EFL in Japan Whose English is it anyway? By Jason Beale, M.

Ed (TESOL) Monash University, 2001

Email: jasongbeale@hotmail.com Published in Babel, Vol 37, No 2, Spring 2002, pp.26-28. ERIC #: EJ659463 http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ659463

BACKGROUND

There are clear historical reasons why English has become the foreign language of choice in Japan. Since the arrival of Commodore Perry's ships in 1853 Japan has had a close and complex relationship with English speaking cultures. During the early decades of the 20th century, English was mainly perceived as a "language for businessmen" (McConnell, 1999: 50), in contrast to the cultural cachet of continental European languages such as French.

Since the Allied Administration ended in 1952, the utility of English as a tool for international business has steadily grown. As well as making English lessons compulsory during secondary schooling, Japan has opened its doors to literally thousands of foreign English teachers through the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program, established in 1987. This initiative has been called "one of the largest foreign language programs in the world" (McConnell, 1999: 49).

RESPONDING TO CRITICISMS OF EFL IN JAPAN

Despite this massive allocation of resources toward the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL), Japan has still attracted criticism from many parts of the English speaking world. In order to address curriculum development issues properly, it is important there is a realistic and culturally informed view of English education in Japan. In order to do this, the main criticisms of Japanese English education need to be

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addressed. These criticisms can be found stated in various ways throughout the literature on education in Japan.

Japanese society is fundamentally insular and remote from the rest of the world, despite attempts to internationalize its social institutions.

Why does the Japanese government invest so much in English language education, especially given the minor place of English within Japanese society itself? The main purpose of English education in Japan has been described as the process of 'internationalization'. Such a process can be interpreted from different cultural perspectives or biases. Merry White defines it as "the creation of children who know how to work productively with foreign counterparts" (1987: 173). David McConnell calls it "the opening up" of Japanese society (1999: 55).

Clearly neither of these definitions is value neutral. White assumes that Japan's foreign counterparts (ie. America) are representatives of the dominant world culture, and so it is the Japanese who must adapt to foreign ways of working. McConnell assumes that the adoption of distinctly "Western norms and expectations" (1999: 49), gained through conversational fluency in English, is necessary for Japan to join the international community as an equal.

One quite extreme criticism made by McConnell is that language policies, such as the JET program, are not intended to 'internationalize' Japanese society at all. These policies are simply aimed at "getting Japan a better press" on the world stage. At the most,

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Japanese want to use English "so they can avoid unanticipated counterreactions and thereby raise their own status in the world" (1999: 55). In the process Japan has deliberately rejected the "living culture" (1999: 51) of English, in pursuit of its own national interests.

Such criticisms represent a widely held belief that 'English' is a vehicle of cherished cultural values. The use of English is associated with 'openness' and 'democracy', in contrast to the seemingly 'complex' and 'undemocratic' languages of the East. As Japan endeavours to extend and improve its English language program it will need to uncover and counter such Anglo-centric cultural attacks, and define the methods and aims of English instruction on its own terms.

The Japanese people are stubbornly monolingual and neglectful of Japan's multicultural minorities.

The predominantly monolingual nature of Japanese society is partly reponsible for the difficulty students have in developing conversational fluency in foreign languages. In the words of one international student from Japan: "We rarely face the occasion where we have to speak languages other than Japanese in daily life. So some of us never need English and neither are we interested in learning English" (Kito, personal communication). It would be too easy to simply blame students or teachers for this handicap. Certainly a country like Australia has not performed any better in learning second languages, even though it is one of the most multicultural countries in the world.

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Still, Japan does have a degree of cultural diversity within its borders, which it is slowly coming to recognize and embrace. (Refer statistics in Appendixes 1 and 2) Hopefully there will be an increase in openness and understanding among different cultural and ethnic groups. The role of education in this development will be significant, especially as Japan faces up to its falling birth rate and welcomes more migrants to its shores. (Refer population growth statistics in Appendix 3) This trend is an aspect of 'internationalization' which should not be specifically linked to the adoption of English as a lingua franca. The association of English use with cultural 'openness' is unfortunately a common Anglocentric bias, as noted above.

Teaching programs and methodology are rigidly conventional, and resistant to change.

The main perception of Japan in the West is of a rigidly hierarchical country where individuality and creativity must conform to strict social codes and practices. Yet the association of creativity with unbridled individualism is a Western notion that has not been so successful in educational terms. The American school curriculum has been criticised for its overly "sentimental and permissive views" of children's development, leading to an avoidance of ethical issues, and a general lack of curriculum focus (Wray, 1999: 280).

In comparison with the West, Japan faces the challenge of maintaining and nurturing the positive aspects of its social traditions, in the face of quite considerable social stresses, such as growing unemployment and the disaffection of the youth. Education can certainly

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encourage the evolution of social practices and values in response to these changes. But most importantly, such issues need to be approached with an understanding and respect for "cultural continuity" (Holliday, 2001) in the Japanese context.

A common criticism of English education in Japanese schools relates to the reliance on grammar-based exercises and the emphasis on learning through translation. The suggestion that Japan needs a more 'communicative approach' is very attractive. But even here it is important to avoid imposing a foreign methodology, without consideration of the existing cultural characteristics and constraints withing which it must be applied.

Many alternative communicative methodologies have been promoted in the past, and often in confusing ways. Some educators proposed abandoning all linguistically structured elements and using a totally student centred 'indirect' approach. In such a proposal it was assumed that students would be able to learn more effectively if only teacher influence and control was minimized. The inapproprateness of these extreme views to the Japanese situation has not encouraged the use of more moderate communicative approaches.

As reported by Dorota Pacek (1996), in-service training programs for Japanese teachers have only been partially successful in promoting communicative teaching techniques. Teachers' resistance would "seem to stem from differences between British and Japanese educational and cultural traditions." Clearly it makes sense to promote innovation in ways that are "more sensistive to the participants' cultural and educational backgrounds." (1996)

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More recently there has been a growing emphasis in the TESOL field on a combination of traditional and communicative approaches. Traditional linguistic exercises have become more student-focused, and are seen to have a central role in raising student awareness of language features, alongside the communicative use of language. Such a balanced approach is definitely preferable in the Japanese context, as it respects the value of both old and new teaching methods. Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) are treated as short-term guests, and team teaching is seen as an exception to the standard curriculum.

After working as an ALT at a number of senior high schools in the Tokyo area, I would have to agree with this criticism on the whole. The Japanese Ministry of Education has provided no clear guidelines for integrating team teaching into the regular curriculum. In principle, the individual teachers are required to negotiate with each other about how teaching shall be shared. In practice the results are sporadic at best. There is some excellent team teaching, as well as many wasted opportunities in which the ALT is no more than a superfluous attraction.

Foreign language teachers find themselves in an unfamiliar teaching environment with its own values and assumptions. They have limited Japanese skills which places them on the margins of the school culture, and prevents them from interacting assertively with school officials. For foreign teachers to work effectively in Japanese schools there needs to be specific professional training in team teaching, for both ALTs and their Japanese

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counterparts. Until both clear guidelines and professional standards are established, the role of the foreigner in Japanese schools will remain a marginal one.

The main goal of English instruction in schools is to prepare students for noncommunicative university entrance exams.

The gradual introduction of communicative techniques into the Japanese education system depends on an equal shift in assessment procedures, at least to introduce a communicative component. In this context we cannot assume there are universal standards of communicative competence that apply to all people in all situations. There is no ideal native speaker of English that exists as a template for assessment. On top of this, social practices of assessment are clearly formed in the service of powerful interests. These interests shape not only economic realities, but ideological ones as well. Assessment is the gatekeeper of both opportunity and ideas.

Lesley Farrell of Monash University has identified three culturally situated categories of assessment that are mistakenly presented as "universal indicators of academic merit" (1997: 142). These three categories are: literacy, relevance and politeness. That these are not universally consistent categories can be seen by examining English education in the Japanese context.

The cultural embeddedness of the concepts of 'literacy' and 'relevance' is shown in a recent university study in Japan that focused on the assessement of EFL student writing. It compared evaluations made by readers from different cultural and educational

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backgrounds. Overall, Japanese students who had not received English writing instruction preferred the Japanese rhetorical pattern, while native English speakers favoured the American rhetorical pattern (Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1996).

Although Japan has become a key economic ally of America, it has maintained to a great extent distinctly non-Western social traditions and values. As Farrell has put it, such cultural values have "a profound influence on the ways in which an individual pays attention, weights and values experience" (1997: 138)

The other culturally situated category is that of 'politeness'. This relates to socially appropriate and expected language use, relative to the speaker's position in the discourse. It has been noted that "Japanese students generally desire that the teacher respect their privacy (and) are not forthcoming about their personal feelings"(Oxford & Anderson, 1995: 206). It would be unwise for Japanese educators to blindly apply Western norms and expectations to the assessment of communicative skills. Examiners in Victoria, Australia, for example, "demand that candidates assume a position of equality with the examiner, a position which may be quite inappropriate for some students" (Farrell 1997: 146).

CONCLUSION

The teaching of English in Japan is not a neutral endeavour by any means. The accusation that Japan has somehow emptied out the cultural content of English in its educational programs (McConnell 1999), reminds us that language exists within a discourse of power

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and ideology. Such a criticism shows that internationalization through English is sometimes a hidden form of linguistic imperialism.

As in any country, curriculum innovation is needed in Japan to keep education alive and relevant. Yet the frequent calls for the development of EFL from outside Japan need to respect the principles of cultural continuity. This means that innovation "is adjusted to enable the best possible fit" with the host culture (Holliday 2001: 170). This is especially important with EFL in Japan, since Japan is both a client state of America and also an Asian culture with its own distinct social practices and values.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Farrell, L. (1997) Making Grades. Australian Journal of Education, 41 (2), 134-149.

Holliday, A. (2001) Achieving cultural continuity in curriculum innovation. In D. R. Hall & A. Hewings (eds.) Innovation in English Language Teaching: A Reader. London: Routledge, 169-177.

Kobayashi, H. & Rinnert, C. (1996) Factors affecting evaluation in an EFL context: cultural rhetorical patterns and readers' background. Language Learning, 46 (3), 397437.

Li, D. (2001) Teachers' perceived difficulties in introducing the communicative approach in South Korea. In D. R. Hall & A. Hewings (eds.) Innovation in English Language Teaching: A Reader. London: Routledge, 149-166.

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Maher, J. (1997) Linguistic minorities and education in Japan. Educational Review, 49 (2), 115-27.

McConnell, D. M. (1999) Coping with Diversity: The Achilles' Heel of Japanese Education? In G. K. LeTendre (ed.) Competitor or Ally? Japan's Role in American Educational Debates. New York: Falmer Press, 47-55.

Otani, Y. (1978) College and university: What are the barriers to efficient English teaching? In Koike, Matsuyama, Igarashi & Suzuki (eds.) The Teaching of English in Japan. Tokyo: Eichosa Publishing,115-122.

Oxford, R. L. & Anderson, N. J. (1995) State of the art:A crosscultural view of learning styles. Language Teaching, 28 (4), 201-15.

White, M. (1987) The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children. New York: The Free Press, 173-175.

Wray, H. (1999) Japanese and American Education: Attitudes and Practices. Westport CT: Bergin & Garvey, 275-281.

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