Thai university students score 7/100 for English test

[zeichen]

"I'm a damn ajarn, buddy."

Really, so you have published several books, been reviewed by a committee for your title. You were given the title by the King? NO, then you are not a Damn Ajarn. You might be a lecturer, but here in Thailand there is a very long and lengthy process to get the 3 ranks of Ajarn. I have only met a few foreigners with the actually title Ajarn and they have been here for 20 years and speak fluent Thai.

Having a PhD doesn't make you an ajarn, you arrogant snob.

[Stradavarius37]

"I'm a damn ajarn, buddy."

Really, so you have published several books, been reviewed by a committee for your title. You were given the title by the King? NO, then you are not a Damn Ajarn. You might be a lecturer, but here in Thailand there is a very long and lengthy process to get the 3 ranks of Ajarn. I have only met a few foreigners with the actually title Ajarn and they have been here for 20 years and speak fluent Thai.

Having a PhD doesn't make you an ajarn, you arrogant snob.

Somebody pee in your corn flakes this morning?

[CaptHaddock]

I have no doubt that Thai studen'ts English language skills are poor, but the article cites only one exam of one student. So, it's just an anecdote and tells us nothing about the system overall.

[ThaiUser]

Well, a person that can read, write and is perfect in grammar BUT has terrible pronunciation (you can't tell what they're blabbering on about) is a failure in that language. Period.

And I can have a conversation with an English person, read a newspaper (and know what I've just read), write posts on TV. I have had 6 years of formal English language education. Many Thai people get 10+ years and Yes, No, Goodbye is what they know... It's just the truth...

You must be a very clever man reading your posts on this specific subject in this forum, aren't you?

I didn’t speak a word of English nor could I read the language when I went to the UK when I was 18 years old. Most of my education I received was in the UK and I am grateful for it. The quality of teachers and the teaching materials available made it possible to gain what was impossible to get in my country at that time, Thailand.

When I got married to a man that had to travel in his job as IT consultant I have learned that the proper pronunciation differs, depending on the part of the country you are in. I would advise you to travel from Shetland to Orkney and continue to Liverpool not leaving out Northern England carrying on to Wales and some other parts of the island. You will find that pronunciation is different depending which part of the country you are in and understanding sometimes is even more difficult.

When being over in the US I found it very difficult to understand people when visiting part of the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana and sometimes it was impossible.

By saying that you received 6 years of formal English training and Thai receive 10 to 12 years of it, you have already invalidated your argument. In one of your posts you write that you know that some Thai teachers don’t speak English and students that have left that school certainly haven’t gained a formal English education. The Netherlands compared to Thailand is a rich country that has a long history when looking at education and how to apply it. Most of all, they have the money to provide teachers with expertise that can teach the subjects. In the place of Thailand I live, our local school has no English teacher and the person to teach English, which is enforced by the curriculum, has been designated by the head teacher. So the children leaving that school can’t claim to have had a formal education in English as you certainly can.

Always the excuse thatThailand is poor. thailand is actually very rich, only problem is the money is in the hands of a couple of people, most of whom we can not criticise. If Thais would stand up for their rights they could have a very good education system. Instead they are mostly busy playing Facebook, going to wats for lucky lottery numbers or watching Thai lakorn.

Let me first reply to this comment that said Thailand is actually a very rich country. I agree that Thailand is rich in resources and natural resorts but compared to the rest of the world we are not in the same league. I agree that we have very rich people in Thailand, but so have the rest of the world and an article in a UK paper recently published pointed out that during the last 10 years the wealth of 1% of the population has doubled to a staggering £512 billion.

Thailand is not alone when it comes to neglect education and some European countries that to certain extend also prefer to put money into pet projects that serve no purpose whatsoever and forget that the future of a country depends on the education her children.

I am absolutely nowhere blaming Thai students, I blame the education system and the dinosaurs they have working there called teachers. So does my Thai wife by the way. "Thai teachers can't teach " iswhat she often says.

My answer to your next comment is, that blaming Thai students is common and that you should read all comments made on this subject and you are one of the exceptions in the large amount of comments that contradict you and me.

I agree with you that the education system is in dire need of being changed and in that respect some of the teachers too need to change or leave. But to say that all Thai teachers are dinosaurs doesn’t take a fair look at them and the red tape they have to fight every day. We had two English camps during the recent holidays and with the help of the US Peace Corps and Thai teachers the children had a great time and enjoyed learning English, using games and other activities that are not standard in the syllabus.

[metisdead]

A post containing Thai language has been removed. English is the only acceptable language anywhere on ThaiVisa including Classifieds, except within the Thai language forum, where of course using Thai is allowed.

Another post containing another foreign language was removed as well.

[MaeJoMTB]

And to the people who don't need English in their job or life: it can be fun to learn something new, and a skill too. Maybe now you want to be a ricefarmer or tuk-tuk driver. But when you change your mind later on you have this skill called "being able to learn" already...

tuk tuk driver needs English, rice farmer not so much.

[Asheron]

tell all the students to put google translate on their iPhone

you can type in an English word and it will speak the word in American English ( not sure if it has British etc)

it will also translate so input : house and translates to Ban , with accent over the "a"

one other problem is using past - present - future tense......

and how do they get to "my mother me"

English is a hard language to learn , I am glad my parents grew up this side of the border !

I would say that english is very easy to learn. I would go as far as to say that any language (even truely hard languages such as finnish and hungarian) in the world is easy to learn if you get to speak, read, write and listen it each day. But then again when are you good in a language? When you can order food at the restaurant or have an academic discussion about the current political situation in say... ****land?

[boomerangutang]

I was a lecturer at a Thai U for awhile. The class was elective (voluntary for students) and after-regular-hours. I had 5 groups. The idea was to get them conversing in English, because in 11 years prior, none had spoken any English in their respective English classes. They had shown up to class, sat down, faced the front of the room, and never asked any questions or spoke. One evening after class, 3 female students came to me and asked for help with an assignment from their regular English teacher, a Thai man. I looked closely at the assignment, and found mistakes. But more tellingly, the questions delved into strange language territory so as to be nonsense. I pitied any students who had to try and wade through that convoluted stuff. I gently handed back the papers, and told them I couldn't assist.

[CaptHaddock]

tell all the students to put google translate on their iPhone

you can type in an English word and it will speak the word in American English ( not sure if it has British etc)

it will also translate so input : house and translates to Ban , with accent over the "a"

one other problem is using past - present - future tense......

and how do they get to "my mother me"

English is a hard language to learn , I am glad my parents grew up this side of the border !

I would say that english is very easy to learn. I would go as far as to say that any language (even truely hard languages such as finnish and hungarian) in the world is easy to learn if you get to speak, read, write and listen it each day. But then again when are you good in a language? When you can order food at the restaurant or have an academic discussion about the current political situation in say... ****land?

A particularly vacuous comment even by the standards of ThaiVisa.

[The manic]

boomerangutang: the nonsense you describe is similar to the test discussed here. It is neither functional, communicative, or skills based. It's sad really. But a lot of things in Thailand are.

[Asheron]

tell all the students to put google translate on their iPhone

you can type in an English word and it will speak the word in American English ( not sure if it has British etc)

it will also translate so input : house and translates to Ban , with accent over the "a"

one other problem is using past - present - future tense......

and how do they get to "my mother me"

English is a hard language to learn , I am glad my parents grew up this side of the border !

I would say that english is very easy to learn. I would go as far as to say that any language (even truely hard languages such as finnish and hungarian) in the world is easy to learn if you get to speak, read, write and listen it each day. But then again when are you good in a language? When you can order food at the restaurant or have an academic discussion about the current political situation in say... ****land?

A particularly vacuous comment even by the standards of ThaiVisa.

If you can't learn a language then you are either lazy, "challenged" or uninterested in learning the language. Don't know which of those three you place in but from your "vacuous" reply i assume first or third as obviously second is not an option as you know "fancy" words such as "vacuous".

With that said, what's up with your hate?

[jamiesmith]

There is a Thai parody of an English class...hahaha

[PaPiPuPePo]

 

I let him look at English speaking programmes and cartoons on Youtube which unfortunately has started to give him an American accent.

 

God forbid an American disagree with an Englishman about "his" language, but the American and Irish (and certain Scottish, those not so heavily influenced by Gaelic, like Edinburgh and environs) accents are much closer to the historical pronunciation of English. To take the most distinctive difference in English and "colonial" pronunciations, Richard III (on stage) actually did pronounce the "r" in "horse." (If you think about it for a minute, why would the English language write "r's" if they're not to be pronounced? ) At some point the English upper classes started dropping their "r's" to differentiate themselves from hoi polloi, but much of the rest of English society gradually followed suit. Kind of like the way everyone eats white bread nowadays.

There's no innate reason why "father" and "after" (nearly) rhyme, and one could argue that their doing so is a devolution of pronunciation.

And while, granted, there's a lot if room for improvement in the diction (and grammar, and vocabulary, and....) of many Americans, the same could be said for a lot of Brits. And which "correct" English accent to you want him to acquire--the BBC aka "Atlantic" accent? The public-school accent? Or do you want him to speak like an East-ender, or a Yorkshireman? Of course any and all of those are much superior in every way to that horrible American accent!

[lostoday]

There is a Thai parody of an English class...hahaha

100% accurate except the teacher would have also put the tone marks on each word.

And if she was from the Phillipines she would have pointed to her dress and said, "frock."

[CaptHaddock]

tell all the students to put google translate on their iPhone

you can type in an English word and it will speak the word in American English ( not sure if it has British etc)

it will also translate so input : house and translates to Ban , with accent over the "a"

one other problem is using past - present - future tense......

and how do they get to "my mother me"

English is a hard language to learn , I am glad my parents grew up this side of the border !

I would say that english is very easy to learn. I would go as far as to say that any language (even truely hard languages such as finnish and hungarian) in the world is easy to learn if you get to speak, read, write and listen it each day. But then again when are you good in a language? When you can order food at the restaurant or have an academic discussion about the current political situation in say... ****land?

A particularly vacuous comment even by the standards of ThaiVisa.

If you can't learn a language then you are either lazy, "challenged" or uninterested in learning the language. Don't know which of those three you place in but from your "vacuous" reply i assume first or third as obviously second is not an option as you know "fancy" words such as "vacuous".

With that said, what's up with your hate?

I was being kind. In fact, your comment is moronic. English easy to learn? For whom? For native speakers of a closely-related language like Dutch equally with speakers of a language remote from all the Indo-European languages like Thai? Really?

But the topic is the poor performance of Thai students at learning English, which is obviously the product of the inadequate Thai education system and not the result of supposed personal character defects on which the bar room philosophers of ThaiVisa so like to insist. We know this from independent measures of the Thai education system such as the PISA results from 2013 in which Thailand ranked number 47 out of 62 countries. So, Thai students' poor performance in English is not a special case, but consistent with overall poor educational performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_student_performance

But I know these concepts are hard to grasp for those who know too little to understand just how little they know.

I myself read, write, and speak several languages including Thai, thank you very much.

[Scott]

English is not a particularly easy language to learn. I believe it is classed as a medium language as far as difficulty. Japanese is, for example, more difficult, in part because of the subtle differences in what words and phrases are used to address particular people according to social status.

There is also the problem of linguistic distance, which has to do with the fact that English and Thai are very different languages, both with regard to pronunciation, grammar, alphabet and tones.

The important factor, however, is that English is seldom used in Thailand and most people have very, very limited exposure to the language. The second important factor is that in school they are taught rules of grammar endlessly, but never apply them and in some places there is a huge emphasis on vocabulary, but it is almost never in a sentence or used in context. They also emphasize obscure rules about the language in testing.

[lostoday]

• Category I language: 95 or higher (French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish)

• Category II language: 100 or higher (German, Indonesian)

• Category III language: 105 or higher (Hebrew, Hindi, Persian Farsi, Dari, Punjabi,Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Uzbek, and Urdu

• Category IV language: 110 or higher (Modern Standard Arabic, Iraqi Arabic,Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Levantine Arabic and Pashto)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Battery

I is easy IV is difficult for English speakers to learn.

Edited May 24, 2015 by lostoday

[boomerangutang]

It seems Thai nationals teaching English - often try to 'construct' the English language to students, while speaking mostly Thai in their classes.

It would be like someone teaching a class of students to tango. She would draw diagrams of the many positions and poses by the dancers. She might even play some tango music - but wouldn't put on the music and have the students pair off and dance. Thai nationals teach English like it's a series of mathematical formulas. Language is more of a dance, ....a flow.

Thailand needs to open its policy and allow native English speakers to teach in Thailand. If I were PM, I'd welcome all enthusiastic backpackers who wanted to assist in that endeavor. If any were shown to be (or had prior evidence of being) sexual predators or inept as teachers, then they'd be dropped from the program. The vast majority of backpackers willing to teach would prove to be of great assistance.

Who are the greatest teachers (of language or any other topic) for each individual growing up? Parents. How many parents are certified as teachers? Few. Yet we all learned lots from them while growing up, didn't we?

Certification programs are mostly bunk. If an individual has teaching skills (as most people do), that person won't need a paid-for curriculum to bring it out. I meet hundreds of backpackers each year, most of whom are native English speakers or otherwise fluent. I'd venture to say that any of those hundreds would be fine English teachers if they chose to be. No offense to Thais, but the farang would be head and shoulders more adept than most Thais with teaching degrees. On the other side of the coin; I speak Thai badly, but probably better than most Thai English teachers speak English. Would Thais want me teaching Thai language in a farang land?

[Thaddeus]

There is a Thai parody of an English class...hahaha

Sadly, that's reality and not a parody.

[Local Drunk]

There is a Thai parody of an English class...hahaha

Sadly, that's reality and not a parody.

I know I'm not as fluent in reading Thai as some of you are, but when I see the way that English is translated phonetically in Thai script... I just shake my head. That's the way they learn to pronounce these words. Oh... is_land is also pronounced as ice_land. I think that my all time favourite is, ka_mare_ra.

[Asheron]

I was being kind. In fact, your comment is moronic. English easy to learn? For whom? For native speakers of a closely-related language like Dutch equally with speakers of a language remote from all the Indo-European languages like Thai? Really?

But the topic is the poor performance of Thai students at learning English, which is obviously the product of the inadequate Thai education system and not the result of supposed personal character defects on which the bar room philosophers of ThaiVisa so like to insist. We know this from independent measures of the Thai education system such as the PISA results from 2013 in which Thailand ranked number 47 out of 62 countries. So, Thai students' poor performance in English is not a special case, but consistent with overall poor educational performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_student_performance

But I know these concepts are hard to grasp for those who know too little to understand just how little they know.

I myself read, write, and speak several languages including Thai, thank you very much.

If the poor english skills of thai students really was because of overall poor educational performance how come countries like Japan have very high score in PISA yet they suck just as much in english as your average Somchai in Thailand? Is the japanese education system also "inadequate" because of this fact?

I know for a fact that if someone studies any language for 3-5 hours each day they will be quite fluent in that language after just 6 months. I have now forgot a lot as i never use it but i was semi-fluent in japanese after just 4 months and that was learning japanese in Sweden. For instance "all" of the thai women who move to Sweden get free swedish education called "SFI" (swedish for foreigners). And basicly none of the thai women who come to Sweden have university degrees with them and usually haven't been in school for decades but still they learn swedish enough to have casual conversations in swedish about things they know about.

And your last sentence... i'm fluent in swedish, finnish and english, can i have a cookie or atleast a gold star?

[boomerangutang]

I reside in Chiang Rai, northernmost Thailand. Thailand is about the poorest for English-comprehension in SE Asia, and this northern area is about the poorest in Thailand. Supposedly, a college/U graduate in Thailand is supposed to have at least a tentative handle on simple English. Yet, an English speaker going in to a bank or government office or police station, is unlikely to meet anyone working there who is brave enough to try and speak any English. One or two people there may know how to make English sentences with more than 2 words, but they're so afraid of making mistakes or embarrassing themselves, that they just giggle, put a hand in front of mouth, and say nothing. They often don't even try.

Dozens of time, I might receive a tel call, where I ask the caller if he/she speaks English, and there's silence (They don't know how, or are unable to say, "no"). I then ask if they speak Thai (in Thai), because I speak some Thai. Again there's a long silence, even though I say the Thai phrase correctly. Then, they either demure and hang up, or they throw out a slew of stacatto sentences too fast for me to comprehend.

The result: Many things, in Thailand, which should/could be simple to do - wind up being complicated or un-doable - because of Thais being coy, afraid of making any mistakes, afraid of farang, or lack of patience, or .... fill in the blanks

[bikerlou47]

I think many of you would be surprised as to their math skills!

Like needing a calculator for 4 times 4?

How about near perfect scores on the SAT?

[retsdon]

It seems Thai nationals teaching English - often try to 'construct' the English language to students, while speaking mostly Thai in their classes.

It would be like someone teaching a class of students to tango. She would draw diagrams of the many positions and poses by the dancers. She might even play some tango music - but wouldn't put on the music and have the students pair off and dance. Thai nationals teach English like it's a series of mathematical formulas. Language is more of a dance, ....a flow.

Thailand needs to open its policy and allow native English speakers to teach in Thailand. If I were PM, I'd welcome all enthusiastic backpackers who wanted to assist in that endeavor. If any were shown to be (or had prior evidence of being) sexual predators or inept as teachers, then they'd be dropped from the program. The vast majority of backpackers willing to teach would prove to be of great assistance.

Who are the greatest teachers (of language or any other topic) for each individual growing up? Parents. How many parents are certified as teachers? Few. Yet we all learned lots from them while growing up, didn't we?

Certification programs are mostly bunk. If an individual has teaching skills (as most people do), that person won't need a paid-for curriculum to bring it out. I meet hundreds of backpackers each year, most of whom are native English speakers or otherwise fluent. I'd venture to say that any of those hundreds would be fine English teachers if they chose to be. No offense to Thais, but the farang would be head and shoulders more adept than most Thais with teaching degrees. On the other side of the coin; I speak Thai badly, but probably better than most Thai English teachers speak English. Would Thais want me teaching Thai language in a farang land?

Backpackers teaching sans curriculum or syllabus? That's what half the kids get already. And a fat lot of good it does them.

[CaptHaddock]

I was being kind. In fact, your comment is moronic. English easy to learn? For whom? For native speakers of a closely-related language like Dutch equally with speakers of a language remote from all the Indo-European languages like Thai? Really?

But the topic is the poor performance of Thai students at learning English, which is obviously the product of the inadequate Thai education system and not the result of supposed personal character defects on which the bar room philosophers of ThaiVisa so like to insist. We know this from independent measures of the Thai education system such as the PISA results from 2013 in which Thailand ranked number 47 out of 62 countries. So, Thai students' poor performance in English is not a special case, but consistent with overall poor educational performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_student_performance

But I know these concepts are hard to grasp for those who know too little to understand just how little they know.

I myself read, write, and speak several languages including Thai, thank you very much.

If the poor english skills of thai students really was because of overall poor educational performance how come countries like Japan have very high score in PISA yet they suck just as much in english as your average Somchai in Thailand? Is the japanese education system also "inadequate" because of this fact?

I know for a fact that if someone studies any language for 3-5 hours each day they will be quite fluent in that language after just 6 months. I have now forgot a lot as i never use it but i was semi-fluent in japanese after just 4 months and that was learning japanese in Sweden. For instance "all" of the thai women who move to Sweden get free swedish education called "SFI" (swedish for foreigners). And basicly none of the thai women who come to Sweden have university degrees with them and usually haven't been in school for decades but still they learn swedish enough to have casual conversations in swedish about things they know about.

And your last sentence... i'm fluent in swedish, finnish and english, can i have a cookie or atleast a gold star?

The data tell the story with the Japanese. High PISA scores and the second lowest TOEFL scores in Asia mean they don't know how to teach languages. The fact that English is linguistically remote from Japanese is a factor, but the other Asian languages are similarly remote. So, that doesn't explain the performance gap. Why they should fail so conspicuously in the one area is a question for those who know more of the defects of their language teaching system.

What you believe you know for a fact is nonsense. Those uneducated Thai women are not fluent in Swedish after six months of a basic language skills class from the government. They will have reached a functional level at best, i.e. can perform some basic transactions like buying groceries. They will not be able to read and negotiate an apartment rental lease. You weren't "semi-fluent" in Japanese if you didn't know the 1800 basic kanji, which you didn't know after four months. "Semi-fluent' means you just impressed yourself.

So, my guess is you're a Swede who probably had eight to twelve years of English classes before university. You underestimate the difficulty of learning English because you have forgotten how much work it took. That's like the average (monolingual) American whose attitude is, "What so hard about English?"

Edited May 25, 2015 by CaptHaddock

[boomerangutang]

It seems Thai nationals teaching English - often try to 'construct' the English language to students, while speaking mostly Thai in their classes.

It would be like someone teaching a class of students to tango. She would draw diagrams of the many positions and poses by the dancers. She might even play some tango music - but wouldn't put on the music and have the students pair off and dance. Thai nationals teach English like it's a series of mathematical formulas. Language is more of a dance, ....a flow.

Thailand needs to open its policy and allow native English speakers to teach in Thailand. If I were PM, I'd welcome all enthusiastic backpackers who wanted to assist in that endeavor. If any were shown to be (or had prior evidence of being) sexual predators or inept as teachers, then they'd be dropped from the program. The vast majority of backpackers willing to teach would prove to be of great assistance.

Who are the greatest teachers (of language or any other topic) for each individual growing up? Parents. How many parents are certified as teachers? Few. Yet we all learned lots from them while growing up, didn't we?

Certification programs are mostly bunk. If an individual has teaching skills (as most people do), that person won't need a paid-for curriculum to bring it out. I meet hundreds of backpackers each year, most of whom are native English speakers or otherwise fluent. I'd venture to say that any of those hundreds would be fine English teachers if they chose to be. No offense to Thais, but the farang would be head and shoulders more adept than most Thais with teaching degrees. On the other side of the coin; I speak Thai badly, but probably better than most Thai English teachers speak English. Would Thais want me teaching Thai language in a farang land?

Backpackers teaching sans curriculum or syllabus? That's what half the kids get already. And a fat lot of good it does them.

I didn't mention curriculum or syllabus. I mentioned natural teaching skills - which nearly all people have. Once they get a job teaching, they can be shown the curriculum and go from there. Unfortunately, most curriculum outlines in Thailand, re; learning English, are flawed - sometimes fatally - but that's what teachers are usually stuck with.

There are many reasons backpackers are kept from teaching by overly strict regulations. It's like taxi drivers keeping other drivers from doing taxi-like service. Thai nationality English teachers don't want competition, and they certainly don't want their ineptitude to be shown.

If I had kids, I'd much rather have then learn a language from a native speaker of that language - particularly a young, bright,farang - than have them try to navigate the convoluted crap that's dished out by standard Thai teachers who claim to know English. Thai nationals are probably fine for teaching Thai and other topics - but leave English to native English speakers. Would Malaysians or Indonesians want their kids to learn Thai from farang with a cursory handle of Thai language? Doubtful.

I've seen some of the study material and some Thai/English dictionaries, and they're packed with mistakes - particularly (but not only) the study material crafted by Thai nationals. I saw one dictionary for sale in a contemporary shop - crammed with archaic words which aren't any longer used - like guncotton and wildst. The Thai academics who put that dictionary together merely looked at old English dictionaries, and copied all the listings, not knowing which words were ridiculously archaic.

[djjamie]

Going by a previous PM of Thailand's English skills Kentucky State University must be even lower than 7 then!

[lostoday]

Going by a previous PM of Thailand's English skills Kentucky State University must be even lower than 7 then!

Do you get extra points from the big baiter in the sky for turning every thread in to an anti Thaksin thread?

[AyG]

Going by a previous PM of Thailand's English skills Kentucky State University must be even lower than 7 then!

Do you get extra points from the big baiter in the sky for turning every thread in to an anti Thaksin thread?

Get your facts right. It was Yinglack Shinawatra, not Thaksin that studied at KSU.

[lostoday]

The data tell the story with the Japanese. High PISA scores and the second lowest TOEFL scores in Asia mean they don't know how to teach languages. The fact that English is linguistically remote from Japanese is a factor, but the other Asian languages are similarly remote. So, that doesn't explain the performance gap. Why they should fail so conspicuously in the one area is a question for those who know more of the defects of their language teaching system.

What you believe you know for a fact is nonsense. Those uneducated Thai women are not fluent in Swedish after six months of a basic language skills class from the government. They will have reached a functional level at best, i.e. can perform some basic transactions like buying groceries. They will not be able to read and negotiate an apartment rental lease. You weren't "semi-fluent" in Japanese if you didn't know the 1800 basic kanji, which you didn't know after four months. "Semi-fluent' means you just impressed yourself.

So, my guess is you're a Swede who probably had eight to twelve years of English classes before university. You underestimate the difficulty of learning English because you have forgotten how much work it took. That's like the average (monolingual) American whose attitude is, "What so hard about English?"

• Younger Americans, aged 18-29, are far more likely than other age groups to be bilingual, with 43% able to speak a second language, compared to 25% of those aged 30 to 49, 22% of those 50 to 64, and only 15% of Americans 65 and older.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1825/about-one-four-americans-can-hold-conversation-second-language.aspx

• I guess you need to talk to some more Americans. Your experience is too limited.

I wouldn't say you were a moron for not knowing that almost half of young Americans speak more than one language - just not informed.