On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

1

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Flaws, Fallacies, and Infelicities:
A Critical Look at Culture in ELT
Research
Michael Guest
Miyazaki Medical College
Introduction

1. Is the research founded upon untenablepremises?
2. Is the research circular, that is, does it ‘beg
the question’? Is the conclusion pre-ordained in the premises?
3. Does the research provide a reasonable oracceptable sample of data and an unbiased
methodology or are there variables present
that would render it unreliable? The following discusses some of the recurring
problems that I noted.

What would one think of a discussion on
metaphysics that begins with, “Since God exists...”? Or an essay that begins with the premisethat “women are intellectually inferior to men”
and, from this basis, proceeds to ‘prove’ thatmen should therefore be leaders in all important matters? What about a scientist who argues
that, “given that the universe is 80% made up ofgasses, since computers are part of the universe,
it follows that they too must be 80% made up
of gasses”? We would, in the first two cases,
sense that the speaker must not be speaking
from any research or scientific standpoint but
one of dogma. In all three cases, we’d surely
question the credibility of the claims and those
who made them. In fact, we would likely dismiss these arguments immediately because werecognize that the egregious logical mistakes inthese examples render them invalid. Yet claims
logically similar to these can readily be found in
ELT culture research. They may not be as egregious as the invented examples above but they
are common nonetheless. As a reader of manysuch studies, I had long questioned many of thepremises underscoring such research, not to mention the validity of the steps that take researchers
from these premises to their conclusions. In order
to elucidate these criticisms, I have collected anumber of studies on the effect or relationshipbetween culture, language, pedagogy and learning habits printed over the past 5 years in Japanbased ELT journals, as well as studies focusing
upon Japan and East Asia printed in worldwide
ELT journals. I have focused upon East Asia, andmost specifically Japan, because it is with thesecultures that I am most familiar, and thus able to
make more objective comments. In approachingeach study I have asked three questions.

Cultural Determinism
Unexamined notions of causality
The clearest example of how the outcome of
the research can often be rigged is the pervasive
application of cultural determinism as an unexamined premise. Such assumptions regarding
the nature of cultural-individual causality canreadily be found in Hall (1976; 1994) (“Culture
designates what we pay attention to and what we
ignore” 1994, p.60), as well as in his frequent
use of terms like ‘programming’ and ‘innate contexting’ in describing an individual’s ‘cultural
imprinting’. Similar presumptions are echoed by
Kaplan (1966), (“Each language and each culture
has a paragraph order unique to itself, and thatpart of the learning of a particular language is themastery of its logical system” p.14) and Barnlund(1979; 1994), (“Culture norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action...”1979, p.35), and further backed up by cultural
anthropologists like Rosaldo (1989), (“Evenwhen they appear most subjective, thought andfeeling are always culturally shaped” p.103), so
it is no surprise that determinism is readily andunquestioningly accepted by much subsequent
research.
2

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

The reason is not surprising. The above samples come from what we may call ‘seminal ‘research in culture studies, largely from the fieldof Cultural Anthropology. References to theseworks litter ELT studies on culture where they
act as a type of ‘received wisdom’ for much
subsequent research. For example, Shibata(1998) argues that, “...so many things about
us are culturally determined, our culture thus
becomes our mode of communication. Each of
us is a product of a particular culture. Growing up with a particular culture programs us tothink a certain way” (p.106). Oi (1999) states
that, “Rhetorical logic.... is shaped by culture”(p.85). Harklau (1999) begins by announcing
that, “Language is inextricably bound up with
culture” (p.109). Ryan (1996) starts with, “Thatlanguage and culture are inseparable is a truism
that needs little documentation here” (p.114), as
well as arguing that, “...using a language... means
entering into its culture”. (p.114). Such statements, when used as starting points for inquiry,
are bound to influence, if not restrict, the resultsof any cultural-based research. But the de facto
acceptance of this tenet of cultural anthropology
has its problems. It brings into question as tohow scientific and objective the original studies
actually were. In fact, many of these foundational
studies were largely subjective, anecdotal andbased upon personal observation (Connor 1996;
Guest 2002b; Kubota 1999). Atkinson (1999) is
quite right when he takes many such authors totask for making assumptions about culture andindividuals without holding any critical discussion as to what their notion of culture entails.
Moreover, for anyone with a background in
philosophy, the cavalier acceptance of cultural
determinism should come as a shock. The questions of free will and determinism, the nature ofcausality, the relationship between the individual
and society are classic dilemmas that cannot
and should not be accepted in such an uncriticalmanner. Yet strict determinism, based upon alinear causality from a culture to individuals, istreated as a simple and obvious given in so much
ELT literature. Why? Pinker (1994) equates thecommon man’s acceptance of the ‘truth’ of the
Sapir-Whorf (1956) hypothesis (that cognitive
categories are determined by linguistic ones
which in turn are determined by culture) withother widely-accepted, but unexamined, myths,

such as the allegedly myriad Eskimo words for‘snow’. It is, for Pinker, a case of people believing it simply because they heard it from somebody else and because it appears to hold someintellectual gravity, hardly a basis upon which
one can claim objectivity. Once one accepts thenotion that there is a wholly deterministic relationship between culture and language/thought/
cognition it is quite simple to draw almost any
causal connection that the author wishes to pursue. This is particularly true when the nature ofthis determinism is often simply assumed a priori
since the authors rarely, if ever, discuss the natureof causality.
Of course one could never plausibly deny that
there is some correlation between culture andgroups or individuals but a simple correlation
does not immediately warrant a model of determinism. And if culture and cognition are connected it does not necessarily follow that cultureis the singular, inexorable determinant of cognition. When terms like ‘programmed’, which imply a view of people as mindless passive drones,
are used without hesitation or discussion, thismonolithic, deterministic model, assumed on thebasis of mere correlations, not surprisingly aidsin bringing the researcher to the conclusion heor she hopes to find, or has already pre-scripted.
For example, Shaules & Inoue (2001) base theiradvocacy of ethno-relativism largely on the basis
that, “We feel that it is impossible to go beyond
one’s culture” (p.6), and, “We assume that weare all unavoidably ethnocentric”( p.6). Hazel &Ayres (1998) begin from the premise, “Becauseof cultural differences it is hypothesized that
Americans would employ self-select turn-taking procedures proportionately more often thanJapanese...” (p.91). Is it any surprise then that
their conclusion begins, “...as anticipated, thisstudy found...”(p.96). Nonaka’s (1998) inquiry
starts from a position arguing that discourse patterns of Japanese and English subjects can be expected to highlight their cultural values. Having ahypothesis or expectations about the outcome ofresearch is perfectly natural, but operating froman uncritical acceptance of cultural determinism
as an established fact, or otherwise starting froma strict notion of causality between cultures andindividuals surely loads the rhetorical dice. The
logic in such cases needs a lot of fine-tuning.
3

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Some further implications of accepting a hard determinism‘others’. The tendency to reduce and essentialize
also results in ‘constructing’ other cultures asmonolithic, singular entities with little variationor nuance.
How does this manifest itself in ELT culture
studies? Well, for example, if we are to accept
on some level that Japanese learners in general display avoidance characteristics (to use
Hofstede’s 1980 model) it does not follow that
this particular Japanese person or group shouldnecessarily display this characteristic. Yet, often
researchers do treat individuals or small groups
as necessarily manifesting characteristics attributed to the whole. This is evidenced in Ryan’s(1996) claim that, “...the micro-culture of themonocultural classroom is imbued with the culture that surrounds it” (p.114). A similar fallacy
lays behind Holliday’s (1994) notion that alllearning and teaching contexts should be seen
primarily as cultural constructs. Although somecorrelation surely exists, the equation cannot be
this simple.
The fallacy inverse to the existential is thecomposition fallacy, which holds that one cannot
make generalized conclusions from particularinstances. To assume that a micro-sample necessarily reflects truths found at a macro levelis logically untenable. Hazel & Ayres (1998)
explicitly make this assumption when they describe the basis of their inquiry as, “...believingthat a microscopic examination of one aspect ofverbal communication should further serve todemonstrate the significance of cultural differences...”, (p.92). Nonaka (1998) does likewisein her premise that general cultural values of native English and Japanese speakers can and will
be noted in particular discourse samples. In fact
most studies with very small samples regularly
run this risk, but while vague suggestions may
legitimately be made from such data any pretense to a logical connection between the micro
data and generalized conclusions is untenable.
The composition fallacy is the fallacy whichargues, for example, that any utterance froman individual Japanese or a Westerner will beessentially Japanese or Western and display ‘essences’ of that culture as a whole. According tothis schema, if a Chinese person happens to havean idea or opinion it is no longer, strictly speaking, just an idea or opinion. It is now a Chinese
person’s idea or opinion since it is assumed that

Cultural determinism is a position that is,
in many cases, self-defeating. After all, if like
Shaules & Inoue (2001) we believe that, “weare all unavoidably ethnocentric”(p.6), surelythat statement includes the authors too. Since
the writer who believes in ethnorelativism ordeterminism is subject to the same criteria, onemust then say that such writers’ perspectives arethemselves merely products of the writers’ culture, unconsciously portraying their own culturalproclivities as objective truths. The only way
around this is to decide that you, the writer, aresomehow exempt from this analysis of humannature, a stance which surely reeks not only ofintellectual dishonesty and inconsistency but of
elitism (see Sargent’s, 2000, critique of Shaules/
Inoue, 2000). One can qualify the claim to exempt oneself (note Barnlund’s, 1994, claim that,“few ever recognize the assumptions on which
their life and sanity rest”, p.35, or Kamada’s,
1997, “It is natural for people to evaluate theirworld from their personal perspective”, p.155),
but this runs some of the same critical risks with
its implicit assumptions of ‘everyone else but notme’ and its ‘I’m aware of this but everyone else
is not’ pretense.

Two More Fallacies: Composition
and Existential
This often-unquestioned acceptance of a highly disputable hypothesis (determinism) tends tolead to two more ubiquitous fallacies. The firstis the existential fallacy. The existential fallacy
holds that if something may said to be true ina general sense one cannot logically apply thatgeneral truth to any particular part. In short, thatwhich is true of the whole is not necessarily trueof the parts. It is within this fallacy that essentializing finds a home. Essentialism is one of themain charges leveled at the contrastive school ofcultural anthropology and its adherents in ELTby post-modern critics such as Kubota (1999),
Susser (1998), (Spack, 1997), and Pennycook(1998). By reducing complex, dynamic cultures
to a few static essences, particularly binary opposites that serve to contrast them, and us we lay
the groundwork for a kind of ‘orientalizing’ inwhich we reduce the foreign cultures to exotic
4

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

his/her general Chinese-ness must somehow be
indelibly contained in the idea. Not surprisingly,
some alleged element of Chinese culture likely
will be discovered in the idea only because the researcher has been methodologically pre-disposed
to find or invent, it. This is the logic, for example,
that allows the media to present a viewpoint as
an “Asian View” or an “Islamic view” merely
because the presenter happens to be Asian or a
Muslim. Whether or not his or her perspective
typifies or is in any way representative of Asia
or Islam is made irrelevant.
One article that serves as a prime example ofmany of the aforementioned logical shortcomings
is Stapleton’s (1997). In this article he proposesa curriculum for culture study that is thoroughly
derived from a contrastive analysis approach.
He selects fourteen aspects of daily life, one
for each week of the course, which he believes
serve as microcosms of or pointers to deeper
cultural values, the composition fallacy at work.
For example, he argues reductively that in golf,
the Japanese are concerned about equipment
and clothing but Americans are more concerned
about scoring and winning. This, to Stapleton,
reveals the essences of the two cultures, namelythat the Japanese like to fit into a group anddisplay perseverance while Americans reveal
their individualist desire to compete and win.
In every case, Japan and the U.S. are treatedas singular, monolithic cultural constructs withcompletely polarized values. In every case, theso-called deeper cultural truth is nothing but apre-scripted stereotype graphed post-hoc on to
uncritically accepted premises about ‘us andthem’. One may well wonder how, if learning
about each other through such binary reductions,Japanese and Americans could ever interact
meaningfully.

almost interchangeably which allows for a variety of untenable conclusions. Nonaka says that,“the absence of aizuchi in English as a sign ofconsideration for others ... suggests the inevitably
confrontational nature of Western discourse” (p.
161). But how does English conversation equal
Western discourse? (Let alone the question as
to how a perceived lack of aizuchi equals a lackof ‘consideration for others’) In Hinkel (1999),
similar conclusions are reached regarding directness in English discourse, but here the qualities
are predicated to ‘Anglo-American’ rhetoric. So,
just who are we talking about here? Moreover,these ethnic and geographical entities are often
treated as if they were single constructs lacking
any consideration for variation or sub-cultural
factors. The habit of morphing racial and nationalgroups uncritically is crucial in creating untenable conclusions since much of the supportive
data cited (i.e., Gudykunst & Kim 1992; Hofstede 1980) draws fairly strong distinctions not
only between Western countries but, for example,
even between regions of the United States.
The question as to which genre of discourse isbeing dealt with is also often left unclear. Connor(1996) has criticized Kaplan (1966) in particularon this account and complains of, “small sample
size, a mix of genres and generalizing from L2
data to L1 behaviour” (p.162) in the literature.
As a particular example, Oi & Kamimura’s(1997) study claims to be analyzing ‘organizational writing’ in Japan, a very general term, but
surely the form of a scientific report will differ
from that of, say, a business letter. When Rose
(1996) considered genre patterns in his study
he concluded that, “no single characterizationis adequate to describe patterns of language
used by any one group in every context” (p.78)
and concluded that genre is more important thanculture in determining discursive features suchas directness. Yet this plea seems to go unheard.
Other potentially mitigating variables also seemto be ignored or unduly dismissed, particularly
the roles and effects of sub-cultures. Why is thecultural matrix in these studies inevitably nation or race (see Mabuchi, 1995, Guest, 2002a)?
Surely other factors affect who we are and how
we behave (note how Edge, 1996, for example,
skillfully begins his analysis from the matrix ofeducational sub-cultures)! For example, wouldn’t
a group of well-educated fifty-year old Japanese

Methodological Obfuscations andInfelicities
Category confusion; genre and sub-culture
Category errors are also rife in the literature:cases in which terms seem to shift at will andthus obfuscate the inquiry. In both Oi (1999) andNonaka (1998), ‘America’ morphs inexplicably
into ‘English’ which later itself morphs into ‘The
West’. These three distinct categories are used5

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1nuns be expected to exhibit at least some featuresof the sub-cultures of being women, educated,
middle-aged and Christian rather than have everything they are be subsumed under the monolithic construct ‘Japanese’? Although people
are an amalgam of various competing cultures,
sub-cultures and their respective discourses (seeYoshida, 1996 ; Gee, 1990) so much ELT literature seems to assume that we are fundamentally
reducible to national or ethnic categories, which
in a world of rapid change, globalization and‘hybrid cultures’ (see Clifford, 1992), seems all
the more negligent.

as the interpretive principle, replacing culture
as the main determinant? If economics is theprime cause then why otherwise focus solely on
national/ethnic culture as the categorical determinant? In fact, the whole question as to whether
so-called ‘Western values’ are largely made upof ‘middle-class values’, the result not of an
ethnic, racial or national culture per se but oneof having a moneyed, educated middle-class, iswidely discussed in sociology circles but seems
to enter only tangentially into ELT literature,
which tends to stick to more ‘stable’ nationaland racial categories. On this point, Hofstede’s
approach seems infelicitous.
One can’t help but note another point ofinconsistency in Hofstede’s treatment. How
is it that one can characterize a culture as ‘individualist’ and then proceed to list the norms
or schemas of that culture that its members
supposedly abide by. After all, by definition an
individualist culture’s mandates and norms restwith the individual and cannot be easily or readily reduced to general overriding cultural traits.
Ochi (2001) takes this type of rationalization of‘unwelcome’ results one step further. When her
research showed that Japanese academics were infact generally using an allegedly ‘English-style’approach to academic writing she assumed notthat the Japanese and English writing styles must
therefore be fundamentally similar but instead
argued that Japanese academics must have been
unconsciously influenced by the ‘English’ style.
Likewise, Oi & Kamimura (1997) explain theappearance of English-type constructions intheir Japanese subjects’ written data as a resultof the teaching of English rhetorical styles inJapanese schools. In short, it seems that what
Japanese writers write will not be considered to
be Japanese unless it corresponds to some preordained belief as to what Japanese writing is
supposed to be like.
Even though application of Occam’s razor
to the data should lead to the conclusion thatwritten Japanese and English are rhetoricallysimilar, it seems that some researchers are so
intent on proving differences that similarities are
explained away even when the research results
explicitly indicate them. Yet similar examples
abound. Shibata’s (1998) data shows that Japanese students scored higher than expected on
individualist categories, but this is explained

Occam’s razor and the rationalization of ‘problematic’ data
Perhaps most surprising in my analysis was
the number of occasions in which results that
did not cohere with the researcher’s pre-scriptedconclusions were either ignored or otherwise rationalized away. Cogan (1995) seems aware of
the dangers of reducing cultural complexities touser-friendly dichotomies but nonetheless announces that, “by necessity, a number of grossgeneralizations which ignore significant differences between, ...various Japanese and Western
sub-cultures, will be made” p.104). As research,
this methodological admission is rather surprising. It is as if he is saying that certain variables
will be ignored in order to limit the scope ofthe study, which will surely help to produce the‘desired’ result. Hofstede (1986) does somethingsimilar when moving the Japanese away froma collectivist characterization into a more individualistic category (although many who cite
Hofstede still seem to ‘prefer’ his earlier conclusions). Hofstede explains that this change canbe explained as a product of increased wealth.
In other words, it is economic considerations
that are determining the culture, not something
indigenous to the ethnic group. Unfortunately,
once Hofstede brings in this variable many of his
conclusions, as well as the conclusions of those
who cite him start to crumble. It seems that Hofstede has found data that contradicts his earlier
depiction of Japanese culture as collectivist but
he does not want to say that the earlier depiction
was incorrect. Rather he wants to say that new
factors have changed the Japanese character. But
then why not apply such an economic criteria
6

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

away as a ‘young person’s’ thing. The pre-set
fixed model of Japanese collectivism is neverchallenged or altered by the data. Hazel & Ayres (1998) admit that the results of their cultural
turn-taking habits study were limited and unclear
when subjects were in mixed groups, as opposed
to uniform culturally separate groups, but thisin no way prevents them from concluding theirpre-conceived notion that, “because of culturaldifferences, we hypothesize that Americans will
employ more self-select turn-taking procedures”,(p.91). Flowerdew (1998) cites studies that seemto contradict her findings regarding alleged Asian
preferences for group work over individual workand admits that the research is inconclusive, butnonetheless concludes that group work is preferable in Asia because of the Confucian culture.
This propensity to interpret according to preconceived expectations about cultural behaviour
is similar to what Fujita & Sano (1988) noted in apaper in which American and Japanese teachers
watched videotapes of each other’s day care centers. American teachers noted that the Japanese
day care centers seemed noisy and chaotic. This
was at odds with the stereotype of paternalistic,
authoritarian Japan. As a result, their interpretation of the chaos reverted to pre-conceived stereotypes as evidenced in such interpretations as,“(Japanese) society itself is so structured, thattraditional values (alone) can control the children” (p.90). In short, obvious hard facts wererationalized away by interpretations that reverted
to stereotypes and pre-conceptions.
Other methodological problems abound.
Hazel & Ayres (1998) analyze their Japanese
subjects’ discourse patterns when their subjects
are speaking English, their non-native language,as if this would allow for an accurate displayof Japanese discourse habits! In analyzing thediscursive patterns of American versus Japanese
subjects, Nonaka (1998) gives her American subjects the controversial topic of ‘homosexuality
in the military’ to discuss while her Japanese
subjects engage in casual chat. Is it any surprisethen that she concludes that the Americans display a ‘high-confrontation’ style, which reflects“the importance of the individual in the West”(p.143), while her Japanese subjects are characterized as ‘non-confrontational’?
Infelicitous comparisons that serve to exaggerate cultural differences are also legion. In

Oi’s (1999) and Kimball’s (1996) analyses ofJapanese students’ writing styles is it really fairto compare a rhetorical style employed by skillededucated writers of English academic articles tothose of college students as they did? Mightn’t
it be that college students are immature writersin any language or culture? Isn’t it true that evenin English-speaking societies students write inmuddled and inconsistent ways? Why interpret
this as a ‘cultural difference’ when the simpler
conclusion (Occam’s razor at work again) is thatthe writers sampled were simply undeveloped,
immature writers?
As an example of a proper usage of Occam’s
razor, readers would do well to note how Cribb(2001) characterizes breakdowns in Koreanlearners’ English discourses with English NS’s
not as a result of differing cultural rhetoricalnorms, but rather by much simpler and obvious
explanations such as problems with lexical specificity, coherence and improper sequencing. The
default choice of explanation - culture - found inso much of this literature simply does not reflect
a detached objectivity on the part of the author.
More often than not, the tendency to resort tocultural explanations is little more than a thinlyveiled research prejudice.

Conclusions
In this paper we have identified numerous
common fallacies and methodological inconsistencies in the literature pertaining to therelationship between Japanese or Asian culture
and language learning. Among these we havenoted:
1. a habit of uncritically accepting the highly
disputable notion of strict determinism andfailing to adequately examine the nature ofcausality it implies.
2. a propensity to reduce complex cultures toa few essential cultural pegs for the sake ofeasy interpretation.
3. a tendency to ‘rig’ the outcome of the inquiry
by begging the question. That is, by limitingor accepting a priori certain premises, theresults have been gerrymandered to produce
the expected or desired outcome.
4. regular application of both the existential
and composition fallacies, which leads tothe propagation of stereotypes and the exag7

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

geration of alleged differences
5. methodological concerns that are likewisesure to prejudice the outcome. For example,
the shifting of categories between The West,
English and America (equivocation) and a
failure to consider other possible causal factors, such as genre and sub-cultures.
6. an unwillingness to use Occam’s razor in
determining more realistic conclusions. Allof this is not to argue, of course, that cultural differences do not exist. Moreover, I
certainly cannot deny that many researches
have contributed greatly to our understanding as to how to apply cultural considerations to particular pedagogical or classroom
issues. But if researchers wish to maintaincredibility in publishing their findings, if
they are operating under the rubric of research objectivity, it behooves them to pay
greater attention to the logical foundationsof their argument. Researchers should notassume, as premises, simple truths aboutcomplex philosophical matters so readily.
Researchers should avoid the temptation
to reduce complex realities to workable,
but distorting, patterns such as binary opposites. Researchers should not try to force
pre-ordained beliefs onto data that clearly
does not support the hypothesis. I hope that
this critical survey may caution some future
researchers so that they will be less likely tofall into the same traps, and that they may
then be more able to present a balanced, accurate picture of both culture and its relation
to language teaching and learning.

Cogan, D. (1996). Classroom cultures: East meets
West. In G. van Troyer, S. Cornwell & H.
Morikawa (Eds.), On JALT 95: Curriculum
and Evaluation (pp. 104-108). Tokyo: Japan
Association For Language Teaching.
Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive rhetoric: Crosscultural aspects of second-language writing.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Cribb, M. (2001) An analysis of discourse miscues
in the oral production of non-native speakers ofEnglish. JALT Journal, 23/1, 111-129.
Edge, J. (1996). Cross-cultural paradoxes in a
profession of values. TESOL Quarterly, 30, 9-30.
Flowerdew, L. (1998). A cultural perspective ongroup work. ELT Journal, 52/4, 323-328.
Fujita, M. & Sano, T. (1988). Children in Americanand Japanese day-care centers: Ethnography
and reflective cross-cultural interviewing. In. H.
T. Trueba & C. Delgado-Gaitain (Eds.), Schooland society: Learning content through culture.
Pp. 73-97. New York: Praeger.
Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies;
Ideology in discourse. London: Flamer Press.
Gudykunst, W. B., & Kim, Y. Y. (1992).
Communicating with strangers: An approach
to intercultural communication (2nd ed.). New
York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Guest, M. (2002a). A critical checkbook for culture
teaching and learning. ELT Journal, 56/2, 154161.
Guest, M. (2002b). Culture research: A hotbed ofmyths, folk wisdom, and stereotypes? In M.
Swanson (Ed.), On JALT 2002: A language
odyssey. Tokyo: JALT.
Hall, E.T. (1976). Beyond culture. New York:
Doubleday.
Hall, E. T. (1994). Context and meaning. In L.
Samovar & R. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural
Communication: A reader. (pp. 60-70).
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Harklau, L. (1999). Representing culture in the
ESL writing classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.),
Culture in second language teaching andlearning. (Pp. 109-130). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hazel, M.T. & Ayres, J. (1998). Conversational
turn-taking behaviours of Japanese andAmericans in small groups. JALT Journal, 20/1,
91-99.
Hinkel, E. (1999). Objectivity and credibilityin L1 and L2 academic writing. In E. Hinkel(Ed.), Culture in second language teaching andlearning (pp. 90-108). Cambridge: Cambridge
U. Press.

References

Atkinson, D. (1999). TESOL and culture. TESOL
Quarterly, 33 (4) 625-654.
Barnlund, D. (1975). Public and private self inJapan and the United States; Communicationstyles of two cultures. Tokyo: Simul Press.
Barnlund, D. (1994). Communication in a global
village. In L. Samovar & R. E. Porter (Eds.),
Intercultural communication: A reader, (pp. 2635). Belmont, Ca: Wadsworth.
Clifford, J. (1992). Traveling cultures. In C.
Grossberg, C. Nelson & P. Triechler (Eds.),
Writing culture: The poetics and politics
of ethnography, (pp. 96-116). New York:
Routledge.
8

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences:
International differences in work-related values.
Beverly Hills, Ca: Sage
Hofstede, G. (1986). Cultural differences inteaching and learning. International Journal ofIntercultural Relations, 10, 301-320.
Holliday, A. (1994). Appropriate methodology andsocial context. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press.
Kamada, L. (1997). Comparing cultures
through critical thinking: Development andinterpretations of meaningful observations. In
S. Cornwell, P. Rule, & T. Sugino (Eds.), On
JALT 96: Crossing Borders. (pp. 154-157).
Tokyo: JALT.
Kaplan, R. (1966). Cultural thought patterns inintercultural education. Language Learning, 16,
1-20.
Kimball, J. (1996). Writing on academic topics:
Externalizing rhetorical processes in anintercultural setting. JALT Journal, 18/1, 55-66.
Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed bydiscourses: Implications for applied linguistics
research and ELT. TESOL Quarterly, 33/1, 935.
Mabuchi, H. (1995). The problem of Japanology.
In K. Kitao (Ed.), Culture and Communication,(pp. 33-47). Kyoto: Yamaguchi Shoten.
Nonaka, K. (1996). Cross-cultural differences
in involvement strategies: A case study ofEnglish and Japanese spoken discourse. JACET
Bulletin, 27, 143-168.
Ochi, K. (2001). The Organization of introductionsin Japanese research articles in the naturalsciences, social sciences and humanities.
JACET Bulletin, 34, 73-92.
Oi, K. (1999). Comparison of argumentative styles:
Japanese college students vs. American college
students: An analysis using the Toulmin Model.
JACET Bulletin, 30, 85-102.
Oi, K. & Kamimura, T. (1997). A pedagogicalapplication of research in contrastive rhetoric.
JACET Bulletin, 28, 65-82.

Pennycook, A. (1998). English and the discoursesof colonialism. New York: Longman.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New
York: Wm. Morrow and Co.
Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture & truth: The remakingof social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press.
Rose, K. (1996). American English, Japaneseand directness: More than stereotypes. JALT
Journal, 18/1, 67-80.
Ryan, S. (1996). Student behaviour: Whose norms?
In G. van Troyer, S. Cornwell, & H. Morikawa(Eds.), On JALT 95: Curriculum & evaluation.
(pp. 112-115). Tokyo: JALT.
Sargent, T. (2000). Relativism vs. universalism: A
hoax?. The Language Teacher, 24 (11), 5-6.
Shaules, J. & Inoue, A. (2000). Relativism anduniversalism. The Language Teacher, 24 (5),1317.
Shibata, A. M. (1998). Intercultural communication
concepts and implications for teachers. JALT
Journal, 20/2, 104-118.
Spack, R. (1997). The rhetorical construction ofmultilingual students. TESOL Quarterly, 31,
765-774.
Stapleton, P. (1997). A Japan-America crosscultural syllabus: Focusing upon some essential
elements of culture. The Language Teacher,
21/10, 77-80.
Susser, B. (1998). EFL’s othering of Japan:
Orientalism in English language teaching. JALT
Journal, 20, 49-82.
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought andreality. In J. B. Carroll (Ed.) Selected writingsof Benjamin Lee Whorf. New York: Wylie.
Yoshida, K. (1996). Intercultural communication asinterpersonal communication. In G. van Troyer,
S. Cornwell, & H. Morikawa (Eds.), On JALT
95: Curriculum & evaluation. (pp. 112-115).
Tokyo: JALT.

9On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

What is a Japanese class really like?
Using classroom research to reveal
and negotiate Japanese students’
expectations of classroom culture.
Tom Whalley
Douglas College, British Columbia
Introduction

was to find in the course of the research that thequestion I was really asking, and the only one I
could answer with certainty, was not ‘What is aJapanese classroom like?’ but rather, ‘What is
this group of Japanese learners like?’“I want this class to be more like our classes
in Japan. Answer Yes or No”. This simple question stimulated classroom research into the rolethat expectations of classroom culture played indetermining the satisfaction levels of a groupof Japanese ESL students in Canada. Placed at
the end of a mid-course evaluation, this question drew an affirmative response from 17 of 32
Japanese students enrolled in an intensive ESL
program in summer 2001. This affirmative response was not reassuring. The implied negativeevaluation of the course, in contrast to the very
positive response to all other questions on theevaluation, was disappointing. What does this
response mean, I wondered. What steps can I
take to deal with the dissatisfaction implied in
the answer to this last question, I asked. Having
taught in Japan in the early 1970’s and having
had frequent contact with Japanese universities
in the nearly three decades since, I had someidea of what classes were like, but I wanted toknow how my students had experienced a Japanese classroom. A classroom research project
emerged from this desire. Designed to clarify ourunderstanding of their experience of Japaneseclassroom culture, as well as my expectations ofclassroom culture, the project made the students
and I collaborators, each disclosing our expectations. As partners in this research we were building a mutual understanding to help us negotiate
our classroom culture to make it a more comfortable place to learn. This process of revealing our
expectations held surprises for all. This paper
reports on the results of our classroom researchand these surprises. One of the surprises for me

The students
The students involved in the research camefrom St. Andrew’s University in Osaka to study
at Douglas College, a sister institution, locatedin suburban Vancouver, British Columbia. Divided into two classes of roughly similar ability,
the 8 young men and 24 young women weresecond and third year students. Almost all were
non-English majors. The program included 16
hours/week of instruction in ESL and a further
8 hours of socio-cultural events in English. Also
for some time each week they were teamed withlocal students studying Japanese. Structured activities provided opportunities for the Canadianand Japanese students to communicate witheach other in their respective target languages,
using Japanese and English in turn. The five
week long, mid-July to mid-August program
also included a home-stay with local families.
St Andrew’s University students have been attending such programs at Douglas College foralmost 20 years.

Designing a classroom-based
research project
The students and I, as well as my colleague
teaching the second class and her students, weresoon involved as collaborators in the research
project. Our efforts provide a good example of10

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1classroom research (Cross & Steadman, 1996),
an activity defined simply as the “ongoing andcumulative intellectual inquiry by classroom
teachers into the nature of teaching and learning in their own classrooms” (p. 2). Cross andSteadman sum up the characteristics of classroom research describing it as:questions such as, what is a “good” Japaneseclassroom like? These questions engaged students in an analysis of the values and norms ofa Japanese post-secondary classroom. A secondsource of data came from letters which they wereasked to write to Canadian students leaving tostudy in Japan advising them what to expect aJapanese class to be like. A survey based on aconceptual framework to describe classroom
culture (Stefani, 1999) provided a final sourceof data. From these three sources of data a richportrait of students’ experience of a Japaneseclassroom emerged. For brevity’s sake, only thedata from the survey is treated in this paper.

1. learner-centered since it is focused primarily on teachers and students observing theirexperience in order to improve learning,
2. teacher-directed since it springs from a conviction that we are able to conduct usefuland valid research on classroom learning,
3. collaborative since it requires the active participation of both teachers and students,
4. context-specific since it is designed andconducted to illuminate specific questionsin an identified classroom,
5. scholarly since it builds on a knowledge
base about teaching and learning,
6. practical and relevant since it investigatesquestions that are practical and present in
the classroom, and which when pursued
deepen teachers’ and students’ understanding of learning in a particular classroom andmay lead to ways to improve learning.

Defining classroom culture
The question, “what is a Japanese classroom
like?” is deceptively simple. Below its surface
it is an enquiry about students’ expectations forcommunication and relational styles, the norms
and values of the classroom and other aspectsof what can be called classroom culture. So
in reality the question about what a Japaneseclassroom is really like becomes more a question of what these particular Japanese students
are really like.
As it turned out, this was the only question I
could answer with assurance, and it was also aquestion that steered away from the stereotypicto the nuanced and personal. With the idea ofconducting a survey in mind and needing todevelop more focused questions, I turned to theprofessional literature. The concept of classroom
culture is not new. There is body of conceptual
literature, and empirical studies have been done.
For my purposes I needed a narrow focus thatstudents could relate to easily in their second
language and in the time we had in class. The
work of American scholar Lisa Stefani (1999)
proved very useful to me.
Stepfani’s (1999) work on culture’s influenceon classroom communication is a broad treatment of classroom culture. Although she also
treats learning and motivational styles as aspects
of classroom culture, I was most interested in her
treatment of the influence of culture on communication and relational styles (See Figure 1). She
includes among these styles direct versus indirect
styles of communication, a concept that appears
frequently in discussions of intercultural commu-

It is important to understand that classroom research is not a matter of using the classroom as a
research site for questions conceived outside that
context. Classroom research is quite the opposite;
it is initiated by a specific “problematic” in a specific classroom. In my case the research question
arose from the observation that my students weredissatisfied in some way that had to do with theculture of the classroom. My desire to understandthe source of this feeling in these students andimprove their learning was the impetus for thisresearch project. My motivation was not add tothe research literature on classroom culture byusing my students as research subjects.

Gathering data
Gathering data to reveal expectations of classroom culture and conflicts that might arise fromdifferences in my and the students’ expectations,relied on three activities. The first of the three
activities was a classroom discussion, guided by11

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

nication, for example. She identifies eight suchpairs of communication and relational styles.
Each pair is dichotomous and reasonably presupposes that culture influences the preference
toward one or the other of the pair. Her work on
this specific aspect of classroom culture provided
the focused framework I needed for a survey.

rooms that are highly active and animated.
The latter is characterized by calmness andlimited movement around the classroom.
6. Preference for direct vs. indirect style.
The former is characterized by straightforwardness, bluntness, frankness and openness. The latter is characterized by carefulattention to the impact of what is said ongroup harmony, the avoidance of dissent anda process of alluding to the issue instead ofcoming at it head-on.
7. Preference for topic-centered vs. topicassociating communication. The former ischaracterized by a focus on a single topic orclosely related topics, which are ordered in a
linear fashion, and lead through argument toresolution. The latter is characterized by associating with the topic through linking it tostories of people or themes so that the links
are implicit and not necessarily stated.
8. Preference for aural/verbal learning vs.
visual learning. The former is characterized by backgrounds and skills that value
oral traditions, rote memory and listening tounderstand words and concepts. The latter ischaracterized by the ability to use imagery
to understand words and concepts.

Figure 1: Lisa Stefani’s categories for understanding classroom culture
1. Preference for formal vs. Informal communication. The former is characterized
by de-emphasizing status, commitment toequality of speakers, and the use of names,
not titles. In classrooms teachers and students are on a first name basis. The latter ischaracterized by structure, that is, speakers
reflect traditional roles. Teacher/student
relationships are extremely formal andrespectful and involve the use of titles/lastnames.
2. Preference for dependent vs. independent learning. The former is characterizedby completing assignments alone, generally not with the aid of teachers and othernon-peers. The latter is characterized by areluctance to take initiative unless a teacher
has approved or made instructions very,
very explicit.
3. Preference for reflective vs. impulsive
learning. The former is characterized byan aversion to making quick judgement andguesses. Students take time to think throughissues and examine all sides before answering. The latter is characterized by quick
guesses and fast responses. Students are
adept at thinking on their feet.
4. Preference for participatory learning vs.
passive learning. The former is characterized by active participation in learning by
asking questions and discussing matters.
Students are likely to be both physically andmentally active. The latter is characterized
by students learning by listening, watching
and imitating. Critical thinking and judgmental questioning may be inappropriate.
5. Preference for energetic vs. calm learning. The former is characterized by class-

The survey
Describing the classroom activities used toprepare students for the survey (See Figure 4)
is beyond the scope of this paper, but considerable time was spent working with the framework
before the survey (See Figure 3) was administered. To further ensure that there was a consistent understanding of the concepts involved,
important terms were glossed in Japanese. The
instructions for the survey itself, as well as the
key concepts, were also in Japanese. To keep thesurvey manageable, I used only five of Stefani’s
conceptual categories.
Before they began to fill-in the survey, thestudents were asked to keep a post-secondaryclassroom context in mind. The survey itself
asked them to rate preferences for the five communication and relational styles on a scale of one
to five. The numbers represent a preference forone end of the continuum or another. Students
were asked to rate preferences to indicate:12

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

1. What they perceived the general preferences
for communication and relational styles inJapanese classrooms to be.
2. What they thought their own preferences forcommunication and relational styles to be.
3. What they perceived the general preferences
for communication and relational styles in
Canadian classrooms to be.

The survey results
The students collaborated in gathering data
through the three classroom activities describedearlier, but they were not involved in the analysis of the data. In many instances of classroom
research students are involved at this stage.
Here too the students could have been involved
in some data analysis, but the brevity of the program as well as competing demands on our time,
led me to undertake the analysis myself and thenshare the results later for comment.
Contrary to what I expected, the results (SeeFigure 5) show that students’ preferences do notshow a conformity to the often cited stereotypesof Japanese norms and values whichoften produce a post-secondary environment preferringformal communication, dependent learners, andreflective, passive and calm learning. In contrast,
this group of students diverges quite significantly
from the stereotypes. While it is clear that thesestudents show a preference, as popular stereotypes might predict, for formal communication in the classroom (About two-thirds of the

The first set of ratings allowed the students
to identify what they experienced as preferredstyles in Japanese classrooms. The second setof ratings allowed students to explore the natureof intra-cultural and well as inter-cultural differences by identifying their own preferences.
The third set of ratings, their predictions of thepreferences for communication and relational
styles in a Canadian post-secondary classroom,
later formed the basis of a task to interview the
Canadian Japanese language students about theirpreferences and thus determine the accuracy ofthese predictions.

Figure 4: Communication and Relation Style preference survey(Within the appropriate bracket, place the number closest to the point on the scale that reflects: 1. yourpreference, 2. your perception of your culture’s preference and, 3. your perception of Canadian’s preference.)1.

Formal communication
1

2

4

Japan ( )Me (…)

Canada (…)

2

3

4

Japan ( )Me (…)

Canada (…)

5

Impulsive learning

2

3

4

Japan ( )Me (…)

Canada ( )5Passive learning

2

3

4

Japan ( )Me (…)

Canada (…)

Energetic learning
1

5

Independent learning

Participatory learning
1

5

3

Reflective learning
1

4

2

Dependent learning
1

3

Informal communication

5
Calm learning

2

3

4

Japan ( )Me (…)

Canada (…)

13

5

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

students rated their own preference to be for justsuch a style of communication.), in other areas
there were surprises.

5

16

4

2

Total

32

32

32

5. Energetic (1) vs. Calm (5)Figure 5: Results of the Communications andRelational Styles Survey
1. Formal (1) vs. Informal (5)RatingJapan

MeCanada

1

5

6

20

RatingJapan

MeCanada

2

1

7

7

1

17

13

2

3

5

8

1

2

10

11

0

4

5

6

2

3

3

3

0

5

16

5

2

4

0

3

8

Total

32

32

32

5

2

2

22

Total

32

32

32

Analyzing the data
In analyzing the data, I took ratings of 1 and
2 and 4 and 5 to indicate a strong preference forthe communication and relational style indicated.
As will be seen later, a rating of 3 can be interpreted as either a shift away from or towards apreference depending on the context. Figure 6
summarizes the data for self-preference and forthe perceived Japanese preference.
It is clear that the preferences the students
express, summarized in the figure above, differ
significantly from those they perceive as expected in Japanese classroom culture, perhaps withthe exception of formal communication style.
Interestingly, significant numbers of students,
12 to 14 depending on the category, indicate apreference mid-way on the continuum. Taking
this preference as distant from the one associated with Japan, the results for those 32 students
show a very strong rejection of these preferences.
This finding was unexpected to me, but not tothe students.
Less surprisingly, the communication andrelational styles that the students identify as thepreferred ones in the Japanese classroom closelyalign with popular images of Japanese education.
Taking a rating of 1 and 2 or 4 and 5 to indicate
strong preferences, the students unambiguously(see the numbers in brackets) portray the postsecondary classroom in Japan as an environment
preferring formal communication (27/32), dependent learners (29/32) and reflective (20/32),
passive (23/32), and calm learning (21/32).
In contrast to this portrait of Japanese class-

2. Dependent (1) vs. Independent (5)RatingJapan

MeCanada

1

18

6

0

2

11

9

1

3

1

14

4

4

2

2

9

5

0

1

18

Total

32

32

32

3. Reflective (1) vs. Impulsive (5)RatingJapan
MeCanada

1

11

9

6

2

9

6

4

3

6

12

4

4

4

4

6

5

2

1

12

Total

32

32

32

4. Participatory (1) vs. Passive (5)RatingJapan

MeCanada

1

5

4

20

2

2

8

6

3

2

12

4

4

7

4

0
14

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Figure 6: Survey data summarized
Category

Self-preference

Perceived Japanese
preference

formal vs. informal

24/32 prefer more formal
communication

27/32 indicate a Japanese preference for formal communication

dependent vs .independent

15/32 prefer more independent learning

29/32 indicate a Japanese preference for dependent learningreflective vs. impulsive

15/32 prefer more impulsive learning

20/32 indicate a Japanese preference for reflective learning

participatory vs. passive

12/32 prefer more participatory learning

23/24 indicate a Japanese preference for passive learningenergetic vs. Calm

13/32 prefer for energetic
learning

21/32 indicate a Japanese preference for calm learning

rooms, the students’ images of the preferredcommunication and relational styles in the
Canadian post-secondary classroom portray anenvironment that is almost the mirror opposite ofJapan. In my students eyes, the Canadian classroom appears (see the numbers in brackets) as
one preferring informal communication (30/32),
independent learners (27/32) and impulsive (18/32), participatory (26/32) and energetic learning(27/32). This data might suggest that some ofthese Japanese students see themselves more
like Canadian learners than traditional Japaneselearners - another surprise.

ture. In fact, when they really examined what aJapanese classroom was like in contrast to theirown preferences, most students agreed that they
didn’t really want a classroom like the one inJapan - at least in regards to the operative communications and relational styles. In the end theaffirmative answer to the question of preference
for a Japanese style of classroom over a Canadian
one was more smoke than fire.
But of course this research project was notabout wanting my students to reject one classroom culture or the other. The thrust of thisresearch project was to understand the nature ofclassroom culture and to identify our preferences
for the communication and relational skills thatare central to this cultural context. Armed withnew knowledge, we could negotiate a classroom
culture to accommodate everyone, myself included, better. The survey (and other) data madeit clear to the students that they differed fromone another significantly in their preferences forcommunications and relational styles. And thiswas a surprise for Japanese students who areoften willing to accept a view of themselves as
exceptionally homogeneous group. This project
thus helped students develop a new appreciationof their own diversity. For my purposes, the mostimportant outcome was a realization on theirpart that what each thought a “good” class was
could differ widely from another classmate’s
opinion.
This shift in viewpoint allowing them to seethemselves as less homogeneous than before,
opened a space for us to evaluate learning in

Discussion
The purpose of this classroom research was
to answer the question, what is a Japanese classlike?
In the end, the data does provide an answer
of sorts to the question. In general it describes a
Japanese classroom reflecting common stereotypes of Japanese norms and values, e.g. valuingof harmony, respect for authority and a cautious
approach to expressing individual opinion, as
well traditional educational practices that rely
on rote memory or on copying a master model
as in many artistic traditions. But the answer tothe question of what Japanese students were like,or more precisely what these Japanese students
were like, was the fuller answer this research
project revealed: that at least half the class had
preferences for communication and relational
styles which were quite at odds with the traditional expectations of Japanese classroom cul15

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

the class in a new light. The title of this paper
refers to negotiating classroom culture precisely
because this new space allowed us to adopt a different stance to classroom activities - to see themas options rooted in different preferences. This
new stance meant I could share with them thechallenge of creating a classroom that met a wide
variety of learners’ expectations. Freed from theconstraints of seeing themselves as all wanting afamiliar Japanese approach to learning, we wereable to negotiate a wider variety of classroom
activities. The renegotiated classroom culturethat this research project and the subsequentdiscussions allowed for can be described, to use
a widely know paradigm, as a more learningcentered classroom than the teaching-centered(Barr & Tagg, 1995) one common in Japan.

lational styles and other elements of culture.
Tasks where these contexts are ambiguous raise
hidden barriers to students’ comfort and ultimate
success. Students, especially those who may becrossing cultural boundaries to study, need thus
to be aware of their own expectations for classroom culture. They will benefit greatly fromclassrooms where different tasks and activities
meet a variety of expectations of classroom culture. In encouraging students to respond to thischallenging variety we can hold out the idealof developing cultural flexibility and becoming
an international person in a meaningful way.
Finally, the results of the survey here suggestthat fearing to change educational practice inJapan out of a perception that Japanese students
will resist changes to traditional practices ismisplaced. If the students in the two classes at
Douglas College in the summer of 2001 are as
typical as I think they are, educators in Japan willfind many students willing, even deeply desiring, to learn differently. These students can beallies in thoughtful, collaborative projects ofeducational reform.

Conclusion
Informed by this simple act of classroom research, one broad conclusion can be drawn andseveral more narrowly focused recommendations
can be made. To begin with a broad brush stroke,
we can conclude that doing research to understand learning in our classrooms in partnerships
with learners opens spaces for us to change andimprove classroom practice with the support oflearners. To maximize the chances of this, it isimportant to keep in mind the distinction between
classroom research and other types of research.
Classroom research asks a question specific toan identified classroom. The research impetus
arises from a desire to improve students’ learningin that one class. Its particularism is its strength.
Classroom research indeed may make a valuable contribution to the professional literature,but it does not start with this goal in mind. For
that reason, this paper does not conclude withrecommendations for further research, though I
hope that readers will be stimulated to think ofresearch questions specific to their classroom
and their students.
More specifically with regards to classroom
culture, this research suggests that we need to
be aware of our own expectations and related
behaviour since these impact the satisfaction of
our students. We need also to make the cultural
assumptions underlying our classrooms clearer
since classroom tasks are located within a webof norms and values, communications and re-References

Barr, R., & Tagg, J. (1995). From teaching to
Learning - A New paradigm for Undergraduate
Education. Change: the Magazine of Higher
Learning, November/December 1995, pp.13- 25
Cross, P. & Steadman, M. (1996). Classroom
Research: Implementing the Scholarship ofTeaching. Jossey-Bass. CA: San Francisco.
Stefani, L. (1997). The Influence of Culture on
Classroom Communication. Intercultural
Communication; A Reader, 8th Edition, Larry
Samovar & Richard Porter (Eds.) Belmont CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Company

I would like to thank my colleague, Amy
Modhal, and her students for their enthusiastic
partnership in this classroom research project.
Tom Whalley holds a Ph.D in Communicationfrom Simon Fraser University and teaches ESL
and Intercultural Communication at Douglas
College in New Westminster, BC. He holds a BA
from Sophia University, Tokyo and has taught
EFL and conducted research in Japan. He can bereached by email at: whalleyt@douglas.bc.ca
16

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

OPINION & PERSPECTIVE:
Chopping Out the Dead Wood

Alan Mackenzie
Keisen University

The Japanese tertiary education system isbuckling under the weight of the number of institutions that do not deserve to be termed collegesor universities. It is also encumbered by a large
number of teachers (especially within EFL) thatshould not be teaching at all, never mind in tertiary education. I am aware that these opinions arehighly inflammatory. They are meant to be.
For too long the question of whether teachers
are qualified and/or able to teach effectively inuniversities has not been seriously addressed.
Of course, most job descriptions do make reference to the educational qualifications required,such as an MA or PhD. But more often thannot, teachers are hired through word of mouth or
personal recommendation rather than by open,
thorough interviews that attempt to address thecandidates’ teaching ability and principles. Thissituation tends to lead to a hiring committee that
may already be biased in favor of one candidate
and may not even interview candidates that do
not come recommended by a current faculty
member.
As for what actually takes place at interviews,
in my own experience and through conversations
with other teaching colleagues, very few interviewers actually ask any significant questions
about teaching principles, ability, or techniques.
More often than not, questions are asked about
previous schools and positions, or academic
activities like publishing, presentations or involvement in academic organizations. Whilethese activities reflect interest in professional
development, the emphasis placed on them is at
the expense of focusing on actual teaching ability, views and experiences. By this, I do not mean
to imply that all universities have the same hiring procedures, but in the vast majority of casesthat I have heard of over the last six years, job
interviews tend to be nothing more than a brief
formality to confirm employment rather than athorough examination of a teacher’s ability toteach the classes available.
Furthermore, it seems that personality is valued more than actual teaching and “Will you
fit in?” is often the most important question oninterviewers’ minds. Very few interviewers ask
about the number of life-changing moments that
occur in your classroom. Very few ask about thechanges in students’ attitudes or abilities. Thisappears to be seen as a private matter. Somethingthat you and them do together in the privacy of
your classroom/study room/office/apartment:
wherever the learning takes place. But shouldn’t
these things be what institutions should be looking at in terms of criteria that can be used togauge the value of their teachers and teachingability for their students?
Once a teacher has entered an institution,
little attention is then given to their teachingpractice. It is assumed that they are competent,
and if there are no complaints about the teacher,everyone goes about their business. Recently,
however, many institutions, including my own,
at the behest of Mombusho, have implementeda ‘self-evaluation system’ which is actually asystem of teacher and course evaluation. The
purpose of this system is to give feedback toteachers about their performance and about
what students think of their course. However,the problem is that all conscientious teachers
do this already, issuing mid-term and/or end-ofterm questionnaires simply because they want
to do a good job. These are not the teachers that
we should be concerned about. These are thechange-oriented teachers: the ones who want tomake a difference and the ones who are going
to try their damnedest to improve their teachingno matter what. The teachers that I think theseevaluations should be aimed at are the ones who
do not ask for feedback, do not wish to change
and do not really care about the results of such
evaluations. Furthermore, it is my opinion, basedon ten years of educational administration that17

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

any evaluation that is not linked to a full peer ormanagement evaluation is likely to fail. In otherwords, simply giving teachers feedback forms
and expecting them to act on them is unlikely
to spur teacher change. In order to accomplish
any meaningful, personal or institutional change
there needs to be built-in support from and accountability to the institution.
It must be said that teachers who do not act on
feedback from students and administrations are
not necessarily uncaring or bad teachers. They
may simply not be aware of how their actions areperceived by others, or may not have the tools tochange those behaviors, which is why a support
system needs to accompany implementation of
any course/teacher evaluation. However, teachers who do not care about their teaching are likely
to know that they are bad because they have seen
it re-affirmed umpteen times. Term after term,
they fail in class because they are not committed
to any real form of change.
Perhaps it is time for these people to be removed from education. Perhaps it is time forour institutions to implement a radical review
process that removes them from the system forgood. The students do not want them. Their fellow teachers do not want them. Their institutions
don’t need them. For the good of the system, theyneed to be removed so that genuine, meaningful education within genuine meaningful tertiary
educational institutions can take place.
What I suggest is an open and informed debate about how this can happen. Having been

involved in concrete, triangulated evaluation
systems, including classroom observations,peer, self and management evaluations, quality
circles and student evaluation within a private
language school framework, I can attest to thevalue of using these forms of feedback to encourage teacher development, spur individual change
and increase faculty quality. This is exactly what
tertiary education in Japan at this point in timeneeds. The many institutions facing an uncertain
future need to remove the ‘dead wood’ from theirranks. The education system as a whole needs
to remove the institutions within their ranks
that constitute ‘dead wood’. This may happen
through natural selection, which is a terribly
long, painful process, where individual schools
and departments will die out due to their persistent failure, taking educationally healthy faculty
members with them.
A swifter, cleaner cut is required: a rational
clearance of the dead logs sitting under the canopy of tertiary education coordinated nationallyand involving both public and private sectors
could lead to a much more dynamic, adaptable,
quality education system. Given the lack of ability of the Ministry of Education to coordinate
anything nationally, I realize that this is likely
to remain a blip on the screen of educational
opinion. However, I stand by my view that there
is a lot of dead wood out there and it needs tobe chopped out in order to enable a sustainable,
quality-based education system to flourish.

18

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

From the Chalkface:Anchoring your activities
Anchoring is an NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) technique in which a stimulus isassociated with a specific response. Anchors
happen naturally. For example, a specific songcauses you to recall a certain person. Anchors
can also be set up intentionally. If you have everwritten something on the board, erased it, andlater pointed to the empty spot to remind thestudents of what was written there, you haveused an anchor.
The trigger for an anchor may be visual (pointing to a spot), auditory (a specific word or tone),or kinesthetic (a touch). There are three criteria
for anchoring:Charles Adamson
Miyagi University

course might commonly include the following:
giving organizational details, students working
alone on an exercise, teacher giving answers andexplanations, student/teacher dialog, questions
from students, and student pair or group work.
After making a list of these activities, the teacher
visualizes the actual classroom layout to determine in what location to anchor each activity.
Some things to consider are whether you will
be sitting or standing, whether you will need theboard, tape recorder, etc., and the sequencingof the activities in a typical class. You want tobe sure that the anchors are clean, that is, thatthe students will not confuse them, so it is best
if, after using one anchor, you move to a different part of the room for the next. Now all thatis left to do is to sit down and relax, look at an
actual lesson plan, and visualize yourself movingaround the room and stopping at the selected site
for each activity. At least for the first few times
you use anchoring, it is a good idea to mentallypreview each class so that you know what to do
and remember to do it.
Anchoring is particularly useful for those
who teach younger students where discipline isa problem. The solution is again anchoring. First,
pick a location in the room that you will never go
to by accident. A good site is the top of a table ordesk. When you need to discipline the students,
deliberately move to the site. If it is the top ofa desk, you may have to use a chair to reach it.
Do not say anything until you get settled in thelocation. Now blast away. Let it all out. Whenyou have finished, leave your own feelings at thesite and move back into the regular area, continue
as if nothing had happened. The next time thatyou need to discipline, look at the site and thendeliberately move to it and do your thing, leaving
it all there when you finish. After doing this a few
times, you will find that all you have to do is lookat the site and the objectionable student actions
will stop. Most teachers who have tried this have

1. the experience must be intense and as pure
as possible,
2. the anchor, or cue, must be set when theexperience is at its peak, and3. the replication of the anchor must be accurate.
One particularly useful application of anchoring in the classroom is the construction of visualanchors for each type of activity in that lesson.
By doing this, the teacher can implicitly informthe students what they should be doing at the
moment. The teacher does this by always using
the same location for a single type of activity. For
example, the teacher might sit in the left front
corner of the room when telling stories, stand at
the board when giving content instruction, standin the right corner when asking the students questions, and stand in the middle of the room close to
the students when giving administrative instructions. If the teacher does this systematically andconscientiously, the students will always know
exactly what sort of activity is taking place andwhat their role in it should be.
Teacher preparation is easy. First, the teacher
thinks about the course and determines the activities that it will encompass. For example, a
19

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

found that discipline problems soon fade away
and the class becomes a pleasure to teach.
Although discipline is sometimes importantand the image of the teacher actually doing it
is quite funny, this technique is much morevaluable for what can be done with it in yourclassroom, where there is unlikely to be a discipline problem. One of the notorious problems
in Japanese universities is to get the students totalk. I have successfully solved this problem bymaking two spatial anchors.
One is for small group discussions. I anchor
the use of English, not Japanese by the group.
To do this, at first you only stand in the location
when the students are speaking English. If they
begin using Japanese, you move to a random neutral location, a different one each time so that the
only consistency is the desired student action andyou standing in the selected location. When they
start using English again, return to the location
for the anchor. Soon the students will use English
when you are standing in that location.
The other is for students to answer or ask
questions in front of the whole class. Again you
move in and out of the location according to the

response you are getting. If the response is what
you want, stand in the location. If it is not, moveto a random neutral location, changing each time.
Once you establish this anchor, it becomes possible to ask a question, move to the location, andget a response from the students.
The effect appears to be magical which is whyJohn Grinder and Richard Bandler, the originators of NLP, used the metaphor of magic in theirearly work.

Additional reading:
While the best source of further information
about anchoring would be a good NLP practitioner training course, the following books will
give you further insight into anchoring and otherelements of NLP.
Dilts, R. (1990). Changing Belief systems with
NLP. Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications.
Lewis, B. and F. Pucelik. (1982). Magic
Demystified. Portland, OR: Metamorphous
Press.
O’Connor, J. and J. Seymour. (1988). Introducing
Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Cornwall,
England: Aquarian Press

Letter to the Teacher

Thomas C. Anderson
Aoyama Gakuin University,
Nihon University, Tokai University

Summary

paper. This is great for the teacher as it is mucheasier to carry twenty or thirty pieces of paper(and to read and write comments on the train!)than a class set of journals.

This technique is an alternative to journaling.
Although much has been written about the valueof journals, they are time consuming and difficult
to manage. A much easier technique is what I
call Letter To The Teacher.

Time Required
Fifteen or twenty minutes of class time andperhaps thirty or forty minutes of teacher reading
and commenting time.

Students
As with journals, this technique can be usedwith all levels, and is especially suited to larger
classes that exist in most Japanese post-secondary institutions.

Rationale
This activity is an authentic context for writing. It provides a non-threatening means of communication between the teacher and students.
Students can express concerns, share ideas, andask questions without worrying about grammar,

Materials
The beauty of this activity is its ease of administration. Students only need a piece of loose-leaf
20

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Assessment

spelling, “using the right words”, etc. Teachers
should use the letter as a tool for continuous
assessment, and more importantly a means tobecome and remain connected with students as
people. In an atmosphere of acceptance and trust,students begin to open up and write about things
that they would never mention in class. By connecting what is important in our students’ daily
lives to what we are doing in the classroom andvalidating their experiences, we can encouragethem and help them to build the self-confidence
they need both to succeed as students as well as
responsible adults.

As the focus of this activity is one-to-one
communication, I do not make corrections unless requested to by the students. I feel that thiswould be too inhibiting.
I make a note of error patterns, which I canaddress in other activities, and react to the content of the letters with questions and short comments in the body and/or at the end of the letter.
I believe that what gives the students the trust to
share their writing with me is that I make it mypurpose to write at least one positive comment
to even the laziest, most passive and frustrating
students in the class. Some students need closemonitoring. An experience with one male student springs to mind. After twenty minutes of“writing”, his letter consisted of “I like sports.”
I handle situations like this by challenging theclass to increase the number of sentences they
write (e.g. “I want everyone to write at least four
sentences”). I sometimes take students aside at
the end of the class and encourage them to write
more and, of course, praise them when they meetthe challenge!

Procedure
I introduce this activity in the first class ofthe semester. Instead of doing the typical oral
self-introduction, I give students a copy of mywritten self-introduction entitled “Letter To My
Students”. I read it while the students follow
along. I then ask them to write a similar letter
about themselves, which will be collected. I givethem about fifteen-twenty minutes to write, andthen collect the letters. I read them and keepthem on file until the end of the term. This first
letter serves as a writing sample, needs assessment tool, and source of information. I then havethe students write letters periodically throughout
the semester. With my lower level students I liketo do this activity at least once every other week;with my advanced students I do it three or fourtimes per term, due to the volume they write.
This level of frequency makes the marking load
manageable. In the second or third to last classof the term, I let my students free write. After
writing my comments, I staple their first letterto the last before returning them. The students
are then able compare the two letters, to see
the improvements they have made during thesemester.
For the letters during the Semester, depending on the student level, I either let them write
freely, or give them ten possible topics for themto choose from (with the proviso that they are
not limited to them). In one class, a student suggested that I give the class a list of topics at theend of the previous class. He wanted to have timeto think about topics and not feel pressured. I
incorporated this into the activity the following
term.

Reflections
I came up with this activity while struggling to
get a class of lower level students to write morethan just a sentence or two. They responded
well to the assurances I gave them that their
letter was privileged information to be seen by
only me. They liked the non-threatening positive feedback I wrote. Students felt comfortablein sharing with me concerns and problems thatthey would never mention in the classroom, occasionally even relationship problems; not that
I’m an expert in matters of the heart! I had a malestudent who told me that he was a “low rider”.
I asked him to explain that and he told me about
how he and his friends soup up old cars and racethem in the middle of the night. This led to him
sharing his dream about wanting to open up an
automobile detailing business after graduating.
Another male student told with me in a letterthat he had missed a week of classes because
his mother had just died of cancer. I was able torelate to this by sharing with him my experienceof dealing with my own mother’s and mother-inlaw’s cancers. By opening up to students suchas these with thoughtful comments, I found that21

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

many of them responded by making more of aneffort in class. This really made me feel like I
had accomplished something as a teacher.

to using journals in TESOL, and her Students andTeachers Writing together, as well as two recent
studies, by Mlynarczyk, and Burton and Carroll,
have more reflective accounts of teachers using
journals in a variety of situations. Readers may
also remember Christopher Kelen’s article in ON
CUE vol 9,2. (Ed)

Variations
While the use of journals may be a tried andtrue activity, I am constantly in the process ofmaking them work better. Next semester, I
plan to make a copy of the first letter to keep
on file while making comments and returning
the original with the intention that the processof building a relationship with the students will
begin sooner. Another idea I am considering isto have the students brainstorm possible topics
in groups, so that the list of topics I provide will
be more relevant to them. In the middle of theterm, when student motivation tends to wane abit, it might be an idea to ask (urge?) students
to include a photograph with their next letter.
This could be expanded to include realia suchas ticket stubs, movie/concert program covers
or whatever might be important to the students.
As with journaling, “The Letter To The Teacher”
provides an infinite number of possibilities forcommunication.

Resources

Burton, J. and Carroll, (M. 2001). Journal Writing.
Case Studies in TESOL Practice Series.
Alexandria, Va: TESOL
Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without Teachers. NY:
Oxford University Press
Fulwiler, Toby (ed.). (1987). The Journal Book.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann - Boynton
andCook.
Fulwiler, T. (1987). Teaching with Writing.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann - Boynton and
Cook.
Kelen, C. (2001). ‘Journal Writing: Some
Observations from a Hong Kong High School
Classroom’. On CUE, 9, (2) 11-14
Kreeft-Peyton, J. (1990). Students and Teachers
Writing Together: Perspectives on Journal
Writing. Alexandria, Va: TESOL
Peyton, J. K., & Reed, L. (1990). Dialogue journal
writing with non-native English speakers:
A handbook for teachers. Alexandria, VA:
TESOL.
Mlynarczyk, Rebecca (1999) Conversations of the
Mind: The Uses of Journal Writing for SecondLanguage Learners. NY: Lawrence Erlbaum
Progoff, I. (1975). At a Journal Workshop. N.Y:
Dialogue House Library

For those interested in further exploration ofjournaling procedure, Toby Fulwiler’s The Journal Book is a good place to start. Progoff’s At a
Journal Workshop was a major influence on the
popularity journals have attained in teaching,as was much of the work of Peter Elbow. Joy
Kreeft Peyton’s Dialogue journal writing with
non-native English speakers, is a practical guideTeaching General English Classes
Through Resume: Gently avoiding thehorns of a dilemma!

Daniel Droukis
Kyushu Kyoritsu University

The Dilemma: “Best laid plans o’mice an’ men gang aft agley”

deal of freedom in planning curriculum andchoosing textbooks. But, what happens when
our plans go awry? In a recent second semester
course I found that my class consisted entirelyof repeaters. Some were taking the course for

One of the joys of teaching at the university
level is that we most often are allowed a great22

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Class Procedure:

the third time. After a few weeks of trying toforce the textbook I had to admit that the bookwas clearly beyond their abilities. Changing
textbooks mid-semester is always problematic,
not to mention unfair to the students’ wallets.
I needed to do something that would help thestudents, was manageable given the class makeup and time period, required little additional
material, and would also vindicate your humble
curriculum designer/narrator.

1. Explain to students that they will be writing a resumes and describe what a resume
is. This was done in the first lesson. It took
about 15 minutes and included writing asimple resume on the board and discussing
what the headings entailed.
2. Give students a simple example of a resume
that they can follow. Following the explanation, I showed copies of resumes from thebook 101 Great Resumes (1996). I again explained while trying to connect the resume
example on the board to the more complex
one they were looking at. This coupled withstep #3 perhaps takes the remainder of theclass.
3. Simple resumes include students’ name,address, telephone number, e-mail address,
job goal, education, work experience, extracurricular activities and awards etc. On thesecond lesson, I asked students questions
about the sample resumes they were looking
at. They then practiced writing the first section of the resume. I followed by asked themquestions about what they had written. This
continued along with #4 below. Students dida lot of correcting, checking dictionaries,
and asking each other what should be done.
This took almost three lessons, and involved
a great deal of work with vocabulary.
4. Continue to compare student resumes withthe sample resume.
5. While students are writing their versions
offer assistance, and encourage questions
and use of dictionaries. During this time
monitor students’ progress and decide if you
want to translate for them when you can,or to strictly encourage them look things
up. During the fourth and fifth sessions
we reviewed how items are listed on theresume and further compared the versions
they had written with actual resumes. I also
asked questions which required students use
information from the resume to answer.
6. Once students have completed their resumes
check them for errors and return the corrected version. Have them completely rewrite any that have many serious flaws. This

Rationale:
What could a teacher do to make this classwork? One thing that I could safely assume wasthat my students knew more about their own lives
than they knew about most other things. Therefore, I decided that finding ways for them to giveinformation about themselves was a reasonable
process to follow. Having the students work toward preparing a resume of their experiences was
something that was achievable for the students
and could be done in the class with minimal outside resources beyond a dictionary and examplesof typical resumes. The students needed to knowthat this activity was simply a way to tell people
about their experiences. In support of this effort
I needed some theoretical justification for theactivity. Chamot (1996) provides us with a variety of learning strategies appropriate for foreign
language students. A strategy is simply a plan,
which is made to achieve some goal. Throughsome of the strategies put forth by Chamot I had astrong basis for using a variety of learning strategies to complete this project.

Materials:
The students provided dictionaries and I
consulted examples of resumes from 101 Great
Resumes (1996, Career Press). I chose complete
resumes written for their level of experience students used these as a guide to the standard makeup of a resume.

Time Period:
As described, this activity took about eightclasses to complete. In hindsight, I am sure thatwith more advance planning I could have done
it faster. In this time period however, it was quite
successful. Teachers can easily modify the timingof this activity to suit their individual needs.
23

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Work Experience:

was done in the sixth and seventh lessons.
7. Once students have a version that looks welldone, call them for an “interview”. In thisinterview, ask them questions that can be
answered by referring to the resume. The
final interview was conducted in the seventhor eighth lesson.

Most resumes will contain work experiencebut not all university students will have this experience. Fortunately, all of my students had somepart time work experience. Again, I prompted
them with questions about where they worked,
what their duties were, and other pertinent information. They were able to answer these questions
and filled in their experiences such as yakitori
shop, Torimatsu, waiter, etc.

Comments on Various Sections of
the Resume
Addresses:

Focusing on career goals:

Students started writing and quickly they
started asking each other questions (in Japanese).
They wanted to know how to write the different
parts of a Japanese address. What was the correct order? What are ku, chome, shi and ken in
English? Did the address have to be in English?
Isn’t it the same as it is in Japanese? They werereally confused by this. Some students wrote out
the entire address without using any numbers. I
showed them my address in Japan and they followed the example. This aspect of the activity
demonstrates things that can be taught easily
through this experience. When they had successfully written out their addresses I followed thisup with questions, which they answered verbally.
This exercise allowed them to do more speaking
in English than they were used to, but they roseto the challenge.

The second part of the resume required students
to state their goals. What did they want to do in
the future? I asked them for some ideas and wrote
them on the board. This activity also requiredthat they consult the dictionary. Many students
had specific ideas about what kind of jobs theywanted and with the help of the dictionary wereable to articulate them. Others had much more difficulty. I gave them suggestions on possible jobs
including typical part time work such as waiteror convenience store clerk. They could easily
identify with the jobs that they were currently
doing. Again, I asked to talk about the kind ofjobs they wanted to do. When students were asked
why they wanted to do a particular job they often
had difficulty explaining. To address this, I asked
them to think of words that could describe the job.
These words were then inserted into their goals
for the future section. Since they were economics
majors, students often said they were interested
in money. When they made a connection between
the job they wanted and their interests, they werethen able to write their goal or objective. I asked
several questions related to this. Did they like talking with people? Did they like to be active? Did
they like working with computers? From theseanswers they could more clearly give a goal for
their resume.

School Experience:
Writing up their school experience was theeasiest for students to understand. They needed
to know what information to include in this area.
To help them understand, I asked specific questions about their school life. Where did you go tohigh school? When did you attend school? Where
was your school located? They then asked eachother these questions and wrote their answers inchronological order. Again, some had difficultywith vocabulary such as attend and located.
However, they were asked to look up thesewords and try to find another word they mightknow. Some students successfully substituted attend with go to but had difficulty with located.
These vocabulary problems occurred throughout
the lessons and simpler words were often used.

Checking the results:
Once the students had written out their resumes
I copied them and gave everyone a copy of eachresume produced in the class. They were not typed
and were occasionally difficult to read therefore if
there is enough time and the students have accessto computers or word processors, it may be best
to have them type the final version. The students
were then asked questions on what was written
24

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1on their resumes. How long did you work at ….?
Where did you go to high school? What is yourtelephone number? Once I demonstrated this process, they took turns asking each other about theirresumes. As a final activity they were interviewed
in pairs in front of the class. Since it was such asmall group this was not a threatening activity.
This was the best way to check their ability tounderstand and respond to questions, and provided
a nice conclusion to the activity.

Conclusion:
If I were to encounter a similar situation in
the future where students did not meet the level
expected I would have a better way to deal withsuch a class. This activity was originally begun
in an act of desperation but turned into a valuable
learning experience for students, and helped tomake for a successful class. Can this activity bedone over an entire semester? Year? It is not asclear, but if we can plan this type of “emergency”
course then we will be able to do more for ourstudents in difficult situations.

Reflections: Chamot’s Learning
Strategies Revisited

References

This activity incorporated several of Chamot’s(1996) learning strategies that can be easily identified. Students had to make and follow a plan.
They frequently had to cooperate to produce partsof the resume. In the process they activated priorknowledge and brainstormed words that could be
used to make a more effective resume. They wererequired to use resources (dictionaries). Whilethey did not use much outside information they
were sometimes called on to listen to introductions and give back information on what they
had heard. This required them to do some notetaking, questioning, and summarizing.

Career Press Editors. (1996). 101 Great Resumes,
Franklin, N.J., Career Press.
Chamot, A.U. (1996). Accelerating Achievementwith Learning Strategies. Glenville, Il: Scott
Foresman Addison Wesley.
Chamot, A.U. (1999). Learning Strategy
Instruction in the Classroom. (On-line) http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/99/jun/chamot.html

Call for Papers
The JALT Hokkaido Journal
The JALT Hokkaido Journal is an annual journal produced by the local chapter in Hokkaido.
Previous to this year, this publication was a journal that strictly published papers resulting
from the annual conference held in the spring each year. Last year, we broadened the scopeof the journal to include papers from both the conference as well as some non-conference
papers. From 1998 to 2001, the journal was called JALT Hokkaido Proceedings. Last year,
it was called JALT Hokkaido Proceedings Plus. We have eliminated the word “proceedings”
to reflect the editors’ (Alan M. Cogen and Paul Stapleton) intentions to widen the scope of thejournal.
In an effort to continue this format and widen the authorship, we are inviting papers, especiallythose related to language teaching research, from authors whether they are planning topresent at our conference or not. We are accepting papers from all Japan. All papers will bevetted by the Journal Review Board.
Papers must be no longer than 3,200 words including two abstracts (maximum
200 words in English, 400 characters in Japanese) and reference list. We will only accept
submissions by e-mail attachment formatted as a Microsoft (MS) Word document.
The DEADLINE for submitting a paper is JUNE 30. For those interested in submitting apaper, please contact Paul Stapleton paul@ilcs.hokudai.ac.jp in order to receive a copy of thesubmission guidelines.
25

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Conference Reviews:
ELT Textbook Rubrics: The Natureof the Beast. Featured Workshop,
JALT 2002. Kristopher Bayne, Aston
University

Reviewed by Ellen Head
Momoyama Gakuin University“If promising moves toward more learner
independence and learner-centred classrooms
through self-access and cooperative learning
are to be realised, wresting the control awayfrom the teacher and giving it to the learner is
an important issue.” (Bayne, 2001)
Rubric: originally it meant the part of themanuscript that was illumitated in red, instructing how the text was to be used. As a teacher andlearner I am faced with decisions about rubrics
every day, and recently writing in-house materials for my university has added a new dimension
to my concern. I therefore leapt at the chance tofind out about Kristopher Baynes’ research at
the featured speaker workshop, “ELT rubrics:
the nature of the beast.”
Baynes’s idea is that students don’t understandthe language of rubrics and waste time readingthem. “A student admitted to spending 10 minutes on translating the rubric in his homeworktasks” (Bayne, 2001) If the task type is familiar
to students they don’t need the rubric anyway.
He demonstrated this at the workshop by asking
us to do three tasks without a rubric. He also
showed us some rubrics created by his students
when confronted with the same activity. The variety of approaches was interesting, and I could
see that at a certain point in a course one mightwant to have students get involved in critiquing
the rubric or creating alternative rubrics.
However there are many variables involved,
and it seemed to me that rather than throw away
the rubric, the solution, at least for beginninglearners who are literate in the mother tongue,
might be to have rubrics using L1. My own

experience as a beginning learner of Japaneseconvinced me that having a readily understandable explanation of the content encouraged me
to focus on the task itself. This is especially
important in a self-access setting.
Baynes’ research project involved interviews
and surveys of the three interested groups, students, teachers and materials writers. He foundthat the teachers who were judged most effective by learners used examples and gestures to
explain the rubric. Allowing “wait-time” forstudents to absorb the instructions, was also
important.
Learners tended no to rely wholly on the rubric, as, when interviewed, they admitted theyalso used prior experience or asked their friends
when deciding what was required by the task.
Materials writers, on the other hand, tended
to see the rubric as a way of making their task
“teacher-proof.”
I identified most strongly with the materials
writers, having recently gone through the process of designing a course book for beginninglearners. In the first part of the book we useda work-book style layout with a lot of speech
bubbles and free placement on the page. In thenext volume of the book we made a very simple
and repetitive layout, with almost identical task
types from unit to unit. In one case a rubric wasmissed out at the printing stage, but as the task
was already familiar the only loss was that ofcontextual information.
It seems to me that a good criterion for judging
a rubric is “does it make the task more interesting? Does it enable the teacher to deliver a task
26

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

that couldn’t be communicated to these particular
students any other way?”
In our workshop, we were asked to create arubric for a task involoving two lists of adjectives. Most people wrote an instruction to findopposites in the lists. One materials writer inthe group suggested selecting traits desired in a
future partner. It seemed to me that this latter task
was far more motivating that the obvious task.
However, Bayne might argue that the exploratory process of writing their own rubric, would
benefit students more than following a given
rubric. Constructing one’s own task stimulates
an active cognitive engagement with the content,
and is a very real way of giving students more
control over their own learning.
In creating learner-friendly materials, weneed to achieve a balance between familiarity
and newness. When I was writing for my falsebeginner audience I was aware of the danger ofmaking the materials “student-proof” , devoidof challenge and space for investment by thestudents. It seems to me a very valuable idea
to raise students’ awareness and explore alternatives in relation to a given set of linguistic
content. At the workshop we discussed the ideaof a course with progressively diminishing rubrics, until in the end the students were given the
linguistic content only, with no task or instructions. Although such a course would need very
careful sequencing, it is an exciting idea. In themeantime, we can help our students by raising
our – and their - awareness of rubrics as subvertible, dispensible, servants rather than masters of
the learning process.
(1) Bayne, Kristopher. (2002). “How Students
Know What To Do: Learner Access to ELT
Textbook Rubrics,” Dokkyo University Studies
in Foreign Language Teaching, 17, 253283. Research Institute of Foreign Language
Teaching, Dokkyo University.

Culture, Content and Competency:
ThaiTESOL 2003 Reviewed
Nanci Graves, International Communication Program at Kobe
Steel; Juanita Heigham, Sugiyama Jogakuen University; Alan
S. Mackenzie, Obirin University; Stacey Vye, International
University of Health and Welfare
Relaxed and easy going. These are words typically used to describe Thailand, and the 23rd Annual Thailand TESOL International Conference
was relaxed, but it was much more; it was also
well-organized and dynamic. This year’s conference was held at the Imperial Queen’s Park Hotelin Bangkok from January 23 through 25. The
site easily accommodated the 1200 participants
and 177 presentations, and the lunch and coffee
breaks provided at the hotel each day allowed
for easy mixing.
The conference theme, ‘ELT 2003: Culture,
Content and Competency’, was addressed by the
keynote speaker Sawitri Suwansathit, Deputy
Permanent Secretary for Education and Secretary-General of The Thai National UNESCO aswell as plenary speakers Donald Freeman, Simon
Greenall and Tom Hutchinson. Professional de-velopment, socio-cultural training and projectwork were topics addressed by the plenary
speakers. All the 20 content areas in the generalprogram had a fairly strong presence, with Methodology and Reading being the best represented.
This review will highlight four sessions to givea broad overview of the conference.
Featured speaker Beverly Derewianka (‘Implementing a Text-Based Syllabus’) detailed
the process of building a text-based lesson.
She defined texts as “meaningful stretches ofwhole language that can be spoken or written”.
A text-based approach to teaching language
begins with identifying the purpose for which
students need to use language (e.g. instructing,
explaining, recounting, etc.). Once the purpose isestablished, tasks should be developed around it.
Derewianka recommended using a Curriculum27

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

In fact some schools have already gone a great
way to ensuring that they do and with enoughapplication and effort on the part of the education ministry in developing sustainable teacher
training programs and professional development
networks, the reforms have the potential to leadto great improvements in the general language
ability of students in all schools in Thailand.
In ‘Sustainable Educational Development’(SED), presenters Susan Carbery, Tony Campbell, and Robert Croker comprehensively
described the acute limitations that English
teachers face in rural Thailand. Rural teachers
often experience isolation, large class sizes,
and few opportunities for teacher-training due
to distance from educational centers and lack ofsupport from the national Ministry of Education.
The presenters advocate for and organize selfsustainable teacher networks at the grass-root
level to help overcome these obstacles. They
encourage rural teachers to make the most of
their resources, organize local teacher support
networks and share effective methodology. Together they have established Volunteer Educational Network (VEN) to provide local support
networks for teachers through English-teachingworkshops for teachers in economically disadvantaged regions. This program encourages local
teachers to become regional workshop presentersand leaders in order to continue inspiring teacher
development amongst their peers. VEN provides
teacher-training in Thailand as well as othercountries. For more information, please consult
http://www.vol-ednet.com regarding VEN andteacher-volunteer possibilities.
Participants in the thought-provoking workshop ‘Developing Autonomy in the Classroom’
were given the opportunity to observe a humorous “language lesson from hell” performed by
the three presenters Rachelle Jorgenson, Stacey
Vye and Miki Kohyama. In this lesson, a textbook-blinkered instructor gave full marks to her‘model’ student’s parroting of the day’s language
point while being driven to near frenzy by her
communication-minded ‘troublemaker’s’ earnest
but disruptive attempts to discover the real meaning the language being used. By clearly demonstrating how the spirit of autonomy in learners
can be dampened, or remain dormant altogether,when teachers themselves are bound-and-gaggedby curricular demands, the skit reinforced the

Cycle for Teaching Text-Types that includes fourbasic steps. The first, ‘Building the Field’, is theintroduction of topic-related vocabulary and thestaging of oral interaction around the topic. In thesecond step, ‘Modeling the Text-Type’, a model
is given to students, and they are asked to answer
questions about it such as what it is called, why
it is used and where it is used. The third step,‘Jointly Constructing a Text’ , is when students
and teacher work together to create a text similar to the model. In the final step, ‘Independent
Writing’, the topic is changed slightly and students must create their own work independently.
Derewianka’s presentation provided a sound,step-by-step approach to help teachers develop
a text-based syllabus and made the process seemmanageable for even a novice teacher.
Recent reforms that are making sweepingchanges in Thai education were discussed in
the panel discussion ‘Making the Most of EFL
Education Reform in Thailand’. The discussion
was conducted in Thai, with simultaneous translation, and two groups of two people each fromthe Thai Ministry of Education and ThaiTESOL
comprised the panel members. The reforms discussed constitute a paradigm shift in Thai education which is being managed in a particularly
chaotic way. Basically, the education system istaking a huge leap from structurally-based instruction to communicative, content-based andproject-based instruction. Although these plans
have been around for about eight years andsome schools have actually implemented them,the shock of being forced to implement theseplans now seems to be a major problem in Thai
English education circles. These reforms firmly
place Thai teachers in the role of curriculum developers which is a positive move, but at present
the teachers are not sufficiently trained to take on
this role; the degree of freedom being afforded
them may be too much too fast. The education
ministry acknowledges that these reforms constitute a burden on teachers. From this year, theeducation ministry is planning teacher-training
workshops. This is beginning a full year after
compulsory implementation of the curriculum
guidelines and seven years after the initial implementation in so-called model-schools.
Throughout this session it was plain by theexhortations of the panelists that the education ministry wants these reforms to succeed.
28

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

importance of placing a high value on learnercuriosity and prioritising a learning-centred focus above other administrative concerns. As aresult, while working together, the audience wasable to come up with many practical suggestions
for how teachers can act autonomously to maketheir textbooks work for them and their students,
rather than the other way around.
The 2003 ThaiTESOL conference allowed
participants to view the state of English lan-

guage education from a variety of perspectives.
And while the conference was fairly large, it
maintained an atmosphere often found at smaller
conferences; an atmosphere that encouraged discussion far beyond the presentation rooms. For
those interested in attending next year’s conference, ‘Prioritizing Teacher Development’, to beheld in Khon Kaen January 29-31, you can get
more information at http://www.thaitesol.org.

Upcoming Conferences
The 8th International Pragmatics
Conference

World CALL 2003 Conference
Banff, Alberta, Canada, May 7
www.worldcall.org

University of Toronto, July 13-18
ipra-www.uia.ac.be/ipra/8th_conference.html

2003 Kyoto JALT-Pan-SIG Conference

Second International Conference on
Speech, Writing and Context

Kyoto Institute of Technology, May 10-11
jalt.org/test/conference.htm.

Kansai Gaidai University, Osaka, August 6-8
www.kansaigaidai.ac.jp/teachers/toyota/
ICSWC2.htm

3rd ASIA CALL International Conference
Bangkok, Thailand , May 14-16
www.asiacall.org

THE JACET 42nd ANNUAL CONVENTION

The 3rd Annual Conference of the Japan
Second Language Association: J-SLA 2003

Tohoku Gakuin University, Sendai, Sept. 4-6

Daito Bunka Meeting Center (Itabashi,Tokyo), May 24-25
www.daito.ac.jp/access.html

The Peace as a Global Language 2003
Conference

Information Technology & Multimedia in
English Language Teaching (ITMELT) 2003

Seisen University, Tokyo, September 27-28
www.eltcalendar.com/PGL2003/main

JALT Learner Development SIG and
CUE SIG Mini-conference: Learner
Development: Contexts, Curricula,Connections

The English Language Center of the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, June 6-7
www.elc.polyu.edu.hk/conference

Computer Assisted Language Learning
CALL Conference

Kobe YMCA, October 17-19
allagash.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/CUE/MiniConference

Kinjo Gakuin University, Nagoya, June 7-8
www.jaltcall.org/

The 11th Annual Korea TESOLInternational Conference 2003

Fostering Partnership in Language
Teaching and Learning

Seoul Educational Training Institute, Korea,
October 18-19
www.kotesol.org/conference/

Hong Kong University of Science andTechnology, June 24-28
www.lc.ust.hk/~centre/conf2003

5th Pan-Asian Conference on Language
Teaching at FEELTA 2004

Summer International Conference of the
Korea Association of Teachers of English (KATE)

Far Eastern National University, Vladivostok,
Russia, June 24-27, 2004
www.dvgu.ru/rus/partner/education/feelta/
pac5/

Yonsei University, Seoul, June 26-28
Contact: Prof. Hwa-ja Lee, Conference Chair,<Lhj@sunchon.ac.kr>

Japan Association for Language Education and Technology Annual Conference
Kansai Gaidai, Hirakata, Osaka,
July 31-August 2
www.LET-kansai.net/LET2003information-e.html
29

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Reflections:
Kicking Chickens out of theClassroom: A Narrative on Teacher
Training at a Refugee Camp

Brent Poole
Kansai Gaidai

Are you interested in a working holiday? Then
why not volunteer to teach for a NGO at a refugee
camp between the border of Burma/Thailand.
Well, that is precisely what I did last year during spring break. I was inspired to take such anadventure from a former colleague who is currently working for an NGO in Northern Thailand.
The following will outline my experiences in the
refugee camp in the hope that it will generateinterest and action to help address the issues that
relate to the Karenni people, but I should admitthat as a ‘parachute teacher’ my experience waslimited to only two weeks.
After about 12 hours of travel from KansaiInternational Airport I finally arrived in Mae
Hong Song, which is located in Northern Thailand. After I got settled into the surroundings ofthe small town, I went to the main office to dosome lesson planning. I was told before I camethat I had to use resources at the main office tocreate teaching aids for the obvious reason thatphotocopy machines were not available in the
refugee camp. Also, books were hard to comeby, and when they were donated they were often culturally inappropriate. I had to present anduse material that my students could replicate intheir own classrooms. That said, I started using
flip charts consisting of large sheets of recycled
paper attached by two pieces of bamboo. After I
finished the preparation, I went out and had dinner and then came home and went to bed.
The next day I woke up and met some otherpeople from the NGO and then jumped in a truck
for the hour and a half ride on a bumpy and dusty
track to the refugee camp. Once in the camp it
took me a while to get adjusted to my surroundings, as this was the first time I had ever taught ina bamboo hut with a dilapidated blackboard anda dirt floor. My students were predominately female primary school English teachers who wereparticipating in the two-week teacher training
during their spring vacation. The attendance
rate was good despite the fact that the teachers
had other pressing responsibilities: this was theseason to repair the roof of one’s hut because therainy season was quickly approaching. (1) Mostof the students were in their mid- to late twenties with a few exceptions, and in terms of theirformal education they ranged from high school
graduates from the school in the refugee camp, tocollege graduates from Burmese Universities.
The first task was to identify the English proficiency level of students in my classes, and after
the first day I had a fairly sound idea. The second
was to become familiar with my students culturallearning requirements. This was rather difficult at
first because I was not familiar with their cultural
heritage, nor the experience of being a refugee.
It dawned on me like a ton of bricks that topics
such as international travel and shopping, things
my Japanese University students find interesting
had little or no relevance to this context.
My lessons were fairly straightforward inthat they concerned themselves with phonology,
grammar, and basic English conversation. I stuck
to topics such as health, parts of the human body,describing people, feelings and emotions andother basic topics. What was lacking in variety
of topics was overcome by the motivation andearnestness of my students. I have taught in the
United States, Korea, and in Japan and there is
no doubt in my mind that the Karenni refugees
were the most focused, self-disciplined, andmotivated people I have ever taught. One of the30

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

reasons for this is that they perceive education
as important for their independence and for the
future of their people.
With regard to the issue of classroom management, the problems were quite different to theusual ones. For example, my class was often
visited by the chickens that wandered round thecamp. This was not really a problem until they
started to peck my feet. I literally had to kickthem out of the classroom. There was also theissue of chewing betel nuts in class and spitting
the juices over the bamboo walls. After I triedchewing some myself, I really could not blame
them for spitting out the juice.
The out of classroom experience was educational for me. I was taken on several tours by mystudents, after class, and I had the opportunity
to visit various places of social interaction suchas the noodle shop. I was invited to share meals
with some students, and heard stories about theirforced relocation inside Burma and about various
human rights violations, such as extra-judicial
killings, forced portage, torture, and the burningand looting of karenni villages by the Burmese
military.

After conducting the two-week teacher-training course, and interacting with my students, I
made the commitment to go back next year. For
those of you who are interested in learning more
about the plight of the Karenni people pleasecontact the Japan based Rainbow Foundation.
The point of contact for this NGO is Dominique
Maidment and he can be contacted via e-mail at
dmmaidment@yahoo.com(1) As a general rule women are primarily responsible for hut repairs. This process involves
walking a few miles into the jungle each way to
extract leaves and then binding them together tomake a new roof. Men are primarily responsible
for childcare.
A Special thanks to Johanna Robinson who inspired me to teach and learn from the KARENNI
and to Victoria Muehleisen for helping find afocus in this article.

31

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Cyberpipeline:
Really Useful Web Sites?

Steve Snyder
Kyushu University of Health and Welfare
thefacts/reliefresources/ that also gives links to
the University of Cambridge campaign against
sanctions on Iraq. Be warned that AlertNet is formembers and that nonmembers can access only
limited parts of the site. If your tastes run more
towards commentaries on the news, you may
want to look at Arts & Letters Daily, which you
can find at: http://www.aldaily.com .
Also recommended on the Google site was thedownloadable toolbar http://toolbar. Google.com
that allows you to extend your searching options.
To use this toolbar you must have MS Internet
Explorer 5 or later. I haven’t tried the toolbar
yet, but I may do so in the near future. Be sure
to read the FAQ before getting it.

While taking a recent transcontinental flight, I
was leafing through a computer magazine and ran
across a listing of “Really Useful Sites.” There
were lots of them-- around 80. Some of the sites
listed were suspiciously commercial or of little
relevance outside of the US, but a small numberof sites I was motivated to check out in moredetail. As checked out these sites, few were as
useful as claimed. Below are my reviews on sitesthat might be of interest to our readers.

Going Google
Two sites that were recommended are related
to the Google porthole. The first site is theGoogle News Page http://news. Google.com that
presents global news organized on a single page.
It might be difficult to find someone who is notfamiliar with Google, but it is surprising how
few people know about the news page. This pageis updated several times each hour and items are
given tags as to when they were posted (eg. “12minutes ago”). Even though the Google News
Page is well organized, up to date, and easy touse, I have found that items listed tend to run
along fairly mainstream reporting of events, although a number of differing links are provided.
Google, though, is fast and uncluttered. Also, you
can find a lot of non-mainstream items throughthe Search News search engine. Also, check out
the categories in the left-hand column. Google
is extremely fast at image searches as well.
So once you’ve gotten updates Google, you
may want to go to Reuters AlertNet Newsdesk
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ tofind items which may not make it into mass distribution. From the Newsdesk page you can linkto any items you did not see in in other sources
or click on a link that follows a major thread.
For those interested in the impact on relief agencies working in Iraq there is an ongoing page
dedicated to this topic: http://www.alertnet.org/

Travel Items
The next site is only for those who really want
to be aware of travel health hazards: the CDC
Traveler’s Health website http://www.cdc.gov/
travel/ For those who are not familiar with US
agencies, CDC stands for “Center for Disease
Control.” The site provides health information
and alerts of disease outbreaks for travelingto any location in the world. This site is notjust about vaccinations. You will find recommendations on food and water, traveling withchildren, as well as risk factors for known diseases. There links to world health agencies andphone and fax emergency information numbers.
If you want to know what the US Departmentof State has for travel warnings and information on travel in various countries you can go to
http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html andwhile you are there check out the CIA fact booklink. You will find a lot of facts on countries,
including literacy rates, birth and death rates,
ethnic ratios, sex ratios, HIV/AIDS deaths, GDP,
unemployment and other commerce statistics,
general military info, information on infrastructure and a very interesting entry on “transnational
issues.” Potentially a very useful source of data32

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

CDs, DVDs, etc

on countries and easy to access. The fact bookis updated regularly.
A site you may want to know about if
you are planning multiple flights in North
America is FlightArrivals.com. http://
www.flightarrivals.com/ This site got high ratings from Yahoo and PC World magazines, but
I have found the site more limited than statedin reviews and I cannot access the site throughmy firewall at work. Nevertheless, this site may
in the future offer information on international
flights, and the current information on airport
status and schedule changes in North America
can be useful if you are visiting multiple sites.
If not, I would check out the homepage of theairline you are flying. Extra travel note: If you
are planning to rent a car, be sure to check out
any discount packages offered through the airline
you are traveling with – I receive much lower
rates through the online reservation system than
I could get through telephone reservations. Promotions can be found on most of the web sites
for major airlines.
A travel support site recommended in one
magazine was at http://www.travisa.com/. It
provides online visa applications to a numberof countries. When you follow a link to a country you will find an information page about
the country with links to further information.
Another recommended web site that claims to
be a travel language store can be found at http://
www3.travlang.com/ has language courses, bothoffline and online, at a range of prices. I foundthese sites very commercial, but that was to be
expected. For those who are curious about trying the Rosetta stone software, this is one place
to learn about it (although you actually end up
purchasing it through yahoo.com).

The recommended web sites in magazines
were not all travel-related. Ice Magazine lists
new music CD release dates, popular music
news and music business links. The lists are
long, but can be searched by using “find” function on your computer. Useful? I found that
Amazon.com had more useful information, forthe music I buy. If you are anticipating new releases, especially for emerging pop/rock groups,
maybe http://www.icemagazine.com is for you.
A recommended site for DVD releases was http://www.thedigitalbits.com, although I have yet
to actually connect to the site. A CD site that I
could connect to and was recommended was http://www.audiogalaxy.com, although the free music
section called “satellite” requires a registration. If
you are really motivated to get different sources
for your music, then look into these sites, but I
found them disappointing. If you are desperate
for a PC driver for your computer, you might go
to http://www.drivershq.com. A subscription will
cost close to $30US, but they advertise access toover 70,000 drivers. That really would be useful,depending upon your needs.

33

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

SPECIAL JOINT ISSUE OF On CUE AND LAC
On CUE, in collaboration with Literacy AcrossCultures (LAC), wish to announce a special joint
issue for 2003. The theme is L2 literacy (theteaching and learning of FL/SL reading and writing) at the university level in Japan and Asia.
Possible topics for submissions could include
the following, but other topics which relate
literacy to L2 language learning will also be
considered:teaching reading; teaching reading, discourse and genre skills; teaching reading
as part of an integrated approach (suchas with listening or writing); teaching
literature (reading it, writing it), teaching
cross-cultural understanding through written texts, testing reading comprehension
and vocabulary, teaching and evaluating
composition courses, running reading programs (intensive or extensive reading), casestudies in learning a FL language throughreading managing the language support elements of content teaching dealing with thesubject-specific aspects of ESP/EAP/EST.
Papers published elsewhere (such as other
JALT publications or in local research bulletins)
will be considered; however, please make sure
you are able to tell us where the paper was firstpublished and who holds copyright.
Both ‘On CUE’ and ‘LAC’ are intended forinternational audiences, many of whom are notnative users of English. Therefore, it is best to
stick to a ‘plain English’ style of writing. Thatis, use a variety of sentence lengths and types,
but keep most sentences shorter than 25 words.
Keep paragraphs fairly short and start new ones
frequently. Use a lot of headings and sub-headings of an explanatory nature. Don’t be afraid
to present long lists of information as lists withbullet points instead of overly long sentences.
Consider covering and repeating key informationin figures and tables to help present and reinforce
your ideas in ways that are easier to understand.
Please use APA style for in-text citations and thereference list.
To see a sample of LAC articles on line, checkout http://www.literacyacrosscultures.org forhtml and the file archive at the yahoo group,(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
literacyacrosscultures/files) for PDF versions.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS
31 July 2003
Send your submissions to both of the following points of contact:
For LAC: Charles Jannuzi<jannuzi@mint.ocn.ne.jp>
For On CUE: Michael Carroll<carroll@andrew.ac.jp>
Format for submissions: Please send your files
in .rtf and .doc so that it can be opened and readon the latest forms of MS Word. Sending it in.rtf is a safer way to share files and often proves
easier to open on different versions of MS Word
and across PC and MAC platforms.
The usual On CUE article types are sought,
though variations are also possible:
Feature articles: 1800-3000 words written from teacher and classroom perspectives.
Overly long lists of bibliography having only
minor relevance to an article’s topic and thesis
are not encouraged. Authors should adequately
document the works that they have consulted andread in conducting their teaching and classroom
research. If an idea or fact or piece of information
appears at least twice under different sources,
then it might well be something that can be taken
as ‘common knowledge’ in the field.
The feature article does not have to be limited to reports on research (either in qualitativeor quantitative traditions). Articles that emerge
from non-traditonal research and reflective practitioner modes (such as the phenomenology ofteaching) are also welcome. Articles in which
the author relates existing theories and others’
research findings to their own actual classroom
teaching are strongly encouraged. Conceptual pieces in which the author demonstrates anability to work across various disciplines andcultures to produce clarity and synthesis for
actual classroom practitioners are also warmly
invited.
Scholarly reviews: 1200-2500 reviews
comparing, contrasting and reviewing two or
more recent publications that cover similar34

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

topic areas. The list of references might include
key background books and articles that havepreceded the works being reviewed.
Reviews: 500-1500 word reviews of titles
relevant to language teachers and their students,
to include professional development titles, resources collections, textbooks (both full courseand supplementary), and software.
WWW links: 500-800 word list of reviews of
web sites useful to teachers and students related
to the theme of this issue.
‘From the Chalkface’ (Classroom activities): length of these will vary depending on theactivity, but explanations should include a clear,step- by-step description of classroom procedures. Also helpful would be including rationale

and the type of learner and classroom the activity is for. If you have a set of related activities,
please consider writing up a somewhat more
scholarly presentation as a feature (see above).
The usual submission in this section is like theactivities published in Modern English Teachingor English Teaching Professional.
Opinions & Perspectives: (500-800
words). A chance to take on topics and positions in the form of a persuasive essay. Example:‘Difficult reading passages should be eliminatedfrom university English entrance exams’. The
most persuasive articles draw on support fromscholarly sources to some extent, and they should
be informative.

35

On CUE

Spring 2003: Volume 11, Issue 1

Learner Development: Contexts,
Curricula, Connections
JALT Learner Development SIG and CUE SIG Mini-conference,
October 17-19 Kobe YMCA
(Main sessions Sat/Sun 18-19)
Learner Development underlies a great deal of the classroom teaching of both LD and CUE

members. But what exactly does it entail? How does it fit into overall educational contexts andinto students’ overall learning experiences? The LD and CUE SIGs of JALT will be holding a miniconference to explore, in a participatory way, how language teachers in Japan are addressingthese issues. We would like to encourage interested teachers to submit presentation proposals
that address questions such as the following

Contexts:

How do institutional factors constrain or facilitate learner development within an institution?
How does learner development operate in different learning contexts: junior high schools, seniorhigh schools and universities, language schools, etc, as well as in the teaching of different
languages?

Curricula:

How can learner development be realised beyond the classroom level, in informing course andprogram design?

Connections:

What are the connections between different approaches to learner development? (For example,
how do learner autonomy, critical thinking, learning skills and strategies, intercultural knowledge,
and academic literacy interrelate?)
How can learner development approaches create links between different elements of courses,
curricula, and programs, between different stages of education, and within students’ overall
learning careers?
Proposals are invited for one hour single presentations or two hour colloquium/forum/workshop
type sessions. Presenters should aim to allocate at least 50% of their sessions for discussion orother types of audience participation. Proposals for 30 minute sessions may also be accepted,
where they can be appropriately paired to make a coherent one-hour session. A limited numberof poster sessions are also available.
While the aim of this conference is to move beyond the confines of single classrooms to thewider contexts, presenters are nevertheless encouraged to ground their discussion in actual
experiences, making use of concrete evidence from the classroom wherever appropriate.
Prospective presenters should submit a 200 word outline including the following:
Title
Presenters’ names, institutional affiliations and contact details (tel, fax, postal address and email
address). Please nominate one person to be the main contact, for group presentations.
Presentation mode: workshop/research paper/discussion paper/poster session/panel discussion/forum/workshop/other
Length:one hour/two hours/30 minutes
Send proposals as Ms Word .rtf attachment, or as a simple text file by email to: Phil McCasland
proposals@kobeconference.com
Deadline for submission of proposals: 31st May

36