The other day my son took a standardized test to measure his academic ability compared with other students in Japan. While he aced the math and science sections, his English test result was a surprising 86%. How could a boy whose English is so good he can watch any movie without subtitles and appreciate the subtle humor of Monty Python have gotten anything but an A? It turns out that in Japan, “test English” is a unique subject unto itself, completely separate from the living language used to communicate ideas to people, and when students translate a sentence from English into Japanese they need to follow certain forms to show they understand the underlying grammar. For example, there are different ways to translate “I will study tomorrow” and “I’m going to study tomorrow,” although the two concepts are pretty much the same, and not knowing how to do this hurt my son’s score. Now that he’s starting juken hell, preparing for his high school entrance exams, I’m sure he’ll have questions about the correct use of English grammar that I won’t be able to answer to his satisfaction. For example, the Japanese spend a lot of time learning the proper use of the pronoun “whom,” yet at least in my dialect of English (West Coast United States), it’s a totally dead word, only used in certain specific situations (e.g. “To whom it may concern”).
Japanese test English is quite unrelated to the living language you or I use.
