According to an article in the Japan Times in Feb 2009, the Japanese don't speak English well because there are few qualified teachers of English in Japan. But the main problem, teachers say, is that any benefits gained disappear rapidly once ESL students move on to middle school. Children are bewildered by the sudden shift from living English to textbook English. The bureaucrats focus on high school teaching. They say they want more English vocabulary to be taught, and will require Japan's large army of middle and high school English-language teachers to speak more English in the classroom. But making Japan's children listen even more to the poor accents and pronunciations of their English-language teachers is not likely to improve things