TO JAPANESE CHILDREN: A CRITICAL REVIEW
The teaching of English is big business in Japan today. There is, though, a clear schism between the interests of the private sector and those of the State school system. More than differences in intensity and nature of interests is the difference in philosophical and didactic approaches. The Ministry of Education is still stifled by tradition, chauvinism, politics, and considerations of tenure; it finds it hard to migrate to the next century while the rest of the nation is bounding towards it. Thus, the State focuses on classical grammar-translation, rote-memorization of paradigms, and reading; whereas the private schools focus on the here-and-now of communication with an early emphasis on conversation.
Mitsue M. Tamai and Ritsuko Nakata are perhaps the two leading ESL specialists in Japan. Fundamentally, they share the belief that language is to communicate rather than simply to pass State examinations with their focus on school English. Richard Beach has taught English in Japan for a number of years and surveyed the textbook field for young Japanese ESL learners and found it deficient. Eloise Pearson likewise has much experience in teaching ESL in Japan; this paper reports her interview of Ritsuko Nakata. These four articles give one a short but incisive picture of ESL for Japanese young children today.
Mitsue M. Tamai's "Three Important Factors in a Children's
Nogami (1977, cited in Tamai, 1991)) conducted a national survey in Japan to find the degree to which English-language education had been introduced in elementary schools. Among the 71 national and 145 private schools which participated, 4% of the national and 75% of the private schools offered English. Over 2.5 million children were thought to be engaged in English-language learning. Since then, state schools have relented somewhat in their application of rigid formal education. English is now slowly being seen as a ne...