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The Japan Association for Language Teaching
College and Universiry &lucators Newsletler

ON CUETn c nr,t o t ocY. & Ln l^nn w e
page3:

Digital Diploma Mills uyDavid F. Noble
Drcrntcrlvq TEACHINS

paget2: Daily Immersiorl by Julian Bamford" pase r+ The Tracking Equation Revisiteduy Paul DoyonIs Not a Process
uy Marc Scheffner

page 18: Teachingpase 2r: ";'Opportuni stic " Or gantzattonal S trate gies in EFL
uy Trudie Heiman

ON CUE
Edited by Jack Kimball, <kimball@post.miyazaki-ned.ac.jp>
Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1998
V is

it CU E O nl ine : <http : / / inters em er.miy azaki -me d.ac ip | - cue / I -htnl >CUE'SN,4 E IR.IIII- A\)VAIR-D
FOR NEWCOMERS TO COLLECE TEACHINCO OOCALL FOR NOMINAIIONSI
CUE's Merit Award for Newcomers to College Teaching.Thisisabrandneur
and very special way of recognizing oulstanding language educators who have recently started
teac*ring at the college or university level. CUE's Merit Award consists ol special recognition at the
CUE Annual General Meeting at Omiya in November and one year's free membership in JALT and
CUE (if a winner of CUE s Merit Award is already a member of JALT and/or CUE, his or her membershp
will be renewed for another year). The winning essay(s), dotails b6low, will also be published in the

ON CUE newsletter.

Who is eligible to be nominated for the Merit Award? Anyinstructorof any
language (Ll or [2) who has been teaching al the junior college, college or university level in Japanfor no mors than three years as ol April 1, 1998. (ln other words, any language teacher who isentering the fourth, third, second or first year of posFsecondary teaching as of April 1 , 1998.) There
are no age restriclions.

Who may nominate a candidate for CUE's Merit Award? Nominations ror
CUE's Meril Award candidates are requested from all CUE members. CUE members are asked either
to write or E-mail Steven Snyder, CUE Membership Chair, suggesting one candidate (with candidate's
afiilialion and address). Nominations should be sent by mail as follows.

Sleven Snyder
Miyazaki Women's Junior College1415 Hei, Kano, Kiyotake
Miyazaki 889-1605

Or, the E-mail address {or nominations is <tomobear@m-surt.or.jp>.
Each nominee will be notilied by CUE and asked to submit a short essay either in English (500 words)
or Japanese (1200 characters). The topic of the essay will be related to the nominee's commitment topost-secondary language teaching.

Who will judge the candidates for CUE's Merit Award?Tnewinnerorwinners
will be chosen by a Merit Award Review Panel appointed by, but independent of, the CUE Executive
Board.

One nomination only is requested from each CUE member. Deadline
for receiving nominations is .lune 1, 1998.

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accident, then, that the high-techtransformation of higher education is being
initiated and implemented from the top down,
either without any student and faculty
involvement in the decision-making or
despite it At UCLA the administmtion
launched their Initiative during the summer
when many faculty are away and there waslinle possibility of faculty oversight orgovernance; faculty were thus left out of theloop and kept in the dark about the new Vy'ebrequirement until the last moment. And
UCLj. administrators also went alead with
its Initiative, which is funded by a newcompulsory student fee, despite the formal
shrdent recommendation against it. Similarly
the initiatives of the York administration in

the deployment of computer technology in
education were taken without facuhy

oversight ard deliberation muchless student
involyement. What is driving this headlong
rush to implement new technology with solittle regard for deliberation of thepedagogical and economic costs and at therisk of student and faculty alienation andopposition? A short answermight be the fearof getting left behind, the incessant pressuresof "progress." But there is more to ir. For theuniversities are not simply undergoing atechnological transformation. Beneath thatchange, and camouflaged by it, lies another:
the commercialization of higher education.
For here as elsewhere technology is but avehicle and a disarming disguise.

What is driving thisheadlong rwslt to implement
new technology? The
commercialization of hi gher
education.
The m{or change to befall the universities
over the last two decades has been theidentification of the campus as a significant
site of capital accumulation, a change insocial perception which has resulted in thesystematic conversion of intellectual activify
into intellecaral capital and, hence, intellectual
property. There have been two generalphases of this transformation. The first,
which began twenfy yeaf,s ago and is still
underway, entailed the mmmoditization of
the research function of the university,transforming scientifi c and engineeringknowledge into commercially viable
proprietary products that could be owned andbought and sold in the market. The second,which we are now witnessing, entails thecommoditization of the educational functionof the university, transforming courses into
courseware, the activity of insruction itself
into commercially viable proprietary productsthat can be owned and bought and sold in themarket. In the first phase the universities
became sites of production and sale of patents

and exclusive licenses. In the second, they
are becoming sites of production of, as wellas the chief market for, copyrighted vidos,
courseware, CD-ROMs, and Web sites.

The first phase began in the mid-1970s
when, in the wake of the oil crisis andintensifying intemational mmpetition,
corporate and political leaders of the majorindustrialized coun*,ries of the world
recognized that they were losing theirmonopoly over the world's heavy industries
and that, in the future, their supremacy would
depend upon their monopoly over theknowledge which had become the lifebloodof the new so-called "knowledge-based"industries (space, electronics, dornputers,materials, telecommunications, andbioengineering). This focus upon "intellectual
capital" turned their attention to theuniversities as ie chief source, implicating
the universities as never before in theeconomic machinery. In the view of capital,
the universities had become too important tobe left to the universities. Within a decade
there was a proliferation of industrial

partnerships and new proprietaryarrangements, as industrialists and theircampus counterparts invented ways tosocialize the risks and costs of creatine thisE

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focus industryn for lucrative investment in the
future, replacing the healthcare industry' (Thereport alsb forecasts that the educationalmirket will eventually become dominated by
EMOs - education maintenance organizations- iust like HMOs in the healthcare market.) It
ii important to emphasize that, for all the
democratic rhetoric about extending
educational access to those unable to get tothe campus, the campus remains the realmarket for these products, where students
outnumbr their distance learning
counterparts six- tG-one.

Corporate training
advocates view online
education as yet anotherway of bringing theirproblem-solving,info rmati o n- p r o c e s s in g,"just-in-time " educatedemployees up to profitmaking speed.
In addition.to the vendors, corporate training
advocates view online education as yet

another way of bringing their problem-

solving, information-processing,'Just-intime" educated employees up to profitmaking speed. Beyond their ambitious inhouse training progftIrns, which haveincorporated computer-based instructional
methods pioneered by the military, theyenvision the transformation of the delivery ofhigher education as a means of supplying
their properly-prepared personnel at public
expense.

The third major promoters of thistransformation are the university
administrators, who see it as a way of giving
their institutions a fashionably forwardlooking image. More importanfly, they view
comouter-based instruction as a means of

reducing their direct labor and plantmaintenance coBts - fewerteachers andclassrooms - while at the same time
undermining the autonomy and independenceof faculty. At the same time, they are hoping
to getapiece of the commercial action for
their institutions or themselves, as vendors intheir own right of sofware and content.
University administrators are supported inthis enterprise by a number of private
foundations, trade associations, andacademic-corporate consortia which arepromoting the use of the new technologies*ith increasing intensity. Among these are
the Sloan, Mellon, Pew, and CulPeper
Foundations, the American Council on
Education, and, above all, Rlucom, aconsortium representing the management of
600 mlleges and universities and a hundredprivate corporations.
[,ast but not least, behind this effort are theubiquitous technozealots who simply view
computers as the panacea for everything,because they like to play with them. With theavid encouragement of their private sector
and university patrons, they forge ahead,
without support for their pedagogical claims
about the alleged enhancement of education,
without any real evidence of productivity
improvement, and without any effective
demand from either students or teachers.

In addition to York and UCLA, universities
throughout North America are rapidly being
overtiaken by this secpnd phase ofcommercialization. There are the stand-alone
virtual institutions like Univenity of
Phoenix, the wired private instirutionslike
the New School for Social Research, thecamDuses of stale universities like theUniversity of Maryland and the new GulfCoast campus of the Universiw of Florida(which Uoisrs no tenure). On ihe state level,
the states of Arizona and California haveinitiated their own state-wide virtual
university projects, while a consortia ofwestem "Smart Statesn have launched theirown ambitious effort to wire all of theirt-$'uo!1r15 UOTSwAIAI

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of new technologies of production. The
second raises for students major questions
about costs, coercion, privacy, equity, andthe quality of education.
With the commoditization of instruction,teachers as labor are drawn into a production
process designed for the efficient creation of
insnuctional commodities, and hence become
subject to all the pressures that have befallen
production workers in other industries
undergoing rapid technologicaltransformation from above. In this context
faculty have much more in common with thehistoric plight of other skilled workers thanthey care to acknowledge. Like these others,
their activity is being restructured, via thetechnology, in order to reduce theirautonomy, independence, and control overtheir work and io place workplace knowledge
and control as mueh as possible into thehands of the administration. As in otherindustries, the technology is being deployedby management primarily to discipline,
deskill, and displace labor.

Technology entails an
inevitable extension ofworking time and an
intensification of work as
faculty struggle to stay on topof the technology.
Once faculty and courses go online,
administrators gain much greater directcontrol over faculty performance and course
content than ever before and the potential for

administrative scrutiny, supervision,
regimentation, discipline and even censorshipincrease dramatically. At the same time, theuse of the technology entails an inevitable
extension of working time and an
intensification of work as faculty struggle at
all hours ofthe day and night to stay on top
ofthe technology and respond, via chatrooms, virtual office hours, and E-mail, toboth students and administrators to whomthey have now becomeinstantly andcontinuously accessible. The technology also
allows for much more careful administrative
monitoring of faculty availability, activities,
and responsiveness.

Once the faculty converts its
courses to courseware, theirservices are in the long run
no longer required.
Once faculry put fheir course material online,
moreover, the knowledge and course desigr
skill embodied in that material is taken out of
their possession, transferred to the machineryand placed in the hands of the administration.
The administation is now in aposition tohire less skille4 and hence cheaper, workers
to deliver the technologically prepackaged
course. It also allows the administration,
which claims ownership of this commodity,
to peddle the course elsewhere without theoriginal designer's involvement or evenknowledge, much less financial interest The
buyers of this packaged commodiry,meanwhile, other academic institutions, areable thereby to contractout, and hence
outsource, the work of their own emplovees
and thus reduce theirreliance upon their'inhouse teaching staff.

Most important, once the faculty converts its
courses to courseware, their services are in
the long run no longer required. They
become redundant, and when they leave,
their work remains behind. In Kurt
Vonnegut's classic novel Player Pianotheace machinist Rudy Hertz is flattered by theautomation engineers who tell him his genius
will be immortzlizgd. Thev buv him a beer.
They capture his skills on 6pe.'Then they fire

him. Today faculty are falling for the same
tired line, that their brilliance will bebroadcast online to millions. Perhaps, but

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provisions which, if effectively enforced,
eive faculw members directand
inambigu6us control over all decisions
relating 0o the automation of instruction,
including veto power. According to thecontract, all decisions regarding the use ofsoftware being used at UCLA, sfudents voted
in areferendum four-to-one againsta similar

technology as a supplement to classroom
instruction or as a means of altemative

ignore, or explain away these negative
student decisions, but there is a message
here: students wantthe genuine face-to-faceeducation they paid foriota
cybercounterfeit. Nevertheless,administrators at both UCLA and UBC
decided to prcceed with the theiragenda
anywav, desperate !o create a market andsecure some return on their investment in theinformation technology infrastructure. Thus,
they are creating a market by fiat, compelling
students (and faculty) to become users andhence consumers of the hardware, software,and content products as a condition of getting
an education, whatever their interest or ability
to pay. Can all students equally afford thiscapital -intensive education?

initiative, despite a lengt$ administation
campaign promising them amore secure
place in the high tech future. Administrators
at both institutions have tended to dismiss,delivery (including the use of video, CDROMs, Internet Web sites, computernshall be
mediated conferencing, etc.)
consistent with the pedagogic and academic
judgements and principles of the faculty
member employee as !o the appropriatenessofthe use oftechnology in thecircumstances." The contract also guarantees"a faculty member will not be required toconvert a course without his or her
agreement." Thus, the York faculty will beable to ensure that the new technology, if andwhen used, will contribute to a genuine
enhancement rather than a degradation of thequality of education, while at the same timepreserving their positions, their autonomy,
and theiracademic freedom. The battle is far
from won, but it is a start.

Another key ethical issue relates to the use of
student online activities. Few students realizc,
that their computer-based courses are often

thinly-veiled field trials for productand
market development, that while they are
studying their courses, their courses are
studying them. In Canadq for example,
universities have been given royalty-freelicenses to Virtual U softrvare in return forproviding data on its use to the vendors.
Thus, all online activity including

The second set of implications stemmingfrom the commoditization of instruction
involve the transformation of the university
into a market for the commodities being
produced. Administrative propaganda
routinely alludes to an alleged student
demand for the new instructional products.
At UCI-A officials are betting that their hightech agenda will be "student driven," asstudents insist that faculty make fuller use of
the Web site technology in their courses. To
date, however, there has been no suchdemand on the part of students, no serious
study of it, and no evidence for it. Indeed,
the few times students have been given a
voice, they have rejected the initiatives hands
down, especially when they were required tocommunications between students andprofessors and among students aremonitored, automatically logged and archived
by the system for use by the vendor.
Students enrolled in courses using Virtual U
software are in fact formally designated"experimental subjects. " Because federalmonies were used to develop the softwareand underwrite the field trials, vendors werecompelled to comply with ethical guidelines
on the experimental use of human subjects.
Thus, all students once enrolled are required
to sign forms releasing ownership andcontrol of their online activities to thepay for it (the definition of effective demand,i.e", a market). At UCLA, students
recommended against the instructional
Enhancement Initiative. At the Universitv of
British Columbia" homeof the WEB-CT'

10

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showing on the big screen TV to set the
mood. Students know they can't readJapanese-language magazines in the room, or
do homework that doesn't involve a foreign
language. (One exception made in the nameof education is that anyone can do any kindof studying in here when the university
library is closed.)

DISTINCTIVE TEACHING

Daily Immersion
An open door to language practice.

Julian Bamford,
Bunkyo University

We teach students to ask[The author responds to and extends
Jonathan Britten's suggestions in On Cue,

what they want to say in
English.

December 1997 for providing students
weekend immersion opportunities. J

It's hard for beginners to say what they wantto say in English.We teach students to ask"How do you say (Japanese word or phrase)
in English?" to one of the other people in theroom when they get stuck.There's a pad ofin E4glish?" papers"How do you
as well. lf no one can answer, students fillthis in, put their na[re at the top, and drop
it in a basket. i write answers to theseWeekend immersion programs sound like agreatidea, and aresidential dormitory aneven greater one. In the meantime, here's aparallel idea I've been involved in for the last
decade at the small private university where I
am on the faculty. I open my office tostudents as a language lounge. The door isopen from 9 'til late every day, arid I mean
open. Students used to say they hesitated toknock so an open door was the only answer.

say-questions once aday so the papers can bepicked up by students next time they're in.

Now when newcomers hover ouBide, I or

someone else here can welcome them in. At
the height of summer and depths of winter, I
hang a transparent plastic sheet over the door
to keep the heat/cold in.

Students crowd in at lunch time, sitting downwith their lunch boxes or a tray from thecafeteria. There may be as many as 15
bodies, tripping over coats, bags and eachother. Often one of the part- or full-time
faculty (foreign and Japanese) squeezes in to
eat lunch and chat to students. It issometimes necessary to introduce shy
students to each other to break the ice.

English (or another foreign language) only isused in the room. When I compare this to thetorrent of Japanese in my regular English
classes, it amazes me with how little effort
the rule is kept. I shouldn't be so naive:
Asking a student last night why she spoke
English to other students in the room evenwhen no one else was around, she replied, "I

For a few students, the room
is a home away "from home.

want to practice English." Japanese may be
used by foreign students and teachers for

At other times of the dav. students drift inand out. Many help thernselves to a cup of
Y20 instant coffee (profits to chanty). On
average there will be two or three people in
the room at any one time. For a few
students, the room is a home away fromwhom it's not a first language. Chinese
students, for example, may not speak
Chinese but may speak Japanese or English.
Japanese can, however, be used by anyone
taking the role of teacher, i.e., for
explanation. Atmost times there is either amusic CD playing or an MTV videotape

home: They seem always to b here when nol
in class. They either study, or talk to each

12

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pue sqof 'qronreuorl 'sesselc lnoq" reqloneeds concentration in the mornings whentraffic in the room is light. At ottler times

whea I have thinking work to do, I put on
headphones and play a tape of white noise
which blocks out background sounds'

Security has yet to be a problem, thanksoodness. A book, magazine or videotape
iisappears once in a while, but no big stuff
so fif. When I'm not in the room, someone
else usually is, or students are droppingby
brieflv to check out or return a video' Thismeans there is usually someone around [oanswer my phone wfich is nice' There isalso usualiy some candy, cookies or fruit
broueht bv local residents or someone who
has 6en 6n a trip, which is even nicer' I
publicize the room by putting posters up allbver the campus ("Do you want to practicevour English?"), and flyers in the language
ieachersicampus mailboxes. What I do forstudents is noiiced and appreciated by otheruniversity faculty, but this doesn't translate
into any bvert support. I've been asking fora largei room fofyears to no avail so far.

The Thacking Equation
Revisited
Summing up of terms.

Paul Doyon
The terms "tracking" or"streaming" arepacked with emotional residue. And for good
ieason -- connotations associated with eitherof these two words, for people familiar with
their roots, are connected with xacism andbieotrv. After all. it was I-ewis Terman, one

oithebriginatorsof the tracking system in
America and also the pioneer of the IQ test,
who used this test (later retitled the Stanford
Binet test) to gather data to support his claimthat most minorities were inferior.

A New Set of Definitions:Whilethe

term tracking was originally based on "IQ" -which for the most part, is considered a"static," or unchanging state -- what we aretalking about here in Japan with regards toIanguage education is "proficiency," which is

It takes a lot of time to organize the room andkeep it running, but it's all in the name ofnoisatic, but "dynamii" and usuilly
improves with time. The disagreement in the
tracking equation has more to do with howdifferent people use the word tracking todefine a broad range of circumstances withregards to grouping students. It is for thisreason that I propose a new set of definitions
to describe clearly what haPPens.

education. It's not what the university
considers it's paying me for, but i think it fits
the bill in $enbral terms. After all, I'm paid
to teach a foreign language, and (likeJonathan Britten) I believe that practice mustbe part of the foreign language curriculum'

A graduate (a local homemaker who came to
mt extra-curricular classes and now lives in
the US with her husband) wrote recently tosay, "I-eaming should be ajoy in life." Tlat

1. Grouping: dividing students into groups.
2. Randomized Grouping: dividing students

into $oups randomly or without any priorstrikes me as an excellent guiding principle.
There is precious little joy to be wrungby
students or teachers, myself included, fromthe regular classes and curriculum. After
years of unsuccessful lobbying, I've
concluded that trying to reform thecurriculum isn't the way to go. Instead, addclasses, review and practice opportunities thatoffer thejoy of teaching and learning to thestudents and teachers who want it.

criteria

3. Nonrandomized Grouping: dividing
students into groups based on a similar (ordissimilar) trait or traits.
4. Tracking/Streaming: dividing andgrouping studene together based on similar
abili ty and/or achievement levels.

T4

SI

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include: overcoming shyness, motivating
oneself, eliminating-procrastination, andgetting into the "flow" of learning.
Joritz-Nakagawa mentioned "self fulfi lling
prophecies" where teacher expectations fol
certain students and those of students
themselves result in self-fulfillment. Kotoriemphasizes the need for the teachen "ffJo beable to explain ... the following things in the
begrryung before students begi-n to fbrm any
negative attitude: 1) why [proficiency
grouping] is necessar5r in a given situation;2)
when and how [proficiency grouping] isdone;3) how it benefits ttre *uaents'iir eachdifferent section; and4) whether there ischance to advance if the program runs into
consecutive semesters" (1997, p. 8).

What is important for students to succeed inqcq]riT.ng g language (before anyrhing else) isthe belrel thatthey can actually succeed inacquiring lang'pgg, and secondly, learn theskills necessar5r for them to learn more
effectively. It is therefore important for theteacier to hold positive expectations forstudents (regardless of level), and forstudents to hold positive expectations forthemselves. As Stevick writes in A Wav andlVays: "In atask-oriented group like alanguage class, the studentrs phce is at thecenter of a space which the teacher has
structured, with room left for him to erowinto. in this kind of relationship, ther6 are
two essentials for the teachen fbith that thesfudent will in fact grow into that space, andunderstanding where the student is in that$pace at any given momenr (1980" p. 3l).

should place students into proficiencv
groups, but "how" and to'iwhat degiee,, thisshould be done. Obviously, no maier how
we group students, there will be somevariation in levels of their proficiency, andintuition tells me that somd variafionis eoodHowever, when the variation is too greir-as
in a randomized group--we are more likely to
run into problems. As Adamson states:"fflhe lasting damage done ro both high andIow students in [non-proficiency groufu]
classes can be far worse. These students will
srop learning and studying. They are in grave
danger ol becoming dropouts. The lower
students go through school wondering why

they never snds$fand things thatare so stsv
for the others. The obvious-answer for man'v
is that theyare stupid and this negative self-image will have a long term effeCt on theirlives. The higher level students will go
through the class unchallenged and mav
actually begin to drop from'ihe levels
previously obtained (L9C7, pp. t0-11).
Therefore, the .tanger may not be inlerent inwhether students are placed or not placed in
proficiency groups, but rather in thi
interpretations both teachers and students
have for the reasons this happens.

The Best Partners for Students:
IAuryhqy inLanguage Hungry (an excellent
book offering students inforrration in
addressing the issue of psychodynamic
competence) states, "The best partners for[stuqents] may be other [studeirts] who are at[their] approximate level..." 11998, p. 5).

Kumon: The success that Kumon, the earlv"
educafion cram-school syslem, offers isallows students to achieve masterv at one
level before proceeding to the neir When
students enler the progrann they are given aplacement test and then given materials which
are deliberately easy in order for them toexperience immediate success, which
provides conlidence and motivation for moredemanding levels. White I am notrecommending Kumon for communicativeit

The danger rnry not be inwhether students are placed
in proficiency groups, butrather in interpretations.

Accordingly, it seems here ttrat the questionsof importance are not whetheror noi we

16

LT

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Teaching Is Not a Process
Scepticism as motivation for freedom.

Marc Scheffner'
Tezukayama UniversitY"Along with our sound list, we would have asvllable list and a word list... At the sametime we would teach the rules of grammar.."'Everything would be planned, with nothi{tgleft t6 chaice; there wbuld be plenty of drill,
review, and tests, to make sure that he had notforgotten anything.
"suppose we tried to do this; what would

happen? What would happen, quite simp_ly, isAs someone who does not believe that"teaching necessarily equals learning," I am
sceptical. Understanding the answers toquestions about teaching and learning is one
thing (probably sgveral); understanding theteacfung process is quite another (and for mypart, less interesting).

thafmost children, before they got very far,would become baffled, discouraged,
humiliated, and fearful, and would quit tryng
to do what we asked them." Sound familiar?
Teaching does not necessarily equal learning.
'I taught them but they didn't learn!" Howoften have you heard that wail, either fromyourself or others? I can recall several teachers
from my grammar-school days who must havewailed this in the staff room daily. I have also
heard it in staff rooms in Japan. And I may

it's really something to observe people trying
to come up with definitions of learning,
cnnsciousness, etc. What is learning (how do
you define it)? And how do you measure it?
two prettv fundamental questions that so far I
have not fbund satisfactory answers to. And I
am not sure that answering tlese questions
will in the end prove as useful as mighteven have been heard mumbling it myself.

Wat is learning? And how
do you mcasure it? I arn notappear.

sure that answering thesequestions will prove as useful. 1,
as mtgffi appear.

My answers here, then, will be pretty
un-scholarly, I'm afraid. I cannot come up witha variety of quotes and references for the

points I am dbout to make. Perhaps somebody
else can.

To learn, students need at least to be awake
and paying some kind of attention; if they are
asleep, or if their attention is elsewhere (whichwith adolescents is frequently the case), they
are not going to learn much. Perhaps thisrecognition is one reason for the relatively
recent shift from observing teachers in action
to observing students in action: what are they
up to while ttre teacher is "teaching"?
(Scholarly reference - "Breaking Rules" byJohn F. Fanselow,l"ongman 1987).

Perhaps I can start, though, with a long quotefrom John Holfi "'If we taught children to

speak, they'd never learn.'Suppose we
decided that we had to'teach'children to
speak? First, some committee of experts
would analyze speech and break it down into a
number of separate 'speech skills'. We would
probably say that, since speech is made up ofiounds, a child must ue talught to make ali thesounds of his language before he can be taught
to speak the language itself. Doubtless wewould list these sounds, easiest andcommonest ones first, harder and rarer ones
next Then we would begin to teach infants
these sounds...

The desire to learn is crucial in the "teacher +student= learning" equation. The teacher mustwant to leach, and the szudent must wantto
learn. Moreover, it is the student's wanting to

18

6I

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research these days (ttrough I am always on

The Achtlles' heel of much
SLA is that learning goes on

the lookout for something interesting, is thatmuch of it has to do with analyzing how

people learn language. A worthy cause, but thepeople they analyze WANT to leam thelanguage. My students are not so sure. Maybe
they do, if it's more interesting than watchinginside peoplets heads, andbecause we can never know
exactly what is going on insomeone else's head we can
not know exactly what isgoing on in students' heads
while we are teaching them.

TV, if theirboy/girlfriend is notavailable, if it
doesn't clash with their part-time job, if theweather's nice, if it's raining, if they feel likeit, if the teacher's good looking, if there isn't
any homework.....Research which loola at
the BEST or FASTEST way to leam alanguagejust does not apply here.

Researchers aften lose sightof oar need for freedom, andso cannot respect it, and so
ignore it. The researeh is thenread and implemented bysimilarly i gnorant people.

Finally, the Achilles'heel of much SI-A is thefact that learning is something that goes on
inside people's heads, and because we cannever know exactly what is going on insomeone else's head we c€ut therefore notknow exactly what is going on in students'
heads while we are teaching them. Are they"processing"? Are they "makiag sense ofblocks of languagen? Are they "determining
rulesn? Are they daydreaming? Are theyolearning"? It's impossible to know for sure.

I think what I am groping for here, is that the

Since it's impossible to know exactly what isgoing on inside people's heads, it's impossible

hidden but implied objectives of much researchof this kind are intended to allow more control
over language-learners, by which I mean (andI think this is what in practice it will comedown to) more manipulation of students. That
is what happens because the research is
conducted by people who do not fullycomprehend human freedom and humanvariation in acting out freedom. Researchers
often lose sight of our need for freedom, andso cannot respect it, and so ignore it. The
research is then read and implemented bysimilarly i gnorant pmple.

to know if, how or when anyone is learning
something.
John Holt again: "The problem with all suchresearch and researchers is that, even with
64-channel helmets, the data is so crude
compared to the activity...." (How Children

Fal.l,p2l2).
"The difference between fond and delighted
parents playing This Linle Piggy Went toMarket'with their laughing baby's toes, andtwo anxious home-based would-be clinicians
giving 'tactile stimulation'to those same toes,
so that the child will one dav be smarter thanother children and thus get ino the bestcolleges, may not on the face of it seem to bevery much. But in fact it is the difference
between nightand day." (How Children

Another point is that it seems based on a
reductionist view of human beings: the very
vocabulary of much research these days withall its computeresejargon - input, output,
processing, data, etc. - suggests a concept of
the human being as some kind of glorified
computer. If people wish to persist in thisview, fine. But I for one disagree.

I-eam,p2I).

20

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Tdtr UI
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uru uoqesrueE:o aql go u.red IIB uer{Arcoordinators of English Language progftuns
are seldom appointed; reasons for this muld
be economic, or there could be concem thatthe professional integrity of the staff would
be challenged. Ifthere are coordinators, theyoften rotate on an annual basis and they see
themselves not as innovators but as
maintainers of the system. All these factors
make it difficult for planned strategy to takeplace. As a result, the overall strategy ofEnglish language programming becomes
opporrunistic in all its glorious and not
glorious manifestations.

usplif' or trfitr are neitlpr positive or negativein themselves. It is the "tensionn or"contention" that can develop when aspects

witbin the organisation do not mesh xhat cancreate a positive or negative feeling.
Pascale's third organisational element
ucontentionu (p.67) has a stronger likelihoodof occurring within decentralisedorganisations such as English language
programs. Contention arises because the staff
feel there are no clear overall goals to theprogram nor any real organisation aJ. agency I
person available to help resolve this feeling.
Since clearaims and goals belong to the fit
area of organisational management, but
English language programs operate within asplit environment, contention or tension
arises. A split environment, on the other
hand, is successful when its strategy is"opportunisticn rather than planned. Clearly
many language professionals areuncomfortable with opportunistic stnategy
and look back wistfully to organisational andcurriculum models wliich ar6similar to theplanned straoegies such as EAP, ESP
progr:lms and the Intensive English language
programs in Western institutions.

Because of this opportunistic organisational
strategy, Kolf observes ttrat the "coren faculty
have an ambivalence about what the English
department is and what it should teach. Some
pr6fessors are qualified to lecture in
literature, some in linguistics. To some, theEnglish class is not so much a chance to use
English, as to look at aspects of foreignculture. Staff members with backgrounds in
TEFL per se are sometimes aclearminority.
In consequence, it seems sensible to theteachers to let each one do what he or she isbest at (Kolf,1996, p.37).

Tension results .fromteachers imposing
curriculum notions.

Kennedy and Edwards prefer to use the word"tension" in order to keep in mind that thatthe contention that arises is creative rather
than destructive. This tension can be a"source of innovation and change" (p. 6?.

Kolf expresses doubts felt by foreignteachers: ( 1) whether students might benefit

Planned v. Opportunistic Strategies
As stated, the prevailing reason why "split"from more continuity (clearer overall goals),and (2) whether students really get to choose

has occuned is that it is administratively more
efficient to operate language programs as
decentralised departrnents. Several facts
govern this practical management/
organisational route for Japanese universities.
First is the fact that foreign staff often can notcommunicate well enough in Japanese toparticipate in staff meetings. Second,
contracts are either very short (1 -3 years)
and / or many foreign language experts often
do not elect !o stay for longer periods, even if
they do have the opporfunity to do so. Third,

what they feel they rnight need within the
short course curriculum. Given that ilrere areno particulady useful guidelines for foreign
staff on which to base the courses, except
very general course names such as English
Expression, English Conversation, Spoken
English, English A, English B and so on,teachers and, in particular, new teachers mustbase their courses on whatever information
they can glean from ad hoc meetings withfellow slaff, and by relying on teKtbooks.

22

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level. This procedure is contentious
oedasoeicallv for a number of reasons. First'
it t*i"i students with no choices either
among the kinds of classes they might want
nor clioices with whom ttrey might like to
studv with (either fellow students or
lectrirers/prbfessors). Secondly, streaming
can have an adverse psychological affectwhich dampens both teachers' and students'

2-4 courses) preparation for class would be
reduced. Staff, then, will have more time tocultivate greater specialization and expeltise
for their courses. Students will actually havea limited number of courses to choose from,but theirchoices will less likely result in their
being submitted to repetitive subject matter orthe sdme lecturer/professo: year after year.

While EAP / ESP programs or extended
curriculums suit the needs of students and theorganizational structures of many universities
both inside Japan and abroad, they are notappropriate to many. Progranls in Japan. The
short course cumculum c:m be a reasonaole
solution to curriculum planning if students
have real choices amoxgthe short courses
offered and ifthe possibilities of

expectations and efforts.

Thirdly, many EFL university students havealreadi experienced'streaming' during theirhigh si,hodl English studies.This is especiallytrue of Japanese students. Streaming is anappropriate procedure for ESL language
piograms inthe English-speakrng world,
ivhere the sftdents might be entering English

repetitiveness are reduced. Further, thedecentralized organizational strucn[e of theselanguage programs in Japanese universities
can-pro-vide tiachers a uriique milieu in which
opportunistic strategies for language teaching
can be optimized. By creating a situation inwhich tebchers canrefine theircourses into
unique offerings and by giving students
limited but real choices among the various
classes and their respective sections fromwhich to choose most of the problems ofrepetitiveness, language skill omissions andlack of choice can be minimized.

language programs needing to learn a new
scribt or be entering at roughly the same
skilis level or requiring EAP ProgRms.
However, by the time Japanese students
arrive at university, surely, they should bemaking study choices that address what theymight feel is of interest and of use to them'

Fourthly, strearning is highly questionable in

EFL programs whic.h PyFrort to have acommunicative curricrdum. According to
Savingnon, the comerstone to communicative
curriculums is to learn how to negotiate
meanings (cited in Flarris). Classes whichhave snidents who have a broad spectrum ofReferences

abilities provide all students regardless of
their level with a perfect environment inwhich to practice learning how to negotiate

Harris. B. (1998). Communicative competence -- still
relevant after all theee years: An interview with Dr'
Sandra J. Savignon. The l"angutge Teachcr 22 (l) 7729, 31.

mearungs.

D ecentralized structure s in
J apane s e univ er sitie s canKennedy, C & Edwards, C. (1996). EllT lutanagcment.
Centre for English Language Strdies, University ofprovide a unique milieu foropportunistic str ate gie s.

Birmingham.

Koll D. (1996). The Extended Curriculum versus
Smorgasbord Instruction. Tln l"anguage Teaclur 2O(4):27.

Since most staff members have to teachbetween G8 classes a week, if staff members
teach two or three sections of the same
course, (and hence have to prepare for only

Pascale, R (199L). Managing on the Edge.

Harmondsworth: Pen guin.

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