Divs-poole

REFORM OF JAPANESE HIGHER EDUCATION 

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classroom would probably agree that many of their students are quiet, a language 

teacher in a North American college might just as easily label their class of 18-

year-olds as “reticent” or “face-saving” (Nathan 2005). The dangers of 

generalization aside, the fact remains that the perception of English-language 

teaching at universities is that of failure, and this perception has challenged both 

university educators and ministry officials for much of the 20th century. Responses 

to this challenge have varied, and for the most part real change has been 

superseded by mere rhetoric.  

ELT Methodology 

To address this question of ELT reform, it is necessary to first discuss the major 

trends in language teaching and learning in Japan, especially noting the change, or 

lack of change, in methodology over the years. As was mentioned above, in the 

university tradition of ELT yakudoku methodology, commonly glossed as 

grammar-translation (GT), has often been the preferred teaching and learning style. 

Yakudoku (GT), the teaching of mechanical word-by-word translation techniques, 

has a long tradition in Japan, some (Henrichsen 1989) tracing its origin to the Nara 

and Heian periods (

A

.

D

. 710–1185), when Japanese Buddhist scholars were greatly 

influenced by the Chinese written language without regard for oral proficiency. 

Though this GT method may have been predominant at preparatory schools for 

university, once entering university, Meiji-era students were trained in English 

(often by foreign professors) as specialists in subjects such as medicine, 

economics, law, or engineering, and English lessons were not part of the 

curriculum. So, while in much of the Meiji period university students studied “in 

English and through English, but never about English,” by the 20th century a 

growing nationalism changed the medium of instruction and meant that students 

“had reached the stage of learning about English in Japanese” (Bryant, 1956 in 

Henrichsen 1989, p. 122). The GT methodology of explaining English grammar 

and translation techniques in Japanese gained prominence as the preferred form of 

teaching English.  

In prewar Japan, then, while English taught through GT was part of the liberal 

arts approach to preparing students for the imperial and private universities at the 

secondary-school level of kōtōgakkō (higher schools) and yoka (preparatory 

schools) respectively, the curriculum of the HEIs focused on specialized training. 

While the intention was not to develop proficiency in communicating in spoken 

English, nevertheless for those Japanese that traveled abroad, lack of 

communicative skills proved embarrassing, and spoken skill gained in priority. The 

Palmer Oral English approach was an important predecessor to a later reform 

innovation implemented in postwar Japan by the English Language Exploratory 

Committee (ELEC) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fries Oral 

Approach to language learning (Henrichsen 1989).  

The persistence of GT methodology in spite of these efforts at reform suggests 

the pernicious strength and perceived efficacy of this tradition of teaching in Japan 

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CHAPTER 2 

and supports the argument that implementation of change in ELT must be 

predominately an indigenous effort. In fact, Japanese ELT experts themselves have 

developed two voices in English-language education, the GT and the 

“communicative,” “one saying that cultural enrichment through reading is 

important in the traditional manner, the other saying that English is needed for 

international communication” (Wada & McCarty 1984, p. 28). This latter group, 

though again using theories from abroad, provided the impetus for a second wave 

of ELT reform at universities in Japan, the communicative language teaching 

(CLT) approach. 

Tsuda Yukio, Suzuki Takao and other Japanese sociolinguists have emphasized 

the need for local, Japanese answers to questions of language learning and teaching 

methodology. Though Aspinall (2003) does suggest that Tsuda and Suzuki’s 

arguments may be used for certain political agendas, he also points out that, taken 

at face value, there is a good degree of relevancy to their claims. I agree that, for 

the most part, “attempts in the past to superimpose methods from overseas have 

generally been a failure not only because of the lack of appropriate training and 

shortage of materials, but also because of the existing approach to university 

education” (Terauchi 2001, p. 52). This failure of properly contextualizing the 

method of learning with the learning environment has been the plague of ELT 

worldwide, not only in Japan. In North America and the British Commonwealth as 

well, there has arisen an unavoidable “gap” between ELT theory in the literature 

and actual practice in the classroom. Through twenty years of observation of 

language classrooms and teacher training programs in the U.S., Europe, Australia, 

and New Zealand, Thornbury (1998) concludes that the so-called communicative 

language teaching (CLT) method of ELT “has never been anything but direct and 

that strong CLT—apart from its one moment of glory in Bangalore (Prabhu 

1987)—has been and remains a chimera” (Thornbury 1998, p. 110). ELT teachers, 

whether in London, Cairo, or Tokyo, are not convinced by research findings, rather 

they are much more concerned with whether or not the method is easily understood 

and adapted to their local situation (Whitley 1993, p. 147).  

The reason for the general perceived “failure” of communicative approaches to 

language teaching in Asia is often defined as the result of insensitivity to the 

cultural realities of the region.  The influence of Confucianism in Asian education 

is often emphasized in these discussions (Cortazzi & Jin 1996; Ellis 1994; 

Flowerdew 1998; Kelly & Adachi 1993; Oxford et al. 1992; Stapleton 1995). 

Partly because of these warnings and criticisms, teacher trainers in the 

communicative approach are certainly aware of the challenges and dangers of 

exporting western methodologies in situ, without considering the cultural and 

social milieu of the education environment (Holliday 1994; Kramsch 1998).  

However, as mentioned above, though the so called cultural explanations in the 

recent literature are at first convincing, some observers (Cheng 2000; Kubota 

1999; Littlewood 2000) have warned that overemphasizing these factors when 

explaining challenges to teaching methodology risks a simplistic, cultural-

deterministic argumentation that is not necessarily “grounded” in reality. 

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