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English Language Teaching in Japanese Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Cullen Bryant II
William Cullen Bryant II*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York 27
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Extract

As their schools reopen this year after the summer vacation, about 7,000,000 Japanese children from 12 to 18 years old are spending five hours a week studying English. They are taught by some 85,000 teachers, few of whom have ever heard the language spoken by a native—except, perhaps, over the radio. In the universities hundreds of thousands more are busy with their seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth year of English. In large cities tens of thousands of clerks and secretaries, waitresses and salesgirls, bankers and government employees of all ages go several evenings a week to commercial schools to learn English conversation and business correspondence. Many of these are among several hundred thousand listeners to radio English courses. At newsstands and bookstores, on streetcars and buses, electric trains and subways, thousands more are poring over magazines with English articles, movie scenarios and jokes; over grammar books whose chapter headings, such as “Elliptical Negation” and “Concessive Clause,” suggest their contents; over cram books, word lists and sample examinations. For high schools follow the lead of universities in making English grammar and translation a part of the rigorous ordeal called shiken jigoku, or “examination hell,” a stiffly competitive process of admission. And ever more business firms are requiring job applicants to take English tests.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 4-Part2 , September 1956 , pp. 21 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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Footnotes

*

The second of a series of articles, commissioned by the editor of PMLA on foreign language teaching in other nations. Professor Bryant is Chairman of the American Language Center for Foreign Students, School of General Studies, Columbia University. His article is a summary of a survey of English language teaching in Japan made, at the request of the Japan Society of New York, Inc., during the fall and winter of 1954-55. He is pleased to acknowledge the helpful suggestions made in the preparation of this article by Shisei lino, Masunori Hiratsuka, Makato Kuranaga, Naoe Naganuma, W. Freeman Twaddell, Katsumi Watanabe, and Theodore Andersson.

References

1 Rev. ed. (Tokyo, 1951), i, 9.

2 Memorials of Naibu Kanda, ed. Kanda Memorial Committee (Tokyo: Toko-Shoin, 1927), p. 131.

3 Baron Dairoku Kikuchi, Japanese Education (London: John Murray, 1909), p. 227.

4 Inazo Nitobe, “The Teaching and Use of Foreign Languages in Japan,” Seivanee Rev., XXXI (July-Sept. 1923), 338–339.

5 Quoted by Harold Palmer in “The English Language in Japan,” Empire Rev., No. 447 (April 1938), p. 217.

6 Ibid.; also Daniel Jones, “Harold Palmer,” Le Maître Phonétique, 3rd Ser., No. 93 Jan.–July 1950), p. 5.

7 These included Standard English Readers in 5 vols. (1926–27), Classroom Procedures and Devices in Connection with English Teaching (1928), English Through Actions (1930), The Five Speech-Learning Habits (1938) and One Hundred Siéstitution Tables.

8 Marquis Shigenobu Okuma, quoted in Hugh L1. Keenleyside and A. F. Thomas, History of Japanese Education and Present Educational System (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1937), pp. 197–198.

9 Quoted in ibid., pp. 195–196.

10 H. Vere Redman, “English Teaching in Japan,” Oversea Education, ii (1 Jan. 1931), 79.

11 J. O. Gauntlett, Basic Principles of English Language Teaching with Special Reference to Japanese Students (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1952), p. 33.

12 The Five Speech-Learning Habits, Inst, for Research in Eng. Teaching (Tokyo, 1938), p. 11.

13 Education in the New Japan, Gen. Hdqrs., Supr. Comdr. for the Allied Powers, Civil Inf. and Educ. Sect., Educ. Div. (Tokyo, 1948), i, 103.

14 Report of the United States Education Mission to Japan (Washington, 1946).

15 Report of the Second Education Mission to Japan (Washington, 1950), pp. 13–14.

16 Figures for 1929 are from Keenleyside and Thomas, pp. 194, 240; for 1955, from Brief Report of Educational Statistics (Mombu Tokei Sokuho), No. 74, Ser. No. MEJ 8246 (July 1955) and No. 75, Ser. No. MEJ 8247 (Aug. 1955), Ministry of Ed. (Tokyo, 1955). It is officially estimated that more than 76% of junior high and 86% of senior high school students elect to study English.

17 Yasaka Takagi, Toward International Understanding (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1954), p. 156.

18 This statement applies to the lower secondary school, but that concerning the upper secondary level is almost the same (p. 16).

19 The section of this manual applying to upper secondary schools has recently been revised and published as Courses of Study, Higher Secondary Schools, Section on Foreign Languages (Koto Gakko Gakushu Shido Yoryo Gaikoku-ga Ka Hen), comp. by the Ministry of Ed., rev. ed. (Tokyo, 1956). Superficial examination of the aims expressed therein indicates a change in emphasis on functional aims away from language as speech, and on cultural aims from individual development toward an “elevation of the national culture” (pp. 9,29). The text, unlike that of the 1951 edition, is wholly in Japanese.

20 Post-War Developments in Japanese Education, Gen. Hdqrs., Supr. Comdr. for the Allied Powers, Civil Inf. and Educ. Sec, Educ. Div. (Tokyo, April 1952), i, 20.

21 Figures from Education in Japan—a Graphic Presentation, Ministry of Ed. (Tokyo, 1954), p. 33. During their 3rd year chttgakko students devote as much time to English as to Japanese.

22 A proposed modification of the present education laws recently introduced in the Diet would “tighten government control of school curriculums,” since it would “end local election of school boards and place the purchase of textbooks under central control of the Education Ministry” (N. Y. Times, 1 June 1956, p. 5). This move provoked strong opposition, particularly from the Socialists and the Japan Teachers' Union (ibid.; see also Japan Quart., iii [April-June 1956], 260, dated 20 Feb. 1946). Subsequently a bill was passed making school boards appointive instead of elective, but the proposal to centralize the editing and selection of textbooks failed to pass (N. Y. Times, 4 June 1956, pp. 1, 10).

23 Of 62,000 teachers of English in lower secondary schools in 1953, 33,000 held certificates in subjects other than English (Report of School Teacher Survey, Ser. No. MET 6079, p. 158, Table 35). Furthermore, 7,400 of the 28,770 licensed English teachers held only temporary or emergency certificates, from which it may be assumed that they were untrained or only partially qualified.

24 Figures from The Professional Training and Status of Secondary School Teachers, Japan, Suppls. 1 and 2, Ministry of Ed. (Tokyo, ca. 1954), pp. 1, 11.

25 Educational Developments in Japan During the School-Year 1953–1954, Ministry of Ed. (Tokyo, ca. 1954), p. 6.

26 Education in Japan—a Graphic Presentation, p. 34.

27 Standards for Preparation of Textbooks, Ministry of Ed., Ser. No. MEJ 1062 (Tokyo, 1954), p. 163.

28 A General Service List of English Words, ed. Michael West (London : Longmans, Green, 1953). This is based on the Interim Report on Vocabulary Selection for the Teaching of Engish as a Foreign Language prepared by West, Harold Palmer, Lawrence W. Faucett and E. L. Thorndike as early as 1936, a Japanese edition of which, edited by Naoe Naganuma was published in Japan by the Inst, for Research in Eng. Teaching, shortly afterward.

29 Brief Report on Educational Statistics, No. 75, passim.

30 From a MS., “Historical Sketch of English Education in Modern Japan,” prepared for me from official records by Tetsuya Kobayashi.

31 Educational Laws and Regulations in Japan; Educational Personnel Certification Law, Ministry of Ed. (Tokyo, 1953), p. 8, and Annexed Table No. 1 as amended in 1956.

32 Tsuda College (Tsuda-Juku Daigaku) General Information and Catalogue in Brief (Tokyo, 1953), pp. 18, 28.

33 Bulletin of International Christian University, 1955–1956 (Tokyo, ca. 1955), pp. 37–38.

34 Tsuda College Catalogue, 1953, pp. 4–5.

35 Quoted from bulletin of Japanese American Conversation Institute (Tokyo, ca. 1953).

36 1953 figures from MS. report, “UNESCO Modern Language Seminar, the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Japan,” in my possession; 1954 figures provided by Toru Matsumoto, conductor of the conversation course cited.

37 Postwar data from Education in the New Japan, i, 349–351, and Post-War Developments in Japanese Education, i, 56 and ii, 363; 1953–54 figures from the Ministry of Education.

38 Kawakita Nagamasa, “Japanese Audiences and Foreign Films,” Japan Quart., in (April–June 1956), 219.

39 Robert S. Schwantes, Japanese and Americans: A Century of Ctdtural Relations, pub. for the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Harper, 1955), p. 330.

40 “Articles of the Exchange Student Association,” in List of Members of the Exchange Student Association, February, 1954 (Tokyo, 1954), p. ii. See also A Handbook for Japanese Students Goine to America, Exchange Stud. Assoc., 1954 ed. (Tokyo, ca. 1954).