelines and policy to include English in the formal curriculum for fifth- and sixth-grade students starting in 2020.