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ESL Learning by Japanese School Children

SOME SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS IN ACCULTURATION

The sources of the Japanese social mold

Japan is a naturally poor country, where nearly 130 million people are crowded along a strip of land on the Eastern border of a couple of islands. The Japanese, one of the most homogeneous societies in the world, have found it necessary to band together in a few liveable areas for sheer survival against the rugged mountains and snowfalls, the frequent devastating earthquakes, the destructive typhoons and their consequent landslides and perennial floodings.

"Without local grassroot cooperative efforts, the society could not have endured" (Duke, 1986, p. 42). Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that "a strong consensus has always bound the Japanese through their history, probably as a result of the insularity and of the struggles they have had to face in order to attain a minimum of creature comforts which are constantly menaced by calamities whose latest mishap could be an economic recession" (Leclercq, 1984, p. 97).

During the feudal Middle Ages, group loyalty became institutionalized under the pervasive influence of Confucianism. Moreover, the shogun and samurai social organization demanded strict loyalty--the price for being allowed to live and be fed. The first and most immediate social group, however, had been and has continued to be the family. The next group owed loyalty had been and continues to be the working-unit, i.e. the social and economic unit with which one ensures group and individual effectiveness (though rarely efficiency) and survival. The school counterpart of this unit is the kumi (the class) and the kan (the task-oriented subdivision of the kumi). As a result of this group-loyalty system, "it is customary in Japan, a family-centered culture, to view the problems of individuals as being inextricably combined with the responsibilities of the family" (Schoolland, 1990, p. 5).

Given the harshness of the envi...

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ESL Learning by Japanese School Children. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:51, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1691117.html