Changing Language, Continuing Discourse: A Shift Toward ELF and Persistent Native-Speakerism in Japan’s ELT Policy

Abstract

The ever-increasing range and functions of English use as a global language has urged many Expanding-Circle countries to overhaul the teaching and learning of the language, and Japan is no exception. Since around 2000s, its education ministry has released a series of policy proposals to expand and improve Japan’s English language teaching (ELT), asserting that it has become more urgently necessary to equip its citizens with the knowledge and skills for communication in English as a lingua franca (ELF) so that the country can better survive the world of global competition. Meanwhile in the academic field of ELT, teaching English as an international language (TEIL) has been conceptualized to address the need to prepare learners to become competent users of English in international contexts and provide teachers with the theoretical and practical resources to do so (e.g., Sharifian, English as an international language: perspectives and pedagogical issues. Bristol, Multilingual Matters, 2009; Matsuda, Principles and practices of teaching English as an international language. Bristol, Multilingual Matters, 2012). To better understand the current and future policy and planning in Japan’s ELT, this study examines its changing profile, applying TEIL as an analytical lens. Specifically, I focus on the discourse about models, teaching methodology, and evaluation system in the official documents, including the latest guidelines for high-school and teacher-training curricula, that present Japan’s approaches and strategies for ELF pedagogy. The analysis shows that, contrary to the stated aim of implementing “New English Education corresponding to globalization” (MEXT, English education reform plan corresponding to globalization, 2013), the ELT practice in Japan places greater importance on developing communicative competence based on the idealized Inner-Circle norm. In addition to reiterating the need to reject the implicit native-speakerism, as many previous studies have done, this chapter argues that a seed of locally appropriate pedagogy can rather be found in the traditional ELT classrooms in Japan, where locally educated teachers teach and evaluate students according to locally developed measures, using their common native language as an important resource.