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Sep.28.2016 KIP Forum “Language, evolution and globalization”
Mr. Yuji Yamashita, Executive Director, The Institute for International Business Communication (IIBC)
Mr. Yuji Yamashita: Mr. Yuji Yamashita was born in Kyoto. He worked at a trading company which is now called Sojitsu Corporation. After he retired, he started to work as the Executive Director of the Institute for International of Business Communication, which runs TOEIC test.
For our September forum, we invited Mr. Yuji Yamashita as our speaker. He is the Executive Director of the Institute for International Business Communication (IIBC). The title of the lecture was “Language, evolution and globalization”. He talked about TOEIC and globalization.
First, Mr. Yamashita talked about TOEIC, mentioning its history and its purpose. During the lecture, he compared TOEIC with TOEFL and explained the differences between them. For example, while the TOEFL scores are primarily used as a measure of the ability of international students to use English in an academic environment, the TOEIC scores are primarily used as a measure of the ability of business persons in a business environment. To make it easy for busy people to take the exam, the fee of TOEIC is lower and the testing time is shorter than that of TOEFL. In addition, he gave us some advice to maintain motivation for studying English and to master it.
Second, Mr. Yamashita lectured about globalization, its history and some features. In the lecture, the most impressive opinion he had was that globalization today meant just Americanization around the world.
After Mr. Yamashita’s lecture, we had a discussion. The theme was “If we belonged to an engineering firm and decided to employ foreigners which held 20% of all employees, should we learn English for working with them or should we get them to learn Japanese?” Every group had heated discussions, and most of the groups reached the same conclusion: Japanese should learn English in order to keep up with the globalization. On the other hand, the group on the opposite side stated that it was costly for all Japanese employees to learn English only for 20% foreigners.
Finally, Mr. Yamashita gave us some comments about our discussion. He also stated his opinion about globalization and the condition of Japan today. In this forum, we learned a lot of important knowledge about globalization and acquisition of foreign language. I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to Mr. Yamashita for giving us a great lecture and a good chance to think about language and globalization.
(Kinuko Takeno)