That may change for English. The problem is that learning a language, particularly when the accent is very different, requires a lot of practice with a good model. When you have a limited number of teachers, with a level not ideal, it's a practical problem. And it's costly. Add to this a culture where people prefer to avoid English if they don't feel confident in their ability, and you have a tough problem to crack.
But technology to the rescue! There's a huge Japanese company called Benesse, doing educational products. They have an English program, one of my kids use it. It's cheap, about $15 per month. The reason is that it's mostly automated: the kid uses an app on a tablet or PC, and his accent in repeating sentences is assessed by the app. All this gamified of course. Then every two weeks he has some time with a human teacher using skype. Looks like the teacher is based in a lower wage country than Japan, which explains the low cost --- which is important to make the system accessible to as many as possible.
We'll see the results over the long haul (it's started recently), but I'm already impressed by my kid's accent on the few sentences he knows. And I'm also impressed at how they built such a system.
We'll see the effect it will have, but it's an interesting attempt at improving things.
But technology to the rescue! There's a huge Japanese company called Benesse, doing educational products. They have an English program, one of my kids use it. It's cheap, about $15 per month. The reason is that it's mostly automated: the kid uses an app on a tablet or PC, and his accent in repeating sentences is assessed by the app. All this gamified of course. Then every two weeks he has some time with a human teacher using skype. Looks like the teacher is based in a lower wage country than Japan, which explains the low cost --- which is important to make the system accessible to as many as possible. We'll see the results over the long haul (it's started recently), but I'm already impressed by my kid's accent on the few sentences he knows. And I'm also impressed at how they built such a system. We'll see the effect it will have, but it's an interesting attempt at improving things.