The power of radio to distribute the spoken word around the globe in a matter of seconds, can not be matched by the written form of language. Add to this, the combined audio/visual effect of movies and television, and the modern technologies suggest a future in which the use of the written form of language will become secondary or even less. Some people have argued that reading will always be important because it is controlled by the individual. A person can read what he wants, when he wants to and at the rate he wants to. When we listen, the speaker is either too slow or too fast, and we can not control him. Modern technology is making even this argument invalid. The modern rate-control technology already invented although not widely marketed will allow the listener to listen to a tape recording at any speed he desires with minimal speech distortion.

A recent article in a newspaper illustrates the all pervasive influence of modern technology on language and language usage. The headline read:
GISCARD'S USE OF ENGLISH, TELEPHONE ANNOYS CRITIC S

The article goes on to explain that officials at the Quai d'Orsay, a bastion of French traditionalism, are a little upset with the new President of France. It seems that when "Giscard wants to speak with his ' friend', Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, he picks up the phone and calls him direct. And they converse-sacre-bleu! -in English. Their chats have been known to last as long as 45 minutes." ^lIt seems they started these close working habits when both were finance ministers. It apparently seemed natural enough for them to resume the relationship after both men rose to their respective nation's highest offices last spring.

Some of the officials of the bureaucracy are a bit upset and claim that sometimes this "telephone diplomacy" leaves out details of the conversation and causes problems for the lower-echelon officials who were incompletely briefed. But in general, this approach has settled many problems more quickly than the slow moving bureaucratic methods and will be continued. This is but one example of the effects of technology on the world of the future.

In present day Japan, the written form of language is still considered very important. It is in fact much more important for the Japanese language than for the English language. The use of kanjimakes Japanese more difficult to encode or to write than most languages. Most languages are strongly phonetic and the written form is generally a printed form of the sound language. The use of kanji, a form of ideograph, makes each idea more graphic, more precise in meaning. It makes it more difficult to learn to decode or read, but, and this is very important, it makes it very much easier to decode or read, once it has been learned. More information can be encoded per unit space using kanji than using a phonetic language system.

The importance of the written form of Japanese can be observed in almost any sound conversation between two speakers of Japanese. The word, for example, KEN is spoken, but because this sound has many meanings, the speaker will identify which meaning he meant by "finger writing" the specific kanjiin his palm. A theoretical explanation for the importance of the written use of kanjiis given by Zipf.²Basically the point is that from a speaker's point of view, the use of a single sound such as KEN to express many many meanings, is very economical, very easy. But from a decoder's point of view, be he an auditor or reader, this is very difficult to understand. It is much easier from his point of view to have each symbol have one and only one meaning. The reading of Icanji, once learned is therefore much easier than trying to figure out which of the many meanings of KEN is meant. The written form of Japanese is still important for the Japanese to learn.

On the other hand, the written form of English is not as important, and as time moves on, it will become less and less important. Written English is generally a phonetic spelling of the sound form. But irregularities are common enough to add difficulty to the "learning-to-read" task, but this does not reduce the reading task once they are learned. As modern technologies become more pervasive around the world, as more and more people have access to radio, television, etc. by satellite and recordings, more and more of the world will be filled with the sound of English. The decisions that people have to make will not wait for translations of spoken English either into written English, or spoken Japanese. A general listening comprehension of English will have to be readily at hand.

A recognition that the written form of English is not quite so important as it was once thought, is slowly gaining form in Japan. Suggestions that more emphasis be placed on speaking are being heard more and more around the country. Yet the general practice in the schools remains steady, and students study the written form in order to pass the entrance examination into the university of their choice. In junior high schools new educational materials utilizing the so-called "audio-lingual" approach are becoming more and more prominent, only to be followed by a reversion to the written form in high school. I suggest that both the emphasis on speaking as illustrated by the trend toward the audio-lingual approach, and the continued use of translation as illustrated in the high school classroom practices are not healthy for Japan's future. I recommend that more emphasis be given to listening comprehension, and the reading of English without translation into Japanese. I will now try to make a case for the increased emphasis on listening comprehension.

Criticism of the present practice of the grammar-translation method of teaching English has caused many to advocate the audio lingual approach with its emphasis on speaking as an alternative practice. For well over a decade most foreign language instruction in the United States has adhered more or less to the audio lingual principles of methodology. The audio-lingual approach is based upon those theories of behavior psychology that saw a child