THE
JELLYBEAN FACTOR OF IL IN JAPANESE UNIVERSITIES
Stacey
Vye, Lecturer, Meikai University, Japan
The
Educational Maze in Japan:
While thinking about independent learning in Japan, it is important to keep
in mind a big feature of the educational system – colossal entrance exams.
The outcome of the exams determines the placement of students in most universities
and high schools, and to a lesser extent, private junior high and primary
schools. As a result, cramming for exams starts early and sometimes even
little nursery school kids vie for position to pass oblique written tests
and interviews for private primary schools. A degree from a prestigious
institution will help secure a solid career and higher paying job, so competition
amongst students can be fierce. Students in their final year of junior and
senior high school are called Jukensei (entrance exam students), and spend
hours preparing for exams at home and at school. EFL classes offered in
schools are elective at the secondary level, but at most schools English
is the only foreign language offered, which naturally means almost all junior
and senior high school students take it (Kitao & Kitao, 1997). At the
tertiary level, larger universities have an English department with English
taken for the duration of the undergraduate degree, while non-English majors
at various colleges take some kind of EFL courses for the first two years.
The shareholders at each university determine how these courses are structured.
If that is not enough confusion, many students attend Juku (private cram
schools), Yobiko (private university prep school for students who have completed
high school), and sometimes, private English language schools. Many children
I know complain that they don’t have enough time for their Game Boys, video
games, trading cards and Japanese comics (Manga). Yes, their playtime is
gobbled up in preparation for some kind of college entrance examination
that over half of all high school graduates in Japan apply to take (Poole,
2002). The national entrance examination for public and private universities
(Senta Shiken) has an English section, and most individual universities
have their own entrance examination with an English section as well. It
is very difficult to go to a university without having taken English classes
in secondary school, but unfortunately at least three of my 350 first and
second year university students who take English communication came from
a renegade high school that does not offer English. These three students
do make extra efforts to study, despite their disadvantage of not experiencing
English since junior high.
Increasing Competition between Universities: Most
probably in the near future student competition for high exam scores will
be replaced by heightened competition between universities, especially those
in financial crisis. Just this fall, the Mombukagagusho (Education, Science
and Technology Ministry) estimated the overall enrolment capacity of Japanese
universities in 2007 would equal the number of applicants due to the declining
birthrate (Yomiuri Shinbun, 2005). What does this mean for teachers and
administrators at universities in Japan? There are too many universities
and teachers, and not enough students. As a result, many higher education
faculties must recruit students, get grants, reduce expenditures, and accept
more foreign students for academic survival. Oh, the laws of supply and
demand! Anyway, this pressure to perform is putting an additional burden
on the EFL teacher in Japan as administrative committee work and research
duties can already be quite demanding (Poole, 2002), although actual teaching
conditions vary.
Independent Learning in Japan: So,
what kind of independent learning is going on in Japan? Due to the incongruity
of EFL course policies at various Japanese universities, independent learning
looks like a jar of jellybeans with an array of colours and flavours. Most
university students have access to computers; some universities do not have
computer labs in the EFL department, while others do. Some universities
have self-access centres; more of them do not other than libraries and computer
centres. To remedy the imbalances of learning resources there is an awareness
and interest in developing learner and teacher autonomy in individual schools
and classroom contexts, not only within the Japanese higher educational
system, but also in primary and secondary settings at the special interest
group level. The College and University Educators (CUE) SIG of the Japan
Association for Language Teaching (JALT) had a Developing Autonomy Conference
in Shizuoka in 2001, where the bulk of the 40 plus presentations focused
on learner autonomy. See http://allagash.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/CUE/ for the
CUE homepage.
Another SIG in the same association, Learner
Development, with which I am involved, shares an interest in learner-centred
teaching and a commitment to exploring connections – the connections between
experiences as learners and practices as teachers, and those between the
learners’ experiences at all ages inside and outside the classroom. In other
words, the LD-SIG tries all this “learning stuff” by linking up with other
teachers, as well as students who are interested in learning via the net,
mini-conferences, retreats, and the annual Learner Development Forum at
the JALT International Conference. We are working on an anthology called
Autonomy You Ask (AYA)! - a collection of papers
by Japan-based teacher-researchers investigating issues in learner and teacher
autonomy. The first in the series was published in 2003 and the second AYA!
2 will be published in 2006. Another feature is a bilingual bi-annual newsletter,
Learning Learning, featuring articles
on topics related to learner development. A shorter electronic newsletter,
LD Wired, comes out four times a
year. The website is http://coyote.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/learnerdev/.
Self-Access: Despite the abundance
of educational technology available in Japan, the development of self-access
centres (SACs) lags behind countries with similar technical recourses (Fouser,
2003). I tend to agree with Fouser that the reason for the slow development
of SACs is quite complex. Most probably it is because foreign languages
are deeply integrated into general education and now, due to the economic
slump and greater scrutiny of university education in the 1990s, there has
been an about face shift in attitude towards language education. Previously
EFL in university concentrated on a four-skills English education, but this
has altered to focus on developing communicative language proficiency.
Autonomy and Independent Learning In and
Out of Class
I encourage students to learn autonomously, but I cannot force it on them.
A key feature of learner autonomy is “the ability to take charge of one’s
learning”, (Holec, 1981, p. 3). The teacher cannot control this because
it is up to the student to develop. With this in mind, here are a few classroom
activities to help learners develop more control and responsibility over
their learning which are equally useful in both low-tech and high-tech classroom
settings: