What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL
Joel P. RIAN
Hokkaido Information University

英語史って、どこが面白い？
－日本人大学生は指摘した英語史の授業内容における面白いポイント－

ライアン ジョエル P.
北海道情報大学

2019年12月

北海道情報大学紀要

第31巻

第１号別刷

北海道情報大学紀要

31

第31巻第１号：31～45，2019〈研究ノート〉〈 研究ノート 〉

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL
Joel P. Rian *Abstract
The history of the English language (affectionately abbreviated to HEL in the
research literature) is as rich and as varied as the people who have spoken it over thelast 1500 years. The task of distilling 15 centuries of language change, as well as
providing a socio-political framework of the context it occurred in, into a one-semester
sequence of fifteen 90-minute classes may seem like a hellish task. If successful,
however, a well-implemented HEL course can serve as a helpful supplement to theEnglish language training that Japanese undergraduates have compulsorily received by
the time they enter university. This short paper broadly surveys the contents andimplementation of a one-semester syllabus that I designed for a HEL course at aJapanese university. I illustrate elements and topics that students seemed particularlyinterested in. These may be used as ideas for future HEL courses.

英語史って、どこが面白い？
－日本人大学生は指摘した英語史の授業内容における面白いポイント－

ライアン

ジョエル

P. *

要旨
英語史という授業は日本の大学ではあまり見られない授業科目である。1500
年に渡るイギリス社会の変化、発展に伴い「英語」という言語は、大きく変貌してきた。その長い歴史を週 1 回、15 回の授業にまとめるということは、大変困難な作業であり、英語の歴史を全て網羅するということは不可能に近い。一
方学生にとって興味を引くポイントをうまくまとめれば、学生の興味関心を引
き出し、中学、高校、大学と学んでいる必修科目としての「英語」の知識を補充し、より深い理解につながり得るものである。本研究ノートは某大学における初のネイティブスピーカーとして担当した講義のシラバスの詳細を説明し、学生たちの興味関心を上手く引き出した授業ノートをまとめ提示する。英語史という授業のシラバス作成の際の手本として参考になるだけでなく、教員志望の大学生にとっても普段の英語の授業では学び得ない知識を得る機会にもな
り、日本における「英語」の発展にも繋がり得ると、筆者は信じている。
Keywords: English language history, HEL (英語史), Old English (古代英語), Middle English(中世英語), syllabus (シラバス), Japanese university (日本の大学)*

経営情報学部准教授 Associate Professor, Faculty of Business Administration & Information Science
—1—

－１－

32

Joel P. Rian

1. Introduction: History classes do nothave to be boring

information. Unfortunately, however, there is apropensity for university classes to follow thesame formula of inputting and testing for
information as in high school classes. This may
especially be the case with large lecture classes
in universities. More unfortunately, the same
formula is sometimes used in smaller EFL
classes in university: English words andstructures are presented as information to be
output on written tests, with communicative
activities occasionally occurring in between.
The chances for the same memorizationregurgitation formula are arguably even greater
for a specialized class like HEL. As with any
content-based class, there is a heavy cognitive
load placed on EFL learners when they aretasked with understanding and processing
detailed content in a foreign language. This iscompounded in the case of HEL, where students
must deal with antique forms of a modern
foreign language. That, added to the historicalcontext in which that language occurred—theplaces, dates, and people’s names—may seem
insurmountable.
On the contrary, however, a HEL class at aJapanese university should be considered a rare
and treasurable opportunity. HEL classes offer achance to fill in some of the details about the
English language that most EFL classes gloss
over, and that in fact many teachers of EFL—
native and non-native alike—do not have readyanswers to. For example: where does thirdperson-singular ~s come from? Why is it there?
What is the difference between sick and ill? Why
do so many words (like night and know) havesilent letters?
Some practitioners may regard thesequestions as little more than trivia. I willcounter-argue that instructors who are able toaddress questions like these from students will atvery least satisfy their curiosity, and at best will
help enrich students’ appreciation of thelanguage. In cases where these students are
studying to become teachers themselves, a deep
knowledge of why English got the way it ispromises to help them become more effective
teachers.
The amount of literature on the English
language, and on teaching and learning it, isoceanic. Equally vast is the body of literature on
the history of England. HEL literature isplentiful, and to some extent there is researchthat treats how these classes have been
structured and taught (for a recent anthology, see
Moore & Palmer, 2019). In Japan there is sometreatment of the subject (see e.g. Iyeiri, 2006;
Tani, 2003, 2005). In particular, Tani (2005),
who used Mother Goose nursery rhymes tointroduce HEL, touches on an extremely
important point, one that is essential to theHistory classes have a bad rap. As Simonton(1994:3) writes, “‘History is more or less bunk,’
automobile Henry Ford once said. This
comment may evoke an involuntary nod fromreaders who remember boring lectures andhomework in mandatory high school history
classes. The subject too often reminds us of
having to memorize countless names, dates, andplaces.” For students who have similarly
experienced dull English language classes, aclass with the title ‘History of the English
Language’—amusingly abbreviated as “HEL”
in the literature—may solicit images of a classthat can be described by pronouncing theacronym. It may seem relieving to students who
harbor these images that HEL courses tend not
to be compulsory, and tend to be far lesscommon than typical EFL classes that treat themechanics of modern English.
In Japan, EFL courses are a mainstay ofcompulsory education from elementary school
through high school. Like the stereotypicallyboring mandatory high school history class, theway English is taught and learned in these EFL
classes has long been beset by a reputation ofdemotivation (see e.g. Apple, Da Silva, &Fellner, 2013; Kikuchi, 2015). A vexingly
persistent issue is Japan’s high-stakes testing
system, which relies heavily on rotememorization. The educational environmentthat accompanies this testing system not only
helps generate and support those high-stakes
tests, but is at the same time a slave to them. A
considerable amount of research has catalogued,
critiqued, and criticized the Japanese Ministry of
Education’s (MEXT’s) efforts to refocus theprocess of education toward outcomes ofcommunicative ability rather than passing
written examinations (MacWhinnie & Mitchell,2017).
Japanese
education
specialists
themselves have been some of the most vocal
critics (see e.g. Amano & Poole, 2005;
Yonezawa, 2010). However, even after morethan 20 years of reform initiatives, Japanesescholars are still scratching their heads as to howmuch has actually changed (Goodman, 2013)
since Ronald Dore famously commented in 1976
that Japanese education could be regarded “as anenormously elaborated, very expensive
intelligence testing system with someeducational spin-off, rather than the other way
around (p.48-49).”
With respect to English education in Japan,
the highest-stakes tests are at the university
entrance level. Once entrance has been achieved,
there is no longer a pressing need to teach to tests
that measure students’ ability to memorize
—2—

－２－

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

success of any class: making it fun for the
students.
Another important point for teachers of HEL
classes is making the content relevant to theirstudents’ environment. For English majors, andparticularly those who will seek English teacher
licensure, the opportunity to capture students’interest is huge. To do this, it is essential tochoose topics within HEL that will be of
immediate interest to them. Given the vastnessof the material available to be taught in a HEL
course, this is no easy task. While there aresuggestions for putting together a HEL syllabus
and textbooks that can and have been used (seeMoore & Palmer, 2019:12), there is little if any
literature that has solicited and catalogued
feedback from students of HEL classes about
which topics within HEL interest them the most.
The following section 2 is a preliminary attempt
to fill this void.

changes occurred. A focus on language forms—
that is, what happened to English words in whattime periods—may be so-called par for thecourse. Instead, however, I will argue that theorganization of a HEL syllabus around socialgroups and social events, with examples of how
those social groups and events affected how
words were used, may be a more engaging
approach to teaching a HEL course at a Japanese
university.
3. HEL at Hokusei Gakuen University
Not included in the list of textbooks in Moore
and Palmer (2019:12) are two books that are
based on two major TV documentaries: The
Story of English, a nine-part series that aired in
the United States and Britain in 1986, and a
successor series, The Adventure of English,
which aired in Britain in 2003. Eachdocumentary series has an accompanying book
(McCrum, MacNeil, & Cran, 2002; and Bragg,M., 2004, respectively).
From 2013 to 2017 I was honored to havebeen given the opportunity to teach a HEL
course at Hokusei Gakuen University in
Sapporo. It had previously been conducted inJapanese, and I was the first non-native Japanese
to teach it. I was advised by other faculty thatwhile English Department majors had
comparatively higher proficiency levels thanstudents in other departments, they might not beable to handle large amounts of difficult reading
such as many HEL textbooks for Westernmarkets are written in. I was encouraged tocreate my own materials. As a start, then, I
decided to produce weekly handouts andaccompanying slideshows, as well as to use
short clips from the two aforementioned
documentary series, in order to illustrate points.
In so doing I used the structure of The Adventureof English series as a guide to syllabus design. A
list of episode titles and descriptions for the
Adventure of English documentary series isgiven in Table 1.

2. HEL in Japanese universities
There are a variety of ways a HEL syllabus canbe constructed, however, the default seems tomove from the beginnings of English in the 400s
A.D. along a timeline to the present day. Most
textbooks present it this way. Accordingly, mostsyllabuses for HEL courses are organized in thisfashion. A simple search for 大学シラバス英語史 [university syllabus HEL] yields only ahandful of syllabi. Two full-year courses in 2017
are provided (in Japanese) in Appendices A and
B. Unsurprisingly and understandably, mostcourses appear to be taught by native Japanese
instructors, and most syllabi appear only inJapanese. Further, the titles and descriptions ofweekly units (classes)—when detail is provided
at all—seem to highlight language structure, e.g.
changes in morphology, phonology, syntax, etc.
over time. This suggests that HEL courses tend
to focus on the linguistic elements of the English
language rather than the socio-historicalbackground, e.g. shifts in power between socialgroups such as the Anglo-Saxons, Normans,
Vikings, etc., through which these language

Table 1. The Adventure of English (2003) Documentary Series Titles and Descriptions
Source: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/adventure-of-english/

Episode1
2

Title
Birth of a Language. The modern Frisian language is the closest sounding language tothe English used approximately 2000 years ago, when the people from what is now thenorth of the Netherlands travelled to what would be the United Kingdom and pushed the
Celts to the western side of the island. Words like "blue" can be recognized in the Frisianlanguage.
English Goes Underground. Bragg discusses how class also affected the use of English,
especially in the time of William the Conqueror and for approximately 300 years after his
reign; during this period, only the French language and Latin were used in state affairs andby the aristocracy, while English remained in use with the lower peasant classes.
—3—

－３－

33

34

Joel P. Rian

3
4
5
6
7
8

The Battle for the Language of the Bible. In the early to mid-1300s, English fought tobe the language of the Christian Bible through the efforts of theologian John Wycliffe,
who opposed the church's use of a Latin scripture because it prevented most of the
population from reading the bible for themselves.
This Earth, This Realm, This England. In Queen Elizabeth I's time, English began toexpand to even greater depths. Overseas trade brought new words from France, as well as
the now popular swearwords "fokkinge," (f--king) "krappe," (crap) and "bugger" from
Dutch, in the 16th century.
English in America. Upon landing in North America, settlers encountered Squanto, anative man who had been captured and brought to England to learn English and become aguide. After escaping, Squanto returned to his tribe, which happened to live near the placethat the English settlers had created their small village.
Speaking Proper. The Age of Reason began, and English scholars of mathematics andscience like Isaac Newton started publishing their books in English instead of Latin.
Jonathan Swift would attempt to save the English language from perpetual change,
followed by Samuel Johnson who would write the A Dictionary of the English Language,
made up of 43,000 words and definitions, written in seven years and published in 1755.
The Language of Empire. British trade and colonization spread the English language. In
India, scholar William Jones finds some English words already present in Sanskrit.
Convicts land in Australia, blending London criminal slang and Aboriginal words into a
new dialect. Jamaicans reclaim patois.
Many Tongues Called English. The globalization of the English language in the 20th
century owes most to the United States. Here we look at the predominance of AmericanBlack street talk, how the Second World War and American movies threatened to "infect"
the mother tongue in Britain and how some nations are attempting to stamp in the invasion
of English out—for example franglais in France and Singlish in Singapore.

Because each Adventure of English
documentary episode is 50 minutes long,and because my goal was neither to cover allof the documentary material nor to spend
large amounts of class time showing videos,
I did the following:(a) Revised and adjusted the topics to fit astandard 15-week university syllabus;(b) pruned, modified and simplified the content,
partly using topics from The Story ofEnglish (1986) documentary as inspiration,
as well as assorted other reference materials;
and(c) added interactive activities and short smallgroup discussion topics.
The resulting one-semester syllabus that I taught
for 2016 and 2017 is presented in Table 2.
Constructing slideshows, handouts, andactivities for each lesson was challenging, but
rewarding. Unexpectedly, over the five years
that I taught the course, the number of students
who enrolled in it rose, from an initial 30 in thefirst year to over 80 in the fifth year. In order toaccommodate a larger number of students withvarying degrees of proficiency, it was necessary
to adjust my lecture style and the level of reading
homework to something that most of them could
manage without undue effort. In so doing I
wound up learning a great deal about English
language history, as well as what material the
majority of students could handle, what they had
difficulty with, and in particular, what wasinteresting to them. Some topics and some classactivities appeared to engage them more thanothers. Overall, students seemed more interested
in an outline of historical society and social
events than they were in an overview of thesystematic changes in language forms over time.
In order to grasp which topics engaged
students the most, in addition to taking notesfrom what students commented to me casuallyduring and outside of class, I solicited feedback
through a short writing activity in the middle andat the end of the 15-week course, using one
simple open-ended question: “What interested
you / surprised you the most about the history ofEnglish? Why?”I first included the question as a bonuspoint writing question at the end of the final
exam for 2014, the second year I taught theclass. Because the exam mainly covered the
topic of how the English language had come toand developed in Japan, many of the comments
understandably referred to this topic. Of 57 total
students, 14 referred to the English in Japan
topic. Excerpts include:“Japan has been admiring English fromway back.”“First Japanese exchange student Manjiro,
he was really smart.”“I was surprised that Ieyasu Tokugawa said
‘William Adams is dead. Your new name is
Miura Anjin.’ It was human rights abuse!”
Others expressed surprise at how English
infiltrated Japan during the sakoku (isolationist)
period, as well as the fact that classes at Tokyo
University were originally mostly conducted in
English, and how this was changed (how the
—4—

－４－

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

English medium was banned) during the Meiji
Restoration. The most striking comment by one
student was: “I learned about Japanese history in
an English class.”
Encouraged by the specificity of thesecomments, and to see whether the majority ofcomments would again refer to the topic ofEnglish in Japan, in each of 2016 and 2017 (thefourth and fifth year I taught the class) I asked
the question once at the end of the 15th week, as
an ungraded writing exercise, before the final
exam week. This helped assure a more even
distribution of responses across all topics during
the semester. A simple count of these responses
is given in Table 2.

Table 2. HEL Syllabus for Hokusei Gakuen University (one-semester course), 2016-2017
Week(Unit)
No.

Lesson Title & Description

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

England before it was England: Romans invade Britain
English is Born: Anglo-Saxons invade Britain
Old English
English almost dies, Part 1: Vikings invade England
English almost dies, Part 2: Normans invade England
Bible Battles: What language is the Word of God?
Middle English (MIDTERM)
Headline News: Printing arrives in England
Shakespeare, wordplay, and the Great Vowel Shift
Taming the English tongue
English invades America
English invades India
English in Japan, Part 1: Sakoku, shipwrecks & gunboat English
English in Japan, Part 2: English teaching & learning
English in Japan, Part 3: Now and hereafterFINAL EXAM
Generic or broad responses (can’t be grouped)*

No. responses
by students(N=136,2016+2017)
4
2
22
15
16
5
2
5
1
1
5
14
12
41

* Open-ended responses are difficult to group neatly into categories, hence the larger number of uncategorizable(generic/broad) responses. ‘Generic’ comments included “I never knew anything about English language history
before,” “I never liked history before this class.” I grouped others into categories by keywords (e.g. any reference to“Bible” would go under category 7, and references to “French” would go under category 5). Further, because lesson
topics overlap, some responses could be assigned to more than one category/unit topic. In order to get a moreaccurate count, a future survey item should ask specifically which lesson topic(s) they enjoyed, with open-end
comments solicited afterward. The above counts can suggest only a rough trend. Low counts should not beinterpreted to indicate disinterest.

4. Discussion: Elements in a HEL
syllabus that interested students

Again, much of the content for each of units
1-12 is excerpted from The Adventure of English
documentary series and its companion volume(Bragg, 2004). This volume, along with The
Story of English (2002) volume that
accompanies an earlier documentary series ofthe same title, and upon which The Adventure ofEnglish documentary series is based, would
make worthy supplementary texts to any HEL
course.

This section offers synopses of elements in each
unit of the 2016-2017 syllabus that interested
students. It must be acknowledged beforehandthat the discussion offered below is neither
research-rigorous nor comprehensive. The
figures and selected comments above were
solicited before the end of each course, and sothey may reflect some degree of halo-effect bias.
Further, an inclusive treatment of all student
comments is beyond the scope of this paper. I
have, alternatively, summarized by lesson
number in the Table 2 HEL syllabus some of thecontent that I perceived students expressedinterest in during the course of the semester,
either through personal communication with meor through comments offered in answers to the
one-item surveys given in 2016 and 2017,
aforementioned.

1

England before it was England:
Romans invade Britain
Relevance to Japanese students: Most students
know nothing more than that the English
language came from England, and are surprised
to learn that what became the English-speaking
people were themselves transplants from
Germany. Further, the culture of theirpredecessors—the Angles and Saxons inGermany, has relevance to modern everyday
—5—

－５－

35

36

Joel P. Rian

speakers as it will appear to Japanese learners. A
reading of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English andin Modern English offers a good example. When
students are provided with a script of the Old
English, some will point out small words like
“and,” “to,” “we,” as well as prototypes of words
like “name” (nama) and “heaven” (heofon).
In order to introduce students to how
inflections work—as these are key in Old
English—a contrast to Japanese may be useful.
For example, 食べる and 食べた illustrate
how Japanese inflections indicate verb tense.
Some students have pointed out commonalities
of Old English to Old Japanese, which is
touched on in most high school curriculums（古文 ） . Old Japanese is, similarly, virtually aforeign language to modern speakers, andcannot be read or understood without somemeasure of study. In this sense, students may
perceive it as an exotic foreign language, with its
antique letters, wildly variant spellings, andGermanic-sounding pronunciation. In particular,
students seem amused by obsolete letters such as
thorn (þ), eth (ð ), wynn (ƿ), ash (æ), as well aslater yogh (ȝ); similarly obsolete letters (kana)such as wi (ゐ,ヰ) and we (ゑ,ヱ) exist inJapanese. It is interesting to note also that thedelimitations of Old, Middle, Early Modern andModern English periods coincide roughly withthe same timeframes as Old, Middle, Early
Modern, and Modern Japanese.
Particularly for students seeking licensure
as English teachers, a treatment of how word
order changed from SOV to SVO as a result of
inflection loss may be beneficial to theirteaching; a select group of curious students
raised this question to me each year. A
discussion of SOV versus SVO is relevant to atreatment of the so-called “five basic sentence
patterns” (５文型) that are covered in junior andsenior high school textbooks across Japan. For
example, the difference between the Third
Sentence Pattern (example: I give him apples)
and the Fourth Sentence Pattern (I give apples tohim) is relevant to Old English. In Old English,
the Third Pattern was more possible. I used thefollowing pattern as an example:
Se cyning biteþ þone æppele.
The king bites the apple.
Biteþ se cyning þone æppele.
Bites the king the apple. (?)Đone æppele biteþ se cyning.
The apple bites the king. (!?)
In Old English, the meaning remains essentiallythe same (The king bites the apple) when word
order is switched, whereas in Modern English,
switching the word order yields completely
different meanings. (NOTE: I used OE æppele
to mean ‘apple’ in the modern sense, although
the word originally meant ‘fruit’ in general).

words, such as days of the week (Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, etc. derive from thenames of Norse/Germanic gods).
A treatment of the Celts—who occupied
the isle of Britain before the Roman invasions in
the first century B.C., and from whence the very
name of Britain comes (the Brythones, one of
the Celtic tribes)—intrigues students. A
discussion of Celts should include how they
were invaded by the expansion of the Roman
Empire—the native speakers of the Latin
language, which has had enormous bearing on
the development of the English language. The
survival, for example, of Roman roads as well as
town names (e.g. Gloucester, or gleaw castra,“the Roman encampments near the Celtic area
known as Glevo”) is of interest. In particular, thetale of Boudica, a female Celtic leader said tohave led a revolt against the Roman invaders(popularized by the 2003 movie Warrior Queenwith Alex Kingston and Steven Waddington),piqued the interest especially of female students
in my class.
2

English is Born: Anglo-Saxons
invade Britain

The origin of English begins in earnest with theretreat of Roman forces during the collapse of
the Roman Empire around 400 A.D. and theimmediately subsequent invasion of Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes from what is now Denmark
and northern Germany. Notable is the wholesale
replacement of the Celtic peoples who had been
living relatively peacefully alongside their
Roman occupiers for nearly 400 years: the areaof land that the Anglo-Saxons would occupy,
and would come to be known as Angla-Land(England), roughly corresponds to the area thatwas occupied by the Romans. Of further note is
the fact that the language of the newly minted
English people absorbed very little of thelanguage of the Celtic peoples it pushed aside.
Most telling, perhaps, of how utter the AngloSaxon conquest was, by comparison to the
Roman occupation, was the fact that many of the
Celts who survived, or who did not immediately
assimilate to the culture of their new invaders,retreated to the west and concentrated in the area
we now call Wales. The Anglo-Saxon word
wealas meant foreigners or slaves. Thus there isa bitter irony that the original inhabitants ofBritain wounded up being referred to as
strangers in their own land.
3

Old English

The language of the Anglo-Saxons in their newland, referred to as “Old English” roughly
between the years of 400 to 1100 A.D., is as
much a foreign language to modern-day native
—6—

－６－

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

4English almost dies, Part 1: Vikings
invade England
By the year 800 A.D., just as Old English andthe society of the people who spoke it seemed to
be developing stably, another invader—one who
coincidentally set sail from some of the same
Danish shores that the Angles and Saxons hadcome from—began to threaten the survival of
the fledgling English language. Persistent andincreasingly concentrated Viking raids alongespecially the eastern shores of England resulted
in a routing of English armies to the region of
Wessex, an area in western England that theinvading Saxons took over and named forthemselves: West Seaxe, or “West Saxons.”
Were it not for the skillful tactics of King
Alfred of Wessex—later to be referred to as
King Alfred the Great—English as we know ittoday may not have existed. Among other things,
his military efforts halted the Vikings’ advance,and compelled the Vikings to acknowledge theEnglish people as a force to be reckoned with.
Alfred helped broker a treaty with the Vikings
by which a large chunk of eastern England wasceded to Viking rule. It was named the ‘Danelaw’
as its governance fell under the law of theinvading Danes (Vikings). In return, the Vikings
were not allowed to try to take over new land.
It is helpful to illustrate the distinction
between ‘dialect’ and ‘language’ to students
here. Old English, and the language of theViking invaders, Old Norse, were like ‘cousin’languages. They were similar enough that
Vikings and English may well have understood
one another enough to engage in simple
conversation. It appears to have been enough toallow the two societies of people, speaking
cousin languages, to trade with each other. In
some cases they married and had children witheach other. Through this interaction, a huge
number of new words were imported from Old
Norse into English. This explains some words
that are cousin-like. An example that will befamiliar to Japanese learners is the difference
between skirt and shirt. Originally, these words
were simply different pronunciations of a wordwith essentially the same meaning: a tunic-likegarment, or a long shirt.
Of other interest to students may be a hostof small words that begin with “sk.” Sky, skill,skull, and skin all come from Old Norse, theVikings’ language. During this unit it is also
useful to point out that Old Norse and Old
English speakers, eager to get along with eachother, began to do away with the inflections ineach of their languages. One can imagine a great
many clumsy utterances—repletewithnegotiation of meaning using roots of words thatwere familiar to each speaker of Norse and of
English—were the stuff of daily life, of trade,and even of romance and of family in the borderregions between England and the Danelaw
during the 900s A.D. Speakers made do with thelanguage they had. As non-native speakers who
may have experienced similar situations in theirtravels or interactions with non-Japanese, many
students will identify with this situation.
Many students seemed interested in theconcept of Vikings and English marrying eachother and raising children, and particularly in thefact that English tended to become the dominantlanguage in the family (and later of the country),
as referenced in McCrum, MacNeil, and Cran
(2002). Coincidentally, perhaps, this tendency
for Old-Norse-speaking Vikings to assimilate to
the language of the people they invaded isrepeated during the same time in history (800s
A.D.) in northern France. A treaty with invading
Vikings was signed by the king of France thatceded them an area of land that would become
Normandy (from Northmannia, or ‘land of theNorthmen’, a.k.a. Vikings who came from thenorth). It is further ironic that this land would
birth the next wave of England-invaders, theNormans. In any case, there seemed significant
indication from students that bilingualism in the
Anglo-Norse families as well as Anglo-Norman
families is a topic of interest to them.
English almost dies, Part 2:
Normans invade England
The fact that yet another sweeping invasion
occurred just 250 years following the advent of
Viking hordes is surprising to students. While itis somewhat difficult to distill the details of thepolitical circumstances that resulted in the 1066
Norman invasion into a simple summary, thefact that the Normans quickly took over is fairly
straightforward. From this story comes anintriguing situation of hierarchy: the Normans,
who spoke Norman French—which wasdescended from ancient Roman Latin—were incontrol of a majority of Germanic-based English
speakers. This political situation resulted in ahierarchy of languages and, within the English
language itself, a hierarchy of words. A good
example of this hierarchy of words is, perhaps,
the difference between ‘cow meat’ and ‘beef’(Anglo-Saxon origin versus Norman origin).
Japan is renowned for its attention to fine cuisine,and Japanese is replete with French-origin
loanwords borrowed through Japanese exposure
to English, such as pork, beef, sauté, broil, androast.
In sum: speaking Norman French wasnecessary for some. It was ‘cool’ for others.
Even if one couldn’t speak Norman French, it
was ‘cool’ to borrow terms from Norman Frenchin order to sound sophisticated and higher-class.
There is a significant parallel to the way English
has been treated in Japan, given the enormous
amount of English loanwords that have

—7—

－７－

5

37

38

Joel P. Rianpermeated the Japanese language, even without
English having ever taken over as an official
language in any capacity.
A parallel can also be drawn with respect towords borrowed into Japanese many hundreds ofyears before, from Chinese. Again, China neverruled Japan, but Japanese scholars who went toChina—whose society was viewed as higherclass in olden days—brought back with themboatfuls of new words, phrases, and writing
systems that are now an integral part of Modern
Japanese.

directly accessible to the eyes and ears andhearts of common folk. Despite the grim fatethat both Wycliffe and Tyndale met at the handsof church leaders, there are stories of delicious
subversion that will capture students’ interest. In
Tyndale’s case, for example, the Bishop of
London tried to curb the flow of Englishlanguage Bibles into the city by buying them up
and burning them. According to Bragg(2004:102), “The bishop bought and burned thebooks, and Tyndale used the money to rework,
prepare and print a better version, as it were at
the Church’s expense.”
It would take until the 1600s when the
Church would finally officially acknowledge afully English version of the Bible, most notably
the King James Version of 1612. In all instancesof attempts to wrest the Word of God from thetight grip of Latin, the focus on translation into
English of such a ubiquitous piece of literature
had profound effects on the development of thelanguage in terms of vocabulary and turns ofphrase, perhaps especially with respect to theconnection of English to Latin and Greek. A
treatment of the English Bible story is, therefore,
quintessential to any HEL class. For universities
in Japan like Hokusei Gakuen University, which
has Protestant origins (of which Wycliffe andTyndale were notably a part), a treatment of the
English Bible story goes without question interms of its relevance to HEL and to students’
academic lives.

6

Bible Battles: What language is the
Word of God?
At this point a continuation into Middle English
is possible, however, in 2017 I decided topunctuate it with a tangent into Biblical English
matters. Throughout the Old English period andinto the Middle English period, English
language learning, and especially writing, waslargely the domain of monastic life. That is, thewritten word was under the purview of Christianmonasteries. In these, too, the main language
was Latin, with English script occurring first as
margin notes to Latin texts. Most of these texts,
too, were religious ones, in particular the
Christian Bible.
Throughout the period of early England,
the Christian religion was avidly seeking inroads
into a previously pagan Anglo-Saxon
community. It did so mainly through itinerantmonks, who spread the Good Word through oralmeans: that is, through preaching in English.
Latin, meanwhile, remained solidly the
traditional language of the Christian Church, andof the Bible it centers around. The copying ofbooks and texts was mainly for churchly
purposes, and the use and knowledge of Latin
was limited largely to elite religious and/or
scientific circles. The broader English populace
was reliant on the interpretation of the Bible andother religious texts through priests and monks.
But because humans are humans, however
religious they may purport to be, some of thesepriests were unforgivably ignorant, corrupt, andmanipulative. These individuals could not fool
the watchful eyes of church reformists like John
Wycliffe, who is credited with overseeing thefirst complete translation of the Catholic
Church’s Latin Vulgate Bible, the gold standard
of Bibles at the time. His efforts were followedby William Tyndale, who reached out to earlier
source languages like Greek, Hebrew, andAramaic, to arrive at a re-translation into Englishof the New Testament.
The Church’s reaction to these efforts was
the opposite of welcoming. Officials saw it as an
attempt to render the Word of God into a lesser,
uncouth language, and in so doing corrupt its
message—moreover to make that message

7

Middle English

It borders on ridiculous to imagine that the
Middle English period, roughly from about 1100
to 1500 A.D., can be adequately surveyed in one
lesson, let alone one semester. The fragments I
touched on during 2016 and 2017 concerned thewide variation in language forms—including
spelling—that characterized the period. Bragg(2004) notes, for one example, churche, cherche,
chirche, cherch, chyrch, cherge, chyrche,
chorche, chrch, churiche, and chirche as variantsof the word “church.” The theme of the Middle
English period was one of prying itself out of thedomination of its Norman captors, who during
the earlier Middle English period occupied seatsof power and who governed with the Norman
French language, but who were ultimately too
few in number to allow the Norman Frenchlanguage to take over as a language of the people.
According to shifts in power and national
identity with regard to the relationship of theNormans to the country of France as a whole, theNormans would—perhaps not unlike theirViking forbears—adopt the language andultimately the identity of the people they hadtaken over. Norman French words would,
however, forever retain their prestige in the
—8—

－８－

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

English language; thousands of Norman Frenchwords ended up enriching the language of theirformer conquerors. One could affect airs ofaristocracy by, for example, speaking ofacquisition rather than getting, of conversation
rather than talking, and of beautiful fragrancesrather than good smells. Even today, if we speakof perfume, the French-based term “eau detoilette” sounds more appealing than its literal
rendering in Anglo-Saxon-based English, “toilet
water” (more appropriately “grooming water”)
or “bathroom water.”
There is a striking parallel in the case ofNorman French loanwords into English with the
influx of Chinese words into Japanese, although
not under the same sociopolitical circumstances.
Over the centuries—from the 600s A.D.
onward—huge numbers of Chinese terms, alongwith Chinese characters (kanji, literally, Chinese
Han-Dynasty characters), were imported into
Japanese, so that one can say 購 買 す る(koukai suru), purchase, instead of 買う (kau),buy; or 食事する (shokuji suru), dine, insteadof 食べる (taberu), eat. Purchase and dine aresimilarly from Norman French as are buy and eat
from Anglo-Saxon. In both cases of Chinese andNorman French borrowings, the register isdifferent from counterpart terms that come from
Anglo-Saxon-based English or from Yamatobased Japanese. My students have expressedinterest in this parallel.
As was the case with Old Norse and Old
English speakers in the Danelaw, or Old Norseand Old French speakers in Normandy, thestories of bilingualism that must have occurredin cases of Norman French speakers and Old
English speakers are compelling. Bragg (2004)
observes that the language of the hand that rocks
the cradle—that is, the likelihood of English tohave been the mothers’ native language in asociety where English is predominately used indaily life—became the main language of thechildren who grew up with it. Because the status
of English in Japan is generally regarded asprestigious and desirable, the idea of English
having been a lower-status language is ofinterest to Japanese learners.
It is indeed remarkable that, after the
Anglo-Saxon speakers of proto-English
marauded into Britain and swept away the Celtic
language speakers who were there before, theEnglish language faced extinction twice, at thehands and mouths of both Viking and Norman
French invaders, and that in both cases it
rebounded and ultimately subsumed thelanguages of its would-be conquerors. In
essence, the English language started out as aninvasion, and went on to repel two subsequentinvasions. This bit of history is arguably a
testament to its resilience.

8

Headline News: Printing arrives inEnglandOf all machines that changed the English
language forever, the printing press, and its
arrival in England at the end of the Middle
English (late 1400s), has been by far the mostimpacting. Herein lies, for example, the reason
behind some of the English spelling conventions
that have tormented Japanese EFL learners (andeven native speakers) for centuries. Of criticalrelevance to the Japanese EFL classroom is thefact that the printing press helped ‘fix’ spellings
that were in a state of flux during the Middle
English period. In brief, even as pronunciationsof words kept changing and evolving, theprinting press helped keep spellings the way
they were. Handy examples are words like night,
knife, thought, and through. In Old English,
these words would have been pronounced muchas they are spelled (e.g. ki-NEE-fuh for knife).
My students were surprised and even glad tounderstand why spelling conventions like these
are the way they are—especially, why they haveremained the way they are—as few if any
Japanese EFL textbooks, particularly in middle
school and high school, include any mention of
etymology, much less older forms ofpronunciation.
A discussion of the printing press can also
include how books and other printed matterbecame exponentially cheaper and moreacquirable by common folk. And, as the desire
for books increased, so did the need for literacy,
which helped thrust English language
pedagogy—and all the troubles and issues
concomitant with it—to the forefront of
mainstream society.
9

Shakespeare, wordplay, and theGreat Vowel Shift
A one-class treatment of Shakespeare may seem
like a fool’s errand, however, one of the biggest
lessons that my students picked up was the way
Shakespeare played with language, unabashedly
juggling prefixes and suffixes, and changing
parts of speech at whim. HEL instructors cantherefore point out to learners the fun of verbing
nouns, the nounification of verbs, the use of
adjectives adverbially, and so forth, and thatthese acts should not be restricted to the purview
of famous authors but reside within the authorityof any speaker, both native and non-native. At
essence is the nature of human beings to playwith language, and by so doing invent creative
new forms of expression. To advocate thisstands refreshingly in opposition to theprescription and proscription of language forms
that pedagogy—and hence EFL classrooms—iscommonly concerned with. Even without
delving into a survey of Shakespearean literature,
—9—

－９－

39

40

Joel P. Rian

my students tended to have great fun with thissegment of the HEL course.
10

Taming the English tongue

As English began to spread across the world
after the 1500s, and as its wordstock and powersof expression blossomed explosively as a result,it occurred to pedagogues that there should be‘right’ ways—and by extension ‘wrong’ ways—of using it. This section of the HEL course
covers how the art of sounding like a book wasessential to being able to shift social status—for
example from a ‘lowly farmer’ to a ‘middle classmerchant’—as how one spoke reflected thesocial circle one was a part of. A typical example
is the play Pygmalion, popularized by the movie
My Fair Lady in 1964, starring Rex Harrison and
Audrey Hepburn (Audrey Hepburn wasparticularly popular in Japan). Within thispedagogical movement a good many “correct”
grammar conventions were born, some of whichwith somewhat random and whimsical origins.
An example is the rule that the English infinitive
should not be split. Thus, the statement madefamous by the Star Trek series, “To boldly go
where no one has gone before” would beincorrect. The reason: infinitive verbs in Latin
were one word, and English should be more like
Latin, because Latin was a “classical” andunchanging language. Unchanging, notably,
because it is no longer a living language!
The lesson for the pedagogy of English,
and I would argue for Japanese learners inparticular, is that “correct” and “incorrect” havealways ever been at least partially subjective,
and are open to being questioned. This notion
stands in contrast to the way English is
traditionally taught to Japanese speakers, who
tend to be passive inputters of what teachersprescribe is “the way” of using English. Becauseof Japan’s relentless pursuit of test fairness,
especially for sake of the high-stakes testingmechanism in place in pre-tertiary education, thetendency for learners to assume that English is“fixed” and that there is always a right and awrong is fundamentally erroneous. Further, thisassumption is inhibiting of, and grossly
misrepresents, the creativity and breadth of
expression that the English language is capableof construing, even by non-proficient, nonnative learners. The notion that ultimately
learners don’t have to ‘get it right’ in order tocommunicate well is, I believe, one of the mostpowerful messages that a HEL course can offer
Japanese learners.
11

English invades America

This unit, as well as the following unit on India,
is intended to show some of the irony of how theEnglish language and people ventured overseas
to do the same thing that was done to them inearlier chapters of England’s history. The
American experience with English is ofparticular interest to Japanese students, likely
because United States English has influenced
Japanese EFL education heavily ever since it
came crashing onto Japan’s shores with thearrival of Commodore Perry in the 1850s, aswell as following the end of World War 2.
As with the way Anglo-Saxon replaced
Celtic languages in the early 400s in England,
there is a striking parallel to how English
replaced the languages of Native American
peoples and in what is now the United States. A
further parallel is the way in which Japanesereplaced native Ainu languages in Hokkaido,
ironically during the same time period, the 1800s.
Of more immediate intrigue to students,
however, were the notions that, compared to
British English, American English tends toreflect older language forms and meanings. One
reason was arguably the result of strict practicesof Puritans, who first invaded American shores
in the 1600s. England English, Bragg (2004)
argues, was more fluid and changing. The irony
is that some students perceive British English as
an older, more formal, more original form of thelanguage, but in fact American English
preserves word usages and nuances that became
obsolete in England. Examples include thepropensity for Americans to use the word ‘fall’
instead of ‘autumn’, or the American tendency
to enunciate words like med-i-cine (instead of
British med-cine) or mil-i-tar-y (instead of
British mil-i-try). American spellings, too,hearken back to older Latinate spellings. For
example, American ‘center’ and ‘honor’ for
British ‘centre’ and ‘honour’. The former
reflects Latin (Roman) spellings, while the latter
belies a Norman French influence.
12

English invades India

The position of the English language in India
bears similarities to how Norman French
occupied England just after the 1066 conquest.
Rather than an abrupt takeover, however,English colonially crept its way into the seats ofIndian government over hundreds of years.
Throughout this gradual takeover, however, thepopulace at large maintained the everyday use ofa vast array of native Indian languages,
including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Urdu.
Today, English maintains a 10 percent secondlanguage status among India’s total population,and has evolved into its own particular brand of“Indian English.” Amusing examples of IndianEnglish include “wafers” for potato chips, “drygrapes” for raisins, “goggles” for sunglasses,and “loose motion” for diarrhea. A more

— 10 —－ 10 －

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

poignant legacy, however, is captured in thearticulate words of Mahatma Ghandi, a lawyer
and statesman who worked tirelessly toward the
independence of India from British rule during
the first half of the 20th century, when he said:“To give millions a knowledge of English is toenslave them… Is it not a painful thing that, if I
want to go to a court of justice, I must employ
the English language as a medium, that when I
become a barrister, I may not speak my mothertongue and that someone else should have totranslate to me from my own language? Is notthis absolutely absurd?” (Bragg, 2004:248).
13
14
15

English in Japan, Part 1: Sakoku,
shipwrecks & gunboat English
English in Japan, Part 2: English
teaching & learning
English in Japan, Part 3: Now andhereafter

These three units were created and included byme following the first two years teaching thecourse, after I perceived that students seemedfascinated by elements of the history of the
English language in Japan that I commented
offhand during class. The stories of Manjiro
Nakahama (“John Mung”) and Ranald
MacDonald (who has no relation to the clown
mascot of the popular fast food chain) arecovered briefly in some junior high and highschool textbooks, but the details of how theyaffected the introduction of English into
Japanese society are left out. Indeed, there aremany other stories like these about how English
seeped its way into the Japanese socioeducational milieu over a series of centuries, anddespite a well-known period in Japanese history
that saw a dedicated effort to repulse all things
and all people foreign. It is as if the Japanese hadsome kind of prescience that English has apropensity for invasion, intrusion, andinfiltration.
Noteworthy, perhaps, is that despite theenduring popularity of English since it began towash ashore in the 1600s, Japan was nevercolonized by English, never dominated by it.
Meanwhile, however, Japan was fascinated by it,
enamored of it, taken (but not taken over) by it,
ever since a shipwrecked William Adams cameashore in the year 1600 and, on account of his
coincidental knowledge of shipbuilding, becamea person of great interest to Ieyasu Tokugawa.
Tokugawa ruled Japan just before the age ofsakoku, a policy he himself helped construct thatin principle closed off the entire country toforeign interaction, until the forceful arrival of
American statesman Commodore Perry in the
1850s.
Shipwrecks and English are a theme forJapan: It was through shipwreckery that key

figures such as the Three Kichis and Manjiro
Nakahama found their way overseas, and bywhich William Adams, Ranald MacDonald(who deliberately shipwrecked himself to get
into Japan) and several others made their way
through the formidable barricades of sakoku andinto the annals of early interactions with theEnglish language.
These interactions would turn out to be
profound when, for example, Manjiro
Nakahama as well as former Japanese studentsof MacDonald would become instrumental innavigating the Japanese government through theramifications of post-sakoku opening to foreign
trade following the Meiji Restoration. It was thisnew, burgeoning trade that saw the creation of
the Bansho-Shirabesho ( 蕃 書 調 所 )—the
Institute for the Study of Foreign Literature, or
as I like to translate it, the Bureau of Barbarian
Books—was created, which would later become
the foundations of Tokyo University. Of
particular interest to students is the fact that until
the 1880s classes at Tokyo University wereconducted mainly in English, and that thispractice was deliberately halted by a nationalist
agenda that persisted until the end of the Second
World War.
Beauchamp (1998), Sasaki (2008), andShimizu (2010) offer detailed accounts of theevolution of English in Japan from the 1600s to
the present day. From these and other references
a wealth of English language history withparticular respect to Japan can be sourced. A
focal point that will be of immediate relevanceand interest to students is the fact that, while
English has long retained prestige in Japanesesociety, it has always had little immediate social
value. This societal status has great influence on
the way English has traditionally been taught
and learned in Japan, as well as other countries(e.g. Thailand) that were similarly nevercolonized by foreign English-speaking powers.
A review of teaching methods, therefore, and of
the way it has been traditionally tested (seeSasaki, 2008) was of immediate interest to mystudents. In sum, three weeks on the subject ofEnglish in Japan seemed to me to leave the mostmaterial untreated, the most unexamined, andthe most unspoken.
5. Conclusions
According to a survey given to 32 teachers of
HEL courses in universities across North
America and Europe, the following topics wererecommended as the most relevant to students:
1) Language change (processes, motivations);
2) Variation and diversity: e.g. attitudes andideologies about standard vs nonstandard
varieties, and prescriptive vs descriptive
practice;— 11 —－ 11 －

41

42

Joel P. Rian

3) HEL as background for present-day English(particularly irregularities);4) Colonial impact of English (as a world
language);5) Defining language;6) External history: e.g. impact of social,economic, technological change;7) Phonological changes: e.g. Great Vowel
Shift;
8) Grammatical principles and change: e.g.
shift from a more synthetic language to amore analytic one; and
9) Relation of English to other languages.
(Moore & Palmer, 2019:11).
While a one-semester, one-90-minute-class-aweek syllabus is horrendously insufficient to be
inclusive of these topics, I believe that what I
have discussed above sufficiently scratches thesurface of some of them. For Japanese university
students in particular, a review of English’s
function and position in Japan are aquintessential component to include in any HEL
course—one which, to date, it appears that manysyllabi do not regard. An exception is the 2017
HEL syllabus of Hosei University in Appendix
A, where an English language history-focused
spring semester serves as a springboard into afall semester that contrasts English withJapanese language elements.
Moore and Palmer (2019:148) further pointout the dual cognitive burden placed on students
in HEL classes that follow a traditional OldEnglish-to-Modern-English linear timeline,
observing that “mastery of the historical facts
that provide the context for linguistic change
requires memorization skills, while thelinguistics content requires analytic skills (inaddition to memorization). The synthesis oflinguistic understanding and historical context inregard to language change then requires thedeeper study of both subjects.” This comment iswith reference to native-speaker learners. For
Japanese university students taking a HEL
course delivered in all English, the cognitive
burden is tripled, as students must also contend
with their non-native grasp of Modern English.
Despite the potentially heavy cognitive
burden on students, however, the reception I
received during the years I taught the course at
Hokusei Gakuen was overwhelmingly positive,
although I admit that some of my students told
me the tests I gave were hellish. One regret I
have is that I did not have time to develop morecommunicative elements (i.e. groupwork) to theweekly lectures. This could be achieved by, forexample, assigning short readings on each unit,
having certain groups become specialists on
certain subtopics, and having groups teach othergroups—in Modern English, in class.

To conclude, the lesson I learned fromconstructing a HEL syllabus and conducting a
HEL class at the Japanese university level wasthat the majority of students expressed interestin historical developments in English-using
societies, rather than in analyzing andunderstanding the mechanisms of obsolete
forms of English. The implication is, therefore,that student interest in HEL resides more in a
focus on a review of the societies and politics
that incidentally gave birth to linguistic change,rather than a more traditional focus on asequence of changing language forms that bythe-way were part of certain social
developments.
While there are many students who have
had less than thrilling experiences with history
classes (Strauss, 2017), the stereotype that
history classes cannot avoid being boring needs
to be dispelled. Depending on the effort andenthusiasm that instructors are willing to invest,
a HEL course can be a heck of a good time anda meaningful experience for all involved.
Positive student feedback, meanwhile, helps
promote the virtuous cycle of teacher-student
motivation. If I were to teach the class again in
future, I would like to undertake a suggestion by
Seiler (2019) to reverse the traditional
chronology of working from Old English toModern English, but instead by going backwardfrom Modern English to Old English.
Finally, but not of least importance, is thepotential for a HEL course to equip futureteachers of English with missing puzzle pieces
that enables them to show a broader picture of
the language to their students. To be able toaddress students’ questions, and to pique theircuriosity, about why the English language is theway it is and the way it is taught and learned,
adds to the measure of credibility in an English
teacher’s performance. A virtuous cycle issupported: the more confident English teachers
are about their grasp of the subject they teach,the more confident their students will be inlearning it. In this respect, the development andpromotion of HEL courses seems essential to
MEXT’s vision of bolstering an understandingof English among Japanese people.

— 12 —－ 12 －

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

43

References[1] Amano, I., & Poole, G. (2005). The
Japanese university in crisis. Higher
Education, 50, 685-711. DOI
10.1007/sl0734-004-6372-y[2] Apple, M., Da Silva, D., & Fellner, T.
(2013). Language Learning Motivation in
Japan. Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
[3] Beauchamp, E.R. (1998). Education and
Schooling in Japan since 1945. New York:
Routledge.
[4] Bragg, M. (2004). The Adventure ofEnglish: The Biography of a Language.
New York: Arcade.
[5] Dore, R.P. (1976). The Diploma Disease:
Education, Qualifications, andDevelopment. London: George Allen &Unwin.
[6] Goodman, R. (2013). Japanese educationand education reform. In V. Bestor, T.
Bestor, & A. Yamagata (Eds.), Routledge
Handbook of Japanese Culture andSociety, pp. 52-62.
[7] Iyeiri, Yoko (2006). 家入葉子. 「英語史をどう教えるか―今を感じる力」『英語青年』 2006 年 8 月号: 36-38.
[8] Kikuchi, K. (2015). Demotivation in
Second Language Acquisition: Insightsfrom Japan. Bristol, UK: Multilingual
Matters.
[9] McCrum, R., MacNeil, R., & Cran, W.
(2002). The Story of English (Third
Revised Ed.). London: Penguin.
[10] Moore, C., & Palmer, C. (2019). Teaching
the History of the English Language. New
York: The Modern Language Associationof America.
[11] Sasaki, M. (2008). The 150-year history
of English language assessment inJapanese education. Language Testing,25(1), 63-83.

[12] Seiler, A. (2019). Teaching the historyof the English language backward. In
C. Moore & C. Palmer (Eds.),
Teaching the History of the English
Language, pp.137-146.
[13] Shimizu, M. (2010). Japanese English
education and learning: A history ofadapting foreign cultures. Educational
Perspectives, 43(1-2), 5-11.
[14] Simonton, D.K. (1994). Greatness: Who
Makes History and Why. New York:
Guilford Press.
[15] Strauss, V. (2017). “Why so many students
hate history—and what to do about it.”
The Washington Post, 17 May 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/an
swer-sheet/wp/2017/05/17/why-so-manystudents-hate-history-and-what-to-doabout-it/?noredirect=on[16] Tani, A. (2003). Teaching HEL in a Fun
Way: Using Nursery Rhymes to Teach theHistory of the English Language to Nonnative Speakers of English Especially at
the Beginning Level. Studies in Modern
English: The Twentieth Anniversary
Publication of The Modern English
Association. Tokyo: Eichosha, 491-505.
[17] Tani, Akinobu (2005). 谷明信. 「わが国での英語史教育の問題と課題―海外と比較して」[Problems of teaching HEL (History of the
English language) in Japanese universities:
Comparison with those in other countries]『兵庫教育大学研究紀要』27: 87-94.
http://www.lib.hyogou.ac.jp/kensaku/fulltext/AA119847890270008.pdf[18] Yonezawa, A. (2010). Much ado about ranking:Why can't Japanese universities internationalize?
Japan Forum, 22(1-2), 121-137.
DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2010.488948— 13 —－ 13 －

44

Joel P. RianAppendix A: Full-year HEL course, Hosei University (2017)
Spring Semester
第1回
ガイダンス: 授業についての説明、必要な教科書、参考文献についての説明
第2回
外面史: 英語成立の歴史的背景について
第3回
世界の中での英語: インド・ヨーロッパ祖語とは第4回語族による分類: インド・ヨーロッパ語族について
第5回
英語の位置づけ: 英語に近い親戚語
第6回
ゲルマン系とは: ゲルマン語派
第7回
ゲルマン系言語の主要３系統: ゲルマン諸語の特徴
第8回
古英語の地域的変種: 方言
第9回
古英語と社会: キリスト教への改宗
第 10 回古英語の発音について: 子音
第 11 回古英語の発音について: 母音
第 12 回古英語の文法: 名詞の性
第 13 回古英語の文法、現代英語との大きな違い: 名詞の格
第 14 回古英語の文法: 形容詞・副詞
第 15 回
春学期のまとめ: まとめと試験
Main Text:
Thomas Pyles 著 『The English Language: A Brief History』(英宝社) [and excerpts from various
English-language titles]
Supplemental Text:[to be specified in class]

Fall Semester
第1回
第2回
第3回
第4回
第5回
第6回
第7回
第8回
第9回
第 10 回
第 11 回
第 12 回
第 13 回
第 14 回
第 15 回

ガイダンス: 秋学期授業の紹介
春学期の復習と、課題についての講評: 課題について、評価を行う
英語の変化：概論: 理論をどのように歴史変化の分析に使うか
現代英語: 束縛理論～問題点
通言語的考察: 束縛理論を使って英語以外の言語の分析を行う
通言語的考察: 日本語における再帰代名詞
通言語的考察: 日本語と英語の違い
通言語的考察: 日本語に束縛原理は適用されるか
古英語: 古い英語における再帰現象
理論的分析: いくつかの重要な先行研究ーその１
理論的分析: いくつかの重要な先行研究ーその２
英語教育の観点から: 日本人英語学習者の誤り
英語教育の観点から: 日本人の犯す誤りの分析
英語教育への応用: 英語教育において束縛理論をどのように活用するか
秋学期のまとめ: 秋学期に学習した内容をまとめる

Main Texts [excerpts from various, including]:
Allen, C.L., (2008). Genitives in Early English: Typology and Evidence. Oxford: OUP.
Fischer, O., van Kemenade, A., Koopman,, W., & van der Wurff, W. (2000). The Syntax of Early English.
Cambridge: CUP.
Osawa, F. (2000). The Historical Emergence of DP in English. English Linguistics, 17(1), 51-79.
Osawa, F. (2009). The Emergence of DP in the History of English: The Role of the Mysterious Genitive. In M.
Dufresne, F. Dupuis, & E. Vocaj (Eds.), Historical Linguistics. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 135-148.
Radford, A. (2004). Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English. Cambridge: CUP.
Taylor, J.R. (1996). Possessives in English: An Explanation in Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: OUP.
Supplemental Texts:
Denison, D. (1993). English Historical Syntax. London: Longman.
Levin, B., & Hovav, M.R. (1995). Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press.

— 14 —－ 14 －

What Japanese university EFL students like about HEL

Appendix B: Full-year HEL course, Kanagawa University (2017)
Spring Semester
第1回
第2回
第3回
第4回
第5回
第6回
第7回
第8回
第9回
第 10 回
第 11 回
第 12 回
第 13 回
第 14 回
第 15 回Main Text:
堀田

導入: 授業方針、英語史概要説明
古英語期以前: インド・ヨーロッパ言語、ゲルマン諸語（英語の起源）
古英語期(1): ビードの語るブリテン、古英語詩、初期古英語文学
古英語期(2): ヴァイキングの襲来、アルフレッド大王の英語散文翻訳、ウェセックス
方言
中英語期(1): ノルマン征服、修道士の文学、古英語と中英語の狭間、12 世紀の英語、フランス語宮廷文化
中英語期(2): フランス語と英語の関係性、政府と地方、チョーサーの出現、印刷技術の開拓
古英語期、中英語期までのまとめ: 中世文学を読む
初期近代英語期(1): 文芸復興（ヨーロッパとイングランド）、清教主義、古典主義
初期近代英語期(2): ロマン主義、規範文法、ジョンソン博士の辞書
後期近代英語期(1): 大英帝国の形成、俗語、ピジンとクレオール
後期近代英語期(2): オックスフォード英語辞典、RP、20 世紀の英語
アメリカの英語: アメリカへの植民、ウェブスターの影響、黒人英語
現代の英語、世界に広がる英語: 21 世紀の英語、英語の変種
初期近代英語から現代英語までのまとめ: 近代英語を読む
前期授業内容のまとめと授業内試験隆一『英語の「なぜ？」に答える

はじめての英語史』[研究社]2016

Supplementary Texts:
寺澤
家入
保坂

盾『英語の歴史 過去から未来への物語』(中公新書)2008
葉子『ベーシック 英語史』[ひつじ書房]2007
道雄『文法化する英語』[開拓社]2014

Fall Semester
第1回
第2回
第3回
第4回
第5回
第6回
第7回
第8回
第9回
第 10 回
第 11 回
第 12 回
第 13 回
第 14 回
第 15 回Main Text:
堀田

導入: 英語史概要（前期で扱った内容の復習）と後期授業ガイダンス
発音・綴り字(1): 古英語や中英誤記を中心に
発音・綴り字(2): 大母音推移から現代へ
語形(1): 性・数・格について
語形(2): 動詞の語形について
語形(3): 形容詞・副詞について
音韻・綴り字、語形の内容のまとめ
統語(1): 助動詞 do を中心に統語(2): 仮定法について
統語(3): 進行形、完了形、受動態について
語彙・意味(1): 語彙の階層性について
語彙・意味(2): 単語の意味変化について
方言・社会: アメリカにおける英語の変種について
統語、語彙・意味、方言・社会の内容のまとめ
後期授業内容のまとめと授業内試験隆一『英語の「なぜ？」に答える

はじめての英語史』[研究社]2016

Supplemental Texts:
寺澤
家入
保坂

盾『英語の歴史 過去から未来への物語』(中公新書)2008
葉子『ベーシック 英語史』[ひつじ書房]2007
道雄『文法化する英語』[開拓社]2014— 15 —－ 15 －

45