In life, nothing is wasted. Let's build a society in which everyone can live an active life

Abstract

A report published in August 2015 by the World Literacy Foundation estimates that economic and social loss due to illiteracy in Japan is about 95.1 billion yen annually [1]. Thanks to compulsory education, Japan is said to have achieved a literacy rate of 99.8%. However, according to a survey by the National Institute of Informatics conducted in 2016 [2], many junior- and senior-high-school students do not understand the structure of basic sentences, such as the relationship between subjects and predicates. We interviewed Tessei Kobayashi, a senior distinguished researcher at NTT Communication Science Laboratories, who is researching the development of the linguistic ability, which plays an important role in social participation, about his current research and attitude as a researcher.