Japan Global Village Case Study

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My view on Japan and the global village Globalisation and the global village There are two distinct terms that are often confused, globalisation and global village. Globalisation is the method by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale (OED). Japan’s impact on the world is enormous and continues to grow; motor vehicles and electronics are just two examples, so there is no question about its influence on the world. No matter, perhaps we should now consider how well and how efficiently Japan participates on the world stage. To answer this, we need to look at how international businesses communicate in the modern world; technology has effected great change in this regard.…show more content…
Videoconferencing and telephoning are common but have limitations owing to time differences and the difficulty in arranging them in the first place. The most common method is e-mailing, but this is also the most likely method to cause confusion between participants and consequently delays in progress. For example, consider an e-mail sent from Japan to the USA on a Monday. Now, if the message was unclear, the recipient in the USA will simply send a reply asking questions rather than providing answers. Moreover, the recipient in the USA may not reply until the Tuesday. To add to the problem, the person in Japan may not read the message and reply until the Wednesday and therefore the recipient in the USA may not reply until the Thursday. So far then, there have been four e-mails, yet no progress made. If the second message sent from Japan is still unclear, the whole cycle begins again and several weeks may pass before the receiver understands the intended original message. Even telephoning and videoconferencing are not immune to confusion. Although they offer the luxury of live questions and answers, the style of English used in Japan means there is still a high chance of confusion and…show more content…
These are positive changes, but perhaps the bigger issue is the teaching methods. For many years, Japan has produced a plethora of conversational English schools because compulsory schools were (and still are) putting too much emphasis on written English rather than spoken. However, conversational English schools are expensive and often impede on valuable time, a normal day for school pupils and businesspeople alike is busy with other, higher, priorities. To be an active, respected and popular member of the global village we cannot wait until the last minute. To learn suitable English and methods of communication, we need to swap the time spend on reading and writing with the time spent speaking; specifically, at least eighty per cent using spoken English in active and realistic situations and twenty per cent on the niceties of grammar. One way to do this is to have pupils and businesspeople making use of Skype or other media to have conversations in English with people all around the world - that is the global

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