This chapter explores why many Japanese learners struggle to achieve functional English proficiency despite extensive school instruction. It contrasts effortless native language acquisition—often described as an “instinct”—with second language learning, which typically requires deliberate, explicit effort. Two factors are highlighted: Japan’s sociolinguistic context, where Japanese remains sufficient for most academic and professional purposes, reducing the urgency to use English; and a pedagogical tendency to prioritize linguistic accuracy over pragmatic communicative success. The chapter also argues that insisting on unaided performance while excluding tools such as machine translation and generative AI further distances learning from real-world communication. Drawing on the Symbol Emergence System, the chapter emphasizes embodiment and situated interaction as conditions for constructing meaning. It then proposes multimodal language education, treating gesture, gaze, and other modes as integral to communication rather than peripheral. Finally, it argues for an expansive view of multimodality that includes technologies such as generative AI as pragmatic resources for interaction and learning, while maintaining that functional language acquisition ultimately depends on learners’ active construction and internalization of meaning.