Why do you study English? - A thought from an EFL context.

There is an obvious universal change in the field of language education since the globalization has begun:  a great emphasize on English is observed in more and more countries all over the world. And now, it has earned a universal agreement that English is the most expanded international language, and therefore, people need to learn it in order to survive economically or politically among this globalized society.

At the same time, however, there has been a critical question from people themselves, who learn English: "Why do we have to learn English?".

These two critical and controversial facts; global agreement upon English as an international language, and a displeasure from people at required (or rather, forced!) English learning, have always been in my mind while I was learning and considering English education. But recently, something has changed in my mind.

Before I start talking about the change, I have to mention English education in Japan.

In Japan, English, as a foreign language, is a required class from fifth grade to ninth grade, followed by three years at high school, and even some more classes at a college/university. For years, however, this long period of study is conceived to be ineffective, since even after a long period of studying English, learners do not pick up many expressions to speak, have only limited reading proficiency, do not understand what a native speaker says in a daily life, and cannot write academic paper. 

Therefore, they ask, "Why are we learning English? It's so ineffective and even unnecessary for our lives!" Controversially, however, they still agree with the idea that English is an international language, and they claim English be a necessity in this globalized world.

Rather, they perceive English as a panacea for their successful life; they admire or sometimes turn envious eyes to people who speak fluent English, even when those people are native speakers of English! Is this really what it should be? - I don't think so.

This jealousy-like feeling toward English and hopeless sigh on Japanese's poor English proficiency are not admirable. Therefore, I persuaded myself, as a future English teacher, as "OK. I'm gonna teach English in Japan. People might think it unnecessary to learn English for use as long as they live their life in Japan, but I do believe English is an international language which do have great impact on Japan's economics and politics, therefore, in order to widen the opportunity for my students to notice this critical need of English, and to enlarge their chance to be more successful in the future, I must teach English." This was my thought upon English education in Japan. 

This thought was rigid and persuasive for me,  so I sticked to it for a while; however, my classmate in TESOL class did change this thought.

He mentioned that all English learners are respected in his country, because English is an economically, politically and scientifically, powerful language all over the world.

My point here is that he did not say "all English speakers", but "all English learners". I see underlying philosophy of learning in his country, that is to say, all learners can be successful as long as they keep trying for it.

This is beautiful. This is something we cannot find in Japan. People do not see things in this way. Instead, they think that English is very hard and therefore many of them give up, or become pessimistic about successful future with English.

It might be because they are all aiming at perfect English, not available one for them. It might be because English and Japanese are linguistically distant. However, to some extent, we have forgot very important facts; we should respect all learners, not just fluent speakers of English; and we should have a strong belief in our mind, that when we do our best to learn English, the effort should be rewarded someday.

English speaks a lot for me.
What does it do for you?