論文

An Investigation into the Language Café
– A Needs Analysis

Peter LYONS

要旨

第一言語での会話でさえ，会話の始め方や継続は困難な場合が多くある。ましてや，L2（第二言語）での会話となれば，語彙の不足や不安といった要因でより困難なものとなる。『Language Café』と同様の試みは日本の他の多くの大学にも見られ，さらに拡大しつつあり，『Global Lounge』『Chat Space』などといった名前で知られるものである。それらの空間は
堅苦しいものではなく，間違いを正すということよりも流暢に話し，自由な会話を楽しむことに重点を置いている。ここでは強要はなく英語で会話をするように自然と促されているのだ。
愛知大学では特に昼食時の『Language Café』に於いて，堅苦しい教室とは異なり，教師と生徒がくつろいだ環境の中で会話することができる，『言語実体験』をする場所を生徒に与えている。
この研究は，そのニーズの分析であり，”Language Menu”（会話補助ツール）の必要性の裏付けである。
・カフェの状況に関する，教師と生徒の現在時における見解
・カフェ参加生徒の動機付け要因は？生徒を参加に促す為に必要な策とは・カフェでの会話促進に役立つサポートツールの構築
キーワード：内因性動機付け，言語不安，フリートーク，生徒主導型会
話，コミュニケーション意欲

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No. 39Introduction and Investigative Aims
Even in one’s first language, initiating and continuing conversation canbe difficult. When it comes to speaking in an L2, the difficulty may bemagnetized by any number of factors ranging from a lack of vocabulary
to social anxiety. The ‘Language Café’ is a growing concept acrossuniversities in Japan. It is known by other names such as ‘Global
Lounge’ and ‘Chat Space’ depending on the university, yet they allcontain similar characteristics – those being its informal setting, its
emphasis on building fluency through ‘free conversation’ rather thanlanguage correction, and L2 use being encouraged rather than demanded.
During lunchtime especially, the café is seen to be a place where students
and language instructors can talk in a relaxed environment giving thestudent an authentic language experience free from the formal constraintsof the classroom.
This investigation is concerned heavily with Needs Analysis anddetermining more specifically a potential need for the creation of a‘Language Menu’ to help scaffold conversation.
•

What are both teachers’ and students’ current perceptions of the
café’s state and success?

•What are the motivating factors for student attendance at the caféand how could non-attendees be encouraged to attend?

•Would more structure in terms of materials to support conversation
be a welcome addition to the café?

Keywords: intrinsic motivation, language anxiety, free conversation,
student-led talk, willingness to communicate

University Context
This entire study took place on the Toyohashi campus of Aichi University, a private
university in Japan. The campus has two faculties – the Faculty of Letters (FL) which100

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includes the Humanities department, and the Faculty of Regional Policy (FR). Around
700 students from both faculties have a compulsory English class in the first year of afour-year degree course. The students have a plethora of classes in their first year before
specializing from their second year - only around 30 students will specialize in English
Language study offered by the Contemporary International English (CIE) section of the
Humanities Department - only students who belong to the FL have this option.

Students
The 100 students who participated in this investigation were all FL students in their firstyear. Due to the logistics of the situation and student progression trends, it can beestablished that less than 10% of the students will major in English - the students arepotential English majors. They are currently being taught by myself at the university for
90 minutes per week in ‘Communicative English.’ The participants are in classes of 25-30
students where the focus is on speaking practice in small groups. They are all between theages of 18-20 and will have had at least six years English instruction through the grammar
based Japanese school system. Upon completion of the course, the students will be given
a grade by the teacher based on class performance and will earn credit needed for theiracademic progress.

Teachers
The university employs on campus four full-time L1 English speakers Professor X is atenured Professor and supervises the other three. Professor Z, Professor Y and myself are
all on temporary contracts, and are responsible for teaching 10 x 90 minute classes per
week over two fifteen-week semesters per year. All members seem to be motivated intheir daily teaching lives, and were keen participants in this investigation. Teachers
generally attend the café once or twice per week.

The Language Café – The Current Situation
The Language Café (from here on referred to as the café) consists of four large tables withseating provided for up to thirty people. In the centre of the room is a self-service area for
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No. 39making tea and coffee which is provided free of charge. There is a television that can beused for playing DVDs, and music is often played quietly on a CD player in order tocreate a café-style atmosphere. The seating area is surrounded on all sides by DVDs andbooks that can be rented by students, therefore it a public space that is not only accessed
for the purpose of the café. The café/rental-library is open five days a week from 9am until
7pm yet the ‘free English conversation’ times are four days a week for 30 minutes aroundlunchtime on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Theoretically, the café could be attended by anyone from the surrounding general public
to retired professors, in practice however, it is attended by students of the university as
well as university staff members. Attendance to the lunchtime sessions fluctuates
throughout the academic year, the second semester ‘slump’ that Professor X mentions
leaves the café with low attendance levels from both teachers and students on Tuesdays
and Wednesdays. It seems from my own experiences that Mondays attract the largest
number of attendees. In the first semester (there are two per year in Japan), a number of
CIE second-year students were in attendance however in the second semester they stopped
coming. With the exception of three ‘regulars’ (two of whom were interviewed as part ofthis study), attendees are predominantly first year female FL students with comparable
language ability. Mondays often see all four teachers in attendance plus a part-timeteacher, Tuesdays and Wednesdays usually only has one or two teachers present.

Theoretical Context
My initial reading was inspired by an urge to discover why or why not students wereentering the café. The language space was completely free - with the exception of books
and DVDs on the shelves - of any materials, and if they were to be developed what formshould they take. A lack of attendance was becoming a growing issue within thedepartment, and rather than rush into asking questions based on hunches, I decided a clear
theoretical foundation was required on which to base the research. Dornyei (2001 p253)
mentions the ‘conceptualization of willingness to communicate’ (WTC) and a brief
exploration of this introduced to me a body of thought and work from which I could findanswers to the following questions.

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Would it be possible to pinpoint sociological factors, whether they are determinedby the student’s age or peer groups that affect their attendance level?

Shamim (2006 p134) speaks of the ‘front-zone’ in the classroom, the area that is ‘conducive
to learning’ where students with ‘initial motivation’ will sit. The attendees at the café
certainly belonged to this group of students. She also speaks of them having a ‘stronger
personality’ than the ‘back-zone’ students, however I wanted through my research todiscover if there were social groups at play that were in relation to extra-curricular
activities such as sports/arts clubs. There are no formal meetings held on campus during
the lunch period, but perhaps these social groups had formed meaning that the café just
was not the ‘cool place to be?’▪

Does the fact that the café is free of any assessment relinquish motivation to attend?

Skehan’s (1989) ‘Carrot and Stick Hypothesis’ discussed by Ellis (1994 p513) makes arelation between an ‘incentive to learn’ and the motivation of the students to communicate.
Whether such a ‘carrot’ existed in the café was of debate amongst teachers. A previously
employed teacher had created a stamp card to encourage attendance however whether thecompletion of this card had any relation to the student’s final assessment was unclear, andseemed to be at the discretion of the teacher. The use of the stamp card seemed childish
without a specific incentive to have it completed. I sought in my interview research withcolleagues to determine whether a clearer incentive was needed to encourage attendance.
Gardner and MacIntyre (1991) cited in Ellis (1994 p514) claim that ‘once any chance forreceiving reward is eliminated, learners may cease applying extra effort.’ However, thesituation at hand was not that of a classroom and I sought to determine whether these‘instrumental factors’ that ‘rewarded’ students should be carried over from the classroom
into the less formal atmosphere of the café.
▪

Have the students developed a ‘far-sighted somewhat vague long-term objective
related to using English for international/intercultural communication’ (Yashima et
al 2004)?

The idea that practice will improve speaking performance is well established yet as
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No. 39Dornyei (2005) states, if teachers and educational establishments do not go beyond merely
providing the opportunity to practice without establishing the benefit to the student thenthe following could occur:“It is not uncommon to find people who tend to avoid entering L2 communication
situations even if they possess a high level of communicative competence. This implies
that there is a further layer of mediating factors between the competence to communicate
and putting this competence into practice” (2005: 207).
However, it is not solely the extrinsic influences of rewards that will develop WTC but as
Brown (2002:12) states ‘a more powerful category of reward is one which is intrinsicallydriven within the learner’ therefore nurturing and developing this ‘self-rewarding
behaviour’ would mean any extrinsic rewards would be unnecessary.
More culturally specifically, Yashima (2002) and Yashima et al (2004) at Kansai University
in Japan conducted research that showed that students who were more interested ininternational issues, and how they could use English in the international community weremore likely to have WTC. Her work lead her to coin the phrase ‘international posture’ andthe idea of students standing up in an international community with English as their toolfor communication in this ‘broader future context’ struck me as being important fordeveloping WTC. As Yashima states, ‘international posture influences motivation, which
in turn, predicts proficiency and L2 communication confidence’ (2002: 63). A lack of thislong-term motivation would certainly detract from student attendance at the café.
▪

Does the prospect of ‘free-talk’ within the café create anxiety that deters the student
from attending?

Krashen’s (1981:38) ‘low-anxiety environment’ that ‘is easy to say but difficult to provide’
led me to try to realize whether the idea of being in a space with your teachers andcommunicating in a foreign language at lunchtime was an overwhelming concept to thestudents. Was there a ‘debilitating anxiety’ (Ellis 1994:484) that was stopping the students
from attending? The café had never had any premise other than to come and talk withteachers and peers about anything that you desired, but from my experience the teachers
seemed to be dominating the conversation, and students were relegated in the conversation
to being respondents and not initiators. I also sought to understand who it was the students
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wanted to engage in conversation with each other or their foreign teachers that would givethem an ‘authentic language experience.’ Lightbown and Spada (1999:51) discuss the‘assumption’ that learners who ‘seek out opportunities to interact with speakers of thelanguage are highly motivated to learn’ but does this necessarily mean these speakers
have to be L1 speakers of the language? It seemed from my own experiences in the caféthat some form of language support was required to avoid the conversation between
students being in their L1 and for the teacher interrogation to cease.

Research Methods
Exploratory Interviews
I initially held recorded interviews with two female students who are both 3rd year students.
Student H is an English Literature Major who attends the café regularly and had done
throughout her three years studying at the university. Student S is a Contemporary
International English Major who also regularly attended the café. I hoped to discover why
they came and simply why they believed others did not. Also, as frankly paying customers
at the university were they satisfied with the service that was currently being offered?
Both of these interviews took place in the café at lunchtime. I approached them as I foundthem both articulate and motivated to communicate, I was aware that speaking with them
may not help to any great extent to understand non-attendance. These interviews were notrecorded as the students while willing, seemed uncomfortable with the idea of being
recorded. I therefore, have not included an appendix of their sample comments.
I also held interviews with Professors X, Y and Z that were primarily focused on thecurrent state of the café, their perception of what its function is, and also how it could be
improved. These interviews were held in each professor’s office during the afternoon.
All of these interviews were exploratory in nature to gather qualitative data in a semistructured manner that would allow me to create a more structured written questionnairethat would be aimed at both student attendees and non-attendees of the café.

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No. 39Written Questionnaire
The written questionnaire was created based upon the theoretical context and the
exploratory interviews. I wanted to be able to create a questionnaire that would yield the‘rich’ data (Dornyei 2003:14) that qualitative research could not. I also wanted to makesure the students avoided any ‘fatigue effect’ (Dornyei 2003:14) by making it long enoughto be of value but easy enough to avoid the negative influences of tedium. The questionnaire
was given to exactly 100 students at the beginning of class across three different classes.
All students were 1st years as described in the ‘Students’ section of this paper. The
questionnaire was fully bilingual, and students were encouraged to write in whicheverlanguage they felt comfortable using. All translation of written comments from Japanese
to English was done by myself.

Results
Teacher Interviews
My first interview was with Professor X who is in a position of authority at the university.
His comments showed a lack of change and more pointedly a lack of direction as to how
the café should progress. He did mention how the first year of the café’s existence was‘pretty structured’ but that over time it had changed to its present day structureless form.
Two areas particularly interested me, his comments regarding the stamp card and how it
was ‘a push thing’ that may at first be an extrinsic influence (Skehan 1989 in Ellis 1994)
but later could develop into an intrinsic motivating factor. Also he provided insight into
how the students interacted with each other with each other, and were perhaps reluctant toengage each other in L2 without the ‘push’ of the teacher.
Professor Z had perhaps the most experience of café attendance and his observations weremost insightful. He spoke of a ‘psychological barrier’ that many students faced that
reminded me of factors relating to WTC and how MacIntyre (2007 p565) determined a‘convergence of psychological processes underlying communication’ that were necessary
for conversation to flow. He commented on how the students were ‘reluctant to initiate’and were ‘misinterpreting’ the café by attending and conversing in their L1 when teachers
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were not present. Again, I sought to confirm ‘who’ the students were seeking to converse
with in the café. Professor Z seemed stricter in his insistence of an ‘all-English’ environment
within the café, but also more encouraging of Yashima (2002)’s ‘international posture.”
He believes the café is a wasted opportunity for the students.
Professor Y offered fascinating insight into the motivating factors he perceived to be
involved. He sided with Brown’s (2002) idea of a strong intrinsic instrument being
required and nurturing this through broadening ‘cultural content leading to cultural
understanding’ He was strongly against any stamp-card system or other extrinsic influenceon the students to encourage attendance. He was the least enthusiastic of the interviewees
in regards to the notion of materials to support conversation, and seemed to support theconcept of ‘free speaking’ in the café.

Student Interviews
Student S’s comment that her ‘English improved so now is more fun’ showed that she
holds value in the café, and she also mentioned the benefits of having connections withEnglish teachers. Her main complaints were of a lack of teachers on certain days leading
to many students reverting to their L1 of Japanese. Her comments helped me to concentrate
the later questionnaire on with whom the students were coming to communicate.
Student H similarly praised the benefits of the café by saying ‘it enhanced my English
ability’ and that it provided a ‘student community.’ Both students were happy with thecurrent state of the café and had no particular ideas in relation to how it could be improved.
They were both open to the idea of more structure to support conversation, yet bothstressed the ‘if necessary’ that could in some ways detract from ‘real’ spoken discourse. I
felt that Student S and H had the ‘international posture’ that Yashima (2002) believed was
key to being a motivated speaker of an L2.

Written Questionnaires
Of the 100 participants in the questionnaire, 23 had been to the café during the semester
which was slightly higher than I had anticipated due to my own observations. Of those 23,
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No. 3920 attended the café to speak with ‘foreign teachers in a foreign language’ being the main
reason for attendance followed by 13 who were attending to speak with other students in
a foreign language. Firth and Wagner (1997:291) criticized ‘the mindset that views
learners/non-natives as inherently defective communicators’, and it would seem thatwhile the students have the motivation to attend, as Professor Y mentioned there is a
‘psychological block’ that was affecting their speaking performance beyond ability.
This ‘block’ seemed to be a lack of confidence that was further enhanced by a social
anxiety of being in a situation where one is being asked to communicate freely in L2. The
58 of 77 non attendees to the café who ‘lack confidence in my English speaking ability’or the 46 of 77 who believe ‘free talk is too difficult’ clearly represent a need for somestructure to be put in place to scaffold conversation in an environment that is uncomfortable
for students.
Other observations from the questionnaire showed the formation of peer groups at lunch
time which is completely understandable at the age of the students, with 21% who took
part in the survey spending the lunch hour with others as part of their extra-curricular
clubs. Taking in to account that the students had only been attending the university for 7-8
months, I feared that asocial behaviour may be detracting from the café attendance,
however only 4% of the students wished to be alone at lunchtime. The 47% of students
who were either eating in the classrooms or in the eating area near the convenience store,
could just as very well easily have lunch in the café. In short, potential attendees were on
campus during lunch.

Conclusion and Proposal for a ‘Language Menu’
Shortcomings
An area in which I failed to gather any valuable data was on the extrinsic motivating
factor of the stamp card. Professor X had concluded that an internal review of this system
was necessary as it had questionable elements in regards to assessment. The ‘nudge’ hementions was something that needed to be discussed with my colleagues and superiors,and could well be related to any further investigations into the café. I felt it had been an108

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interesting point for discussion during the initial exploratory qualitative interviews withteachers, but the division and inconsistencies of teacher practice meant that decisions
needed to be made at management level.

The ‘Language Menu’ Proposal
The concept of ‘foreign language anxiety’ has been around for decades (Horwitz et al1986), and explorations into Japanese ESL classrooms is nothing revolutionary either(Aida 1994). However, less is known of the middle ground between the classroom and thelearner’s private world where L2 usage is offered a chance to be free of the contrived
situation of the classroom. From my investigation, while I believe it is an enrichingexperience for the learner, I believe I have proved it to be an unrealistic aim. The conceptof spontaneous conversation with peers and teachers while enviable, it ‘poses a threat toself-esteem because it deprives the learners of their normal means of communication.’(Horwitz et al 1986).
I therefore propose a ‘Language Menu.’ The menu will offer support to students who are
feeling anxious, provide them with prompts to initiate conversation and also provide
simple ideas for the continuation of conversation. It will serve to be seasonal in the topics
it introduces, manageable for the students in the level of difficulty of content yet suitable
to their age and immediate environment (the life of a university student.) I propose for thismenu to be placed on tables, and similarly to how a menu may be used at a café orrestaurant, only looked at if desired or required by the learner. I also propose that copies
be made for learners to take away in order to feel comfortable with the content.

Final Comments
Yashima's international posture (2002) may exist in a great number of the students at theuniversity, and its fostering in the environment of the Language Cafe is extremely
important. However, the idea of 'free conversation' where the students are initiating withfellow students and teachers alike without any means of material support is a level that is
unattainable for the majority of 1st year students due to foreign language anxiety. Someform of support is needed as an option for the students to turn to in order to stimulate
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No. 39'semi-natural' conversation in Krashen's (1981) 'low-anxiety environment.'

References
Aida, Y. (1994) Examination of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope's Construct of Foreign Language Anxiety:
The Case of Students of Japanese. The Modern Language Journal 78 (2) p155-168
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W. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press p 178-188
Dornyei, Z. (2003) Attitudes, Orientations and Motivations in Language Learning Michigan: Language
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Language Acquisition. Mahwah, LEA.
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Research The Modern Language Journal, 81(3), p285-300
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Journal, 70(2), p125-132
Krashen, S. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning Hemel Hempstead:
Prentice Hall International
Lightbown, P & Spada, N. (1999) How Languages are Learned Oxford: Oxford University Press
MacIntyre, P (2007) Willingness to Communicate in the Second Language: Understanding the Decision
to Speak as a Volitional Process The Modern Language Journal, 91(4), p564-576
Shamim, F. (2006) In or Out of the Zone: Location as a Feature of Interaction in Large ESL Classes inPakistan in Voices from the Language Classroom (eds) Bailey, K. & Nunan, D. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
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The Modern Language Journal, 86(1), p54–66.
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Appendix
Quantitative Data Results from 100 Students
Have you been to the Language Café at lunchtime this semester?
How many times have you been there?

Once 5

Under five 9

Five to ten 3

Over ten 6

Reasons for Attendance (multiple choices allowed for the 23)
To talk to foreign teachers in a foreign language

20

To talk to other students in a foreign language

13

To listen to others talk9

To talk to others in Japanese3

To quietly eat lunch

1

Others4

Reasons for Non-Attendance (multiple choices for the 77)
I lack confidence in my ability to take part in conversation

58

Free talk makes me anxious

46

I want to speak in Japanese at lunchtime

31

The time is inconvenient for me

20

I’m too busy

20

I want to be alone at lunchtime

4

I’m not interested in hearing or speaking a foreign language at the cafe

4

I don’t understand what the café is2

98% of students normally eat lunch on campus
21% are involved in non-formal social group activity

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