Number of people who got the official certificates of his English ability by taking the Official English Examination has been increasing. Some of first grade high school students got the second class certificate of which the examination was said to be very difficult. It is a quite desirable that the English ability of Japanese has been raised up due to this examination. Meanwhile more than ten years have passed since the time when number of pupils who came back from overseas has started to increase. Some of them have already graduated from universities and grown up to responsible adults in Japan. The number of bilinguists who can speak, read and write good in English just like people of English speaking spheres is increasing. They understand Japanese perfectly too. The other day an executive of big companies told me they have two bilinguists in the average in every section of his company.
But recently Japanese who are good in English do not necessarily understand Japanese. Even the ordinary Japanese became weak in reading and writing of their own languages. One of the reasons why they lost their ability was said to be caused by the spread of personal computers. I, myself, have become weak in writing difficult Chinese characters. When we write letters in Japanese by PC, we have to select a proper Chinese character (Kanji) from a few candidates which are shown by the machine, But I feel sometimes difficulty for selecting right characters. I found frequently errors in Kanji conversion in official letters from traders..
A few days ago, NHK TV introduced the Official Kanji Examination on its broadcast. I had never known the Kanji Examination until I saw the program. A motor vehicle parts sales company in Saitama prefecture has been making every efforts to study Kanji with the result that they succeeded in having many winners of official certificates and in winning a best team award twice in consecutive years.
| Mr. Susumu Tanaka, President of the sales company told at the interview by a NHK reporter that as the main clerical work of their business is to make chits and invoices, the company failed to emphasize for writing good letters. He found many errors of Kanji in their official letters. He recommended his subordinated to learn Kanji from almost ten years ago. Only recently we could get some good results.。 |
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I was impressed by the will and efforts of employees who followed the lead by the president.
These days the Official Kanji Examination has become popular among high- and middle- school students. The number of applicants for taking twice a year tests has been increasing enormously.
I hope that every Japanese in 21st century can express himself in Japanese as well as in English correctly without any trouble.