Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEA Letter from the
EditorIt’s been a long time coming, but this newissue of On CUE will not disappoint. Full of
relevant research, useful teaching activities,
points of view, and reﬂections on events you
may have missed, we think you will ﬁnd 13.1
useful and informative.
We begin this issue with three featurearticles. First, Joseph Falout presents his
research into the effects of foreign language
anxiety, both positive and negative, on
students in supplementary English classes.
Next, Thomas Orr explains the need forstandards for ESP professionals and proposessome preliminary criteria. Finally, Matthew
Apple reﬂects on the writing instruction
background of university students in his
writing classes.
In the Opinion & Perspective section,
John Burrell presents his thoughts on thecurrent state of the job market for university
educators in Japan and offers some advice
for those hoping to build a meaningful career here.
The Chalkface section provides two classroom applications. First, Brian Nuspliger
explains his strategy for teaching pronunciation using world populations. And Alex
Gilmore provides an exercise for developing
students’ strategic competence.
In the Research Digest, Christopher
Sullivan gives an overview of Halliday’s
systemic functional grammar and examines

its advantages, criticisms, and applications
in light of two recent articles on the subject. Next, Parrill Stribling reviews theStatistical Package for the Social Sciences(SPSS) version 12.0, statistical software forresearch.
This issue offers reviews of two recent
conferences. First, Martha Robertson andLewis Malamed tell us what happened at
Lao TESOL’s 5th annual conference in February of 2004. David Woodﬁeld reports on
the 2004 JALT Pan-Sig conference held at
Tokyo Keizai University in May.
Rounding out this issue is Debra L.
Simms-Asai’s review of Professional Development in Language Education Series:
Vols. I, II, & III.
More changes to On CUE are on the way.
At JALT 2004, the CUE executive decided
to make efforts to reach out to the broader
university English teaching community. Asa ﬁrst step, we will begin providing Japanesesummaries of feature articles from issue
13.2.
As always, your feedback and suggestions
are encouraged. And your submissions arevery much needed and appreciated.
Enjoy issue 13.1.

Mike Hood
On CUE Editor
1

From the Editor

Friends and Colleagues,

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Foreign Language Anxiety in
Freshman Supplementary Classes
Feature Article: Falout

Joseph J. Falout
Nihon University
To serve low-proﬁcient freshmen, we at the about their second language (L2) abilities:
English department of the College of Science “I have no conﬁdence.” Also when they
& Technology at Nihon University instituted speak English to me, their lips quiver andsupplementary English classes. We intend to their foreheads break out in a sweat—sureraise their proﬁciency both to help them and signs of nervousness. Strangely, anxiety has
to protect curricular standards. These op- not been covered as much in the L2 researchtional, non-credit classes are geared toward here as it has in North America (Kondo &raising all four language
Yang, 2003).
skills: reading, listening, Researchers agree anxiety
Anxiety is the feelingspeaking, and writing;affects attitudes, motivation, of apprehension, tension,a sound, comprehensive
nervousness, and worry—andachievement.
But
they
approach, designed with
it causes sweat and palpistill debate how anxiety is tation. Horwitz, Horwitz,
much thought on target
skills—“the basics”—but facilitating or debilitating. & Cope (1986) conceive
FLA as a distinct anxiety
little on those who need tolearn them. Surely these students, who were separate from general traits, speciﬁc to aable to pass the college English entrance limited context, i.e. the foreign language
exam, have already undergone plenty of this classroom. People who do not ordinarily
type of training. Perhaps there is something experience anxiety may do so when learning
else they need. To ensure the success of the a foreign language.
The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiclasses, we should ﬁnd the reason these students require extra help.
ety Scale (FLCAS), proposed by Horwitz,
We can address learning needs better when Horwitz, & Cope in 1986, has proven to be
we know more about learners’ feelings, or an effective tool to measure FLA (MacIntyre
their affective states. Ellis (1994) says the & Gardner, 1991). It now inﬂuences mostbest research on affective states comes from FLA studies. In Japan, this instrument largely
one area—anxiety. This study measures the inﬂuenced FLA studies that found reliability
foreign language anxiety (FLA) of these ( Kondo & Yang 2003; Takada 2003; Yamastudents in the supplementary classes, and shiro & Sasaki 1999a, 1999b).
analyzes these levels with proﬁciency, learnFLCAS comprises three factors: (1) communication apprehension; (2) test anxiety;ing, and attendance.
and (3) fear of negative evaluation. CommuBackgroundnication apprehension depicts self-conscious,
Many learners in Japan have said to me inhibited speakers. They fear speaking in
2

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

groups, large or small. A foreign language
complicates matters by restricting listening
and speaking. Test anxiety stems from a fearof failure—a performance anxiety where any
mark less than perfect is viewed as failure.
Fear of negative evaluation is the fear ofsocial evaluation—being evaluated personally and professionally by peer or superior(Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986).
Recent FLCAS-based studies relate positive language learning attitudes and FLA. For
Japanese students of English, FLA correlelates to learning styles and beliefs; a negative
correlation of FLA with proﬁciency; and asigniﬁcant correlation between FLA and external inﬂuences, particularly parental beliefs
and classroom environment (Yamashiro &McLaughlin, 2000).
FLA research distinguishes between facilitating and debilitating anxiety. For thosefacilitated, they knuckle down, pay attention,
perform well; for those debilitated, they
avoid the cause of their anxiety both mentallyand physically—the difference between ﬁght
or ﬂight. Mental avoidance means lack of attention, where intake cannot be performed.
In this case, anxiety causes an affective ﬁlter
in learning.
Researchers agree anxiety affects attitudes,
motivation, and achievement. But they still
debate how anxiety is facilitating or debilitating; whether it is situation-speciﬁc (the L2classroom) or trait-speciﬁc (personality); andhow it relates to other affective and cognitive dimensions of L2 learning (Yamashiro& McLaughlin, 2000).

ﬁlter in their learning?
4. Does FLA affect their attendance?

Instrument
The FLCAS, developed by Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope (1986), was translated into
Japanese. This 33-item survey mixed thethree FLA factors, with questions positively
and negatively worded, the former being
reverse-coded items. Instead of adopting theoriginal 5-point Likert scale, I applied a 6point Likert scale to force no neutral answers.
Values range from 1 = “I strongly agree”
to 6 = “I strongly disagree”; the greater thenumber, the stronger the anxiety. FLCAS is

Research Questions
1. Are the three factors on the FLCAS
reliable when applied to learners in
supplementary English classes?
2. Is FLA related to their proﬁciency?
3. Does FLA cause an affective
3

Feature Article: Falout

Participants
The students represent roughly the lower
third in English proﬁciency of two science
departments as determined by a proﬁciency
test—a replication of a typical college entrance exam—administered by the college
before ﬁrst semester. Of 100 possible points,
their averages were 49 points, with TOEIC
averages at 300 (in comparison, the top
third averaged, respectively, 78 and 347).
Participants voluntarily attended one of three
non-credit supplementary English courses
between the ﬁrst semester of 2002 and theﬁrst semester of 2003, meeting during lunchhour or during ﬁfth period, which for many
was after classes for the day.
I administered surveys during class, thoughsome took them home for completion. From
110 surveys passed out, 82 were returned.
Seven of those were eliminated—four surveys were incomplete, and three students did
not take the post-test. The resulting sample
is 75. Not all are Japanese; three came from
Asian countries. While the number is disproportionate considering the larger student
body, for the supplementary English classes
it is representative.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Feature Article: Falout

On CUE

calculated by adding the values for each answer, so the range for 33 items is 33 to 198;for each factor, it is 11 to 66. All items wererepresented in both English and Japanese.
One of the measures of proﬁciency was thescores from the college proﬁciency test mentioned previously. To have another measureof proﬁciency, and to measure improvement,
I developed a 100-point test speciﬁc to the
supplementary class contents. On the ﬁrst
and last days of the class, students took thisfor the pre- and post-tests; the difference
between the two measured learning.

the three foreign students, in relation to their
Japanese counterparts, received low FLCAS
values (FLCAS=80, 112, and 112; comparewith the rest at FLCAS mean=134).
Table 3 shows Pearson-product moment
correlation coefficients. The correlation
Table 3. FLCAS factors and Pearson
correlation coefﬁcients (N=75, †N=67)

Results
For the three FLCAS factors, Table 1
shows the 6-point Likert scale mean, standard deviation, skew, and Cronbach alpha reliability. All three factors reached reliability(α≥.80) in descending order: communication apprehension (α=.88), fear of negative

Proﬁciency†

PretestPosttest∆
test

AttendanceCommunication
apprehension

-.096

.059

.087

-.011

.163

Test anxiety

-.202

.106

.066

-.097

.266*

Fear ofnegative
evaluation

-.128

-.010

.020

.032

.236*

FLCAS

-.149

.054

.062

-.026

.234*

* Signiﬁcant at the p < .05 level (2-tailed)Figure 1. The independence of anxiety andlearning

Table 1. Survey results by 6-point Likert scale

Communication
apprehension
Test anxiety
Fear of negativeevaluation

Mean

SD

Skew

α

4.02

1.21

-0.31

0.88

3.98

1.21

-0.17

0.82

4.06

1.22

-0.42

0.80

Table 2. Survey Results by FLCAS(factor min. = 11; max. = 66)
Communication
apprehension
Test anxiety
Fear of negativeevaluation
FLCAS

Mean

SD

Skew

44.3

8.0

-0.2

43.7

7.2

0.02

44.6

7.4

-0.2

132.6

21.2

-0.1

between proﬁciency and FLCAS was not
signiﬁcant, not by the college proﬁciency
test, nor by the class pre- and post-tests (respectively, r =-.149, .054, and .062; p < .05).
Nor was the correlation between learning and
FLCAS signiﬁcant (r =-.026; p < .05). Even
distribution in Figure 1 shows learning and
FLA act independently from each other.
Signiﬁcance emerged between FLCAS
and attendance (r =.234*; p<.05). There
was about an even correlation with it in fear

evaluation (α=.82), and test anxiety (α=.80).
Table 2 shows the FLCAS measurements.
The Appendix gives the breakdown by item
for each factor. For an interesting side note,4Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Figure 4. The relationship between test
anxiety and attendance

Figure 2. The relationship between foreign
language anxiety and attendance

Figure 3. The relationship between fear ofnegative evaluation and attendance

Discussion
The students of the supplementary English
classes are experiencing FLA. From its lackof correlation with the proﬁciency exams,
the class pre-tests, and post-tests, I interpretthat their low proﬁciency is not due to their
FLA. Between these class tests, we at the
English department were happy to see anaverage increase of 9.2%. From this learning,
FLA did not act as an affective ﬁlter—their
Table 4. Attendance correlation by item
improvement was neither facilitated nor(N=75)
debilitated by
Itemanxiety. How21. The more I study for a language test, the more confused I get.
.370**
7. I keep thinking that the other students are better at languages than I am.
.355** ever, FLA fa25. Language classes move so quickly I worry about getting left behind.
.309** cilitated learn15. I get upset when I don’t understand what the teacher is correcting.
.285*
ing behavior in
23. I always feel that the other students speak the foreign language better than I do.
.264*
attendance.
20. I can feel my heart pounding when I’m going to be called on in language class.
.252*
10. I worry about the consequences of failing my foreign language class.245*
For noncredit classes*Signiﬁcant at the p<.05 (2-tailed)that met during free hours, these students**Signiﬁcant at the p<.01 (2-tailed)attended surprisingly often—on average,
5

Feature Article: Faloutof negative evaluation (r =.236*; p<.05), ahigher correlation in test anxiety (r =.266*;
p<.05), but no correlation in communication
apprehension (r =.163; p<.05). Figures 2, 3,
and 4 show these regression lines. Attendance also correlated with seven items, listed
in Table 4.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Feature Article: Falout

On CUE

88.7%. They seem to be coming out of fear mates—was a factor of demotivation. On aof failure—the highest value from the survey 6-point Likert scale set similar to this study,
is item 10, “I worry about the consequences the result was negligible (mean = 3.59). Neiof failing my foreign language class” (mean ther did such concerns signiﬁcantly appear= 4.96), which appears in test anxiety, the in their attributions of demotivation (onlyfactor with the highest correlation to at- 0.9%). So I do not consider attitude of grouptendance. If this behavior represents prior members a factor of demotivation, but fear
efforts to study, there was little return on of negative evaluation is an important factor
those efforts; on the proﬁciency examination in their FLA.
The high value infor English, they enteredcommunication apcollege at the lower third
FLA neither facilitated norof their class. Little moreprehension might notdebilitated learning, however it be regarded as imporis known of their learning beliefs—beliefs that positively affected attendance. tant, at least not when
may be driving them tomeasured upon college
one failed attempt after another. It must be entrance—they might not have had enoughfrustrating.
experience with communication to know
Another study on the same students (Falout how they felt about it; it came as a hypotheti& Maruyama, 2004), though a slightly differ- cal situation. As Murphey (2002) explains,ent sampling, suggests that they experienced Japanese students entering post-secondary
greater demotivation than their high-pro- education have so little experience usingﬁcient counterparts, and that their highest English communicatively, that when asked
factor of demotivation was self-conﬁdence. how they feel about communicating in EngA total of 73% of them ﬂatly dislike studying lish, results are misleading. He argues that
English, more than double the percentage for such studies to be valid, students need tofor the high-proﬁcient students. This much have “contrast frames of reference”—they
negative affect cannot be ignored.
need at least a semester of communicative
Even for their L2 aptitude, students are classroom experience, not simply a descripconcerned about how they look. By a slim tion thereof—before they can “make true
margin, fear of negative evaluation was the choices” about it (p. 8). I believe the highhighest FLA factor (mean = 4.06). From the FLA values for communication apprehenlow values in items 13 and 31 (respective sion should not be viewed as reports frommeans of 3.44 and 3.33), students are not experience, but as the apprehension students
embarrassed in class or afraid of being made imagine they would feel if performing comfun of. They are upset they do not appear as municatively in the L2.
competent as the others, as the high values
show in items 7, 23, and 25 (respective Conclusion
means of 4.88, 4.43, and 4.39)—three of the
FLCAS was reliable when applied to stuseven items that correlate to attendance; they dents of the supplementary English classes.
do want to keep up with the class. From the FLA neither facilitated nor debilitated learnpreviously mentioned study, this group of ing, however it positively affected attendstudents was surveyed speciﬁcally to ﬁnd if ance. Instead of focusing on rehashing thetheir attitude toward group members—class- language, these classes need to address those6Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

who are learning it. To help these learners,
we must further investigate their learning experiences and beliefs. We can improve how
students feel, think, and learn, to aid them inthe common goal—English acquisition.
Acknowledgement
For signiﬁcant contribution to this study,
I thank Mika Falout.
References
Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language
acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Falout, J., & Maruyama, M. (2004). A
comparative study of proﬁciency andlearner demotivation. The Language
Teacher, 28(8), 3-9.
Horwitz, E.K., Horwitz, M.B., & Cope,
J. (1986). Foreign language classroom
anxiety. Modern Language Journal, 70,
125-132.
Kondo, S., & Yang, Y. (2003). Daigakusei otaisho to shita eigo jugyo funanshakudo
no sakusei to sono kento. [The English
Language Classroom Anxiety Scale: Test
construction, reliability, and validity.] JALT
Journal, 25(2), 187-196.
MacIntyre, P.D., & Gardner, R.C. (1991).

AppendixCommunication Apprehension
Item

Mean

SD

Skew

1. I never feel quite sure of myself when I am speaking in my foreign language
class.
4. It frightens me when I don’t understand what the teacher is saying in theforeign language.
5. It wouldn’t bother me at all to take more foreign language classes.*
9. I start to panic when I have to speak without preparation in language class.
14. I would not be nervous speaking the foreign language with native
speakers.*
18. I feel conﬁdent when I speak in foreign language class.*
24. I feel very self-conscious about speaking the foreign language in front ofother students.

4.56

1.09

-0.83

3.41

1.22

0.12

3.53
4.68
3.55

1.14
1.14
1.19

0.0004
-1.02
-0.04

4.81

0.77

-0.22

3.93

1.04

-0.45

7

Feature Article: Falout

Methods and results in the study of foreign
language anxiety: A review of the literature.
Language Learning, 41, 85-117.
Murphey, T. (2002). From the horse’s mouth:
Advice from second-semester Japaneseuniversity students to J/SHS English
teachers in Japan. Learning Learning, 9(1),2-10.
Takada, T. (2003). Learner characteristics ofearly starters and late starters of English
language earning: Anxiety, motivation, andaptitude. JALT Journal, 25(1), 5-30.
Yamashiro, A.D., & Sasaki, M. (1999a).
Investigating relationships among
attitudinal factors and English proﬁciency
in Heisi International University students.
The Journal of Heisei International
University, 3, 55-78.
Yamashiro, A.D., & Sasaki, M. (1999b). The
relationship among motivation, attitudes,and English proﬁciency: The case of
Saitama Junior College. Journal of Saitama
Junior College, 8, 129-152.
Yamashiro, A.D., & McLaughlin, J. (2000).
Relationships among attitudes, motivation,
anxiety and English language proﬁciency inJapanese college students. In S. Cornwell &P. Robinson (Eds.), Individual differencesin foreign language learning: Effects ofaptitude, intelligence and motivation (pp.
9-26). Tokyo: Aoyama Gakuin University.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Item

Mean

SD

Skew

27. I get nervous and confused when I am speaking in my language classes.
29. I get nervous when I don’t understand every word the language teachersays.
32. I would probably feel comfortable around native speakers of the foreign
language.*
33. I get nervous when the language teacher asks questions which I haven’t
prepared in advance.

3.75

1.05

-0.18

3.92

1.14

-0.24

3.36

1.07

0.17

4.76

1.01

-0.79

Item

Mean

SD

Skew

2. I don’t worry about making mistakes in language class.*
6. During language class, I ﬁnd myself thinking about things that havenothing to do with the course.
8. I am usually at ease during tests in my language class.*
10. I worry about the consequences of failing my foreign language class.
12. In language class, I get so nervous I forget things I know.
15. I get upset when I don’t understand what the teacher is correcting.
16. Even if I am well prepared for language class, I feel anxious about it.
19. I am afraid that my language teacher is ready to correct every mistake I
make.
21. The more I study for a language test, the more confused I get.
22. I don’t feel pressure to prepare very well for language class.*
30. I feel overwhelmed by the number of rules you have to learn to speak aforeign language.

4.12

1.44

-0.60

3.68
4.03
4.96
3.95
4.39
3.87

1.09
1.25
1.12
1.04
0.96
1.22

0.04
-0.26
-0.93
0.03
-0.29
-0.38

3.29
3.43
3.81

0.98
1.00
1.17

0.69
0.37
-0.51

4.21

1.12

-0.44

Item

Mean

SD

Skew

3. I tremble when I know that I’m going to be called on in language class.
7. I keep thinking that the other students are better at languages than I am.
11. I don’t understand why some people get so upset over foreign language
classes.*
13. It embarrasses me to volunteer answers in my language class.
17. I often feel like not going to my language class.
20. I can feel my heart pounding when I’m going to be called on in language
class.
23. I always feel that the other students speak the foreign language better thanI do.
25. Language classes move so quickly I worry about getting left behind.
26. I feel more tense and nervous in my language class than in my otherclasses.
28. When I’m on my way to language class, I feel very sure and relaxed.*
31. I am afraid that the other students will laugh at me when I speak theforeign language.

3.56
4.88

1.24
1.03

-0.14
-1.22

4.81
3.44
3.87

1.06
1.14
1.18

-1.36
0.12
-0.40

3.84

1.28

-0.28

4.43
4.39

1.16
1.03

-0.90
-0.69

3.95
4.11

1.09
1.01

-0.28
-0.55

3.33

1.11

0.04

Feature Article: Falout

Test Anxiety

Fear of Negative Evaluation*Reverse-coded item

8

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Professional Standards in English
for Speciﬁc PurposesThomas OrrCenter for Language Research
University of Aizu

Who are the professionals?
This new interest in ESP at the highest
educational levels has prompted considerable
discussion at Japanese universities andcompanies alike, but one long-ignored
problem within the ESP profession seems
to be presenting some hindrance to thedevelopment of quality ESP design and implementation. Identifying the need for ESP
is easy, but identifying the professionals who
can do the work is not. This is a concern
not only at MEXT but also among those atuniversities who would like to hire quality
ESP professionals to implement the kind ofreform that MEXT is calling for.
With the growing popularity of ESP, more
and more language teachers are adding ESP
to their list of specializations on their CVs,
but university administrators cannot easily
determine when a job applicant’s claims
are justiﬁed. There are very few diplomas
in ESP to demonstrate qualiﬁcation; evenmore importantly, there are no professional
standards in ESP that can serve as a yardstickfor evaluating ESP expertise. In most cases,
job applicants create their own criteria for
9

Feature Article: Orr

new educational task falls clearly within thedomain of ESP and is thus generating heightened interest in the ﬁeld and its professionals,
who frequently address workplace English
learning needs as an important part of their
ESP work.

Growth of interest in ESPEnglish for Speciﬁc Purposes (ESP)—thebranch of English language education which
focuses on training in speciﬁc domains ofEnglish to accomplish speciﬁc academic orworkplace tasks—is attracting greater interest at the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT),
as well as at Japanese universities, as thedemand for university graduates with higher
levels of competence in the English needed
speciﬁcally for their occupations becomesincreasingly important for Japan’s survivalin global markets and international communities. The Ministry’s Action Plan to“cultivate Japanese with English abilities,”
announced 31 March 2003, includes the goal
“On graduating from university, graduates
can use English in their work,” followed by
the request that “Each university should establish attainment targets from the viewpointof fostering personnel who can use English
in their work” (MEXT, 2003).
This call for revising English language
education at Japanese universities to include
training in workplace English—beyond thealready established goal of providing training in general purpose English—has also
been promoted in white papers published by
the Ministry (see www.mext.org), at major
events such as English Forum 2004 (held
March 28, 2004, Tokyo International Exhibition Center), and by the national press. ThisWinter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Feature Article: Orrevaluating personal skills in ESP and thenassert their own professional competence.
Professional qualiﬁcations in ESP currently
remain self-appraised and self-proclaimed,with very little available to guide bothpractitioners and prospective employers intheir assessment.

developing professional standards forpractitioners in TESL/TEFL is needed ﬁrst,
but actually considerably more progress has
already been made in this area. Standards
for ESP are needed more urgently in Japan,
and they require special attention that has not
yet been considered in general ELT becauseof the additional skills and knowledge that
ESP work requires. This paper will touchon the issue of standards development in
TESL/TEFL, but the more pressing concern
is with professional standards in ESP. And
that will be the focus of this article.

The need for standards
As a subset of ELT, ESP requires thesame knowledge and skill sets that are
required for other varieties of English
language teaching; but in most cases, ESP
also demands considerable knowledge of
specific workplace documents, dialogue,
culture, and content that can extend far
beyond the material normally taught inapplied linguistics and ELT certification
programs. Students of computer science andengineering, for example, require specialized
training in the reading and writing oftechnical documentation and speciﬁcations,patents, and project reports, but no ELT
program offers this kind of training, and thus
most language teachers must acquire thistype of knowledge on their own. Specializedskills in research for needs assessment, andmedia design for materials development, arealso required for expertise in ESP, but muchof this must also be learned independently if
ELT training programs do not include theseskill targets in their curriculums.
But whether an ESP practitioner isuniversity trained or self-trained is really
not the problem. The problem is that the ESP
profession has not yet generated any widely
accepted standards that universities andindividuals can use to guide their training,
and that university administrators can use
to effectively assess the ESP qualiﬁcationsof prospective employees in their new
workplace-English language programs.
It can be argued that more attention to

Where standards come from
Criteria for membership in a profession
and criteria for status as a professional in a
profession are not as ﬁrmly established as
the laws of physics or mathematics. There
are no universal absolutes that deﬁne thesecategories, and no single person or organization has enough authority to determine global
standards for professional membership or
professional status for all people everywhere.
Rather, professional standards evolve slowly
through discussions among practitioners at
local, national, and international levels whenpeople with common interests and concerns
gather and set up professional societies. It isthrough the policies and publications of these
specialist communities that standards formembership and professional qualiﬁcation
evolve and compete for acceptance in various
realms. Standards only become authoritative
through consensus, and different societies
may agree on different standards. Criteria formembership in a professional organization
may be clear (e.g., simply pay the membership dues), but membership in a profession
as well as qualiﬁcation to be classiﬁed as abona ﬁde professional in a profession may
differ considerably from organization to organization and be limited by organizational
10Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEor national boundaries.
Criteria for membership and professional
status in other organizations
In many ﬁelds, requirements for membership are stiffer than those in English language
education, with membership in an association
being synonymous with membership in a
profession. The Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers (IEEE), for example,
requires professional degrees and work experience in a designated technical or engineering ﬁeld to qualify for membership, and thenranks members within the IEEE membershipaccording to professional qualiﬁcations andcontributions established by the society andenforced by a board of reviewers. Ranks
beginning from novice to expert are Student
Member, Associate Member, Regular Member, Senior Member, Fellow Member, andHonorary Member. Membership and rank
in the organization reﬂect the association’sviews of status in professional expertise
fairly clearly, with higher-ranking membership titles reserved for those with superior
professional knowledge and skills.
The case is similar in other professions.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA)
requires that members be licensed architects
in the United States to become a Member, or
hold a degree in architecture and/or teach in auniversity program of architecture to become
an Associate Member. The British Medical
Association (BMA) requires Members to be
doctors registered in the UK with the General
Medical Council (GMC) and requires Student
Members to be medical students enrolled ina registered medical program. Similarly, the
Law Society of Singapore (LSS) requires
Members to be practicing lawyers admitted
to the Singapore Bar and Associate Members
to be working in the legal ﬁeld. Degrees inarchitecture, medicine or law alone are not

Criteria for membership and professional
status in English language teaching
In English language teaching (ELT), there
is generally little or no relation between being a member of an ELT organization andbeing a member of the ELT profession, formembership in the organization is commonly
open to anyone who pays the membershipfees, irrespective of training, experience,or employment. Teachers of English to
Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL),
for example, publishes no requirements formembership in the organization; The Japan
Association of College English Teachers(JACET) announces that it is “Open to all
persons teaching English at Japanese colleges and universities and those interested incollege English teaching;” and the International Association of Teachers of English as a
Foreign Language (IATEFL) advertises that
“Membership is open to anyone involved in
the English Language Teaching industry.”
Other than student membership, which
requires enrollment as a student, there is
generally no criteria or system for ranking
various levels of expertise, neither withinmost ELT organizations nor within the ELT
profession itself, other than certiﬁcates anddiplomas, which employers use to evaluate
qualiﬁcations. But these range widely intheir criteria for attainment and do not give
people much information about the holder’s
11

Feature Article: Orr

sufﬁcient for regular membership in these
professional societies, nor is mere interest,
but professional qualiﬁcation via clearlyspeciﬁed standards (which typically include
high scores on specialized examinations) isalso required. In other words, membershipin some professional organizations is synonymous with membership in a profession,and one’s status within the organization may
reﬂect one’s expertise in the discipline.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Feature Article: Orr

On CUE

English as a foreign language (EFL) setting,have the right to be taught by qualiﬁed andtrained teachers. Native speaker proﬁciency
in the target language alone is not a sufﬁcientqualiﬁcation for such teaching positions; theﬁeld of teaching English to speakers of otherlanguages (TESOL) is a professional discipline that requires specialized training.
Qualified ESL and EFL educators not
only should demonstrate a high level ofwritten and oral proﬁciency in the English
language (regardless of native language),
but also should demonstrate teaching competency. Moreover, qualiﬁed ESL and EFL
educators should be aware of current trends
and research and their instructional implications in the ﬁelds of linguistics, applied
linguistics, second language acquisition,sociolinguistics, language pedagogy andmethodology, literacy development, curriculum and materials development, assessment,
and cross-cultural communication. Where
applicable, ESL and EFL educators should
receive the necessary degree, licensing,validation, or certiﬁcation as determinedby their institution, country, or region from
qualiﬁed ESL/EFL teacher educators. Most
importantly, ESL and EFL educators, likeall teachers, require ongoing professional
development, and should receive both theresources and support for continued professional growth and achievement. (TESOL,
2003)—underlines mine.
TESOL has not yet developed a means
for assessing these abilities nor begun
requiring their attainment for membershipin the organization, but these standards do
provide language educators with a yardstick
to measure their own progress toward
professionalism, as well as criteria that
graduate schools or employers can use todetermine one’s suitability for graduationor employment. This is a positive step in thereal ability in the ELT profession. Membership in a professional language teachingorganization may not be synonymous withmembership in the language teaching profession at all.
In ESP, within the field of ELT, thesituation is the same if not worse, for there
are no organizations devoted solely to ESP,
but rather only a few special interest groups
within larger language associations. It is
possible for anyone to claim membership in
the ESP profession and classify him/herself
as an ESP professional, for there are nostandards established by the ESP communitythat people can use to clarify professional
identities in objective terms. Joining an ESP
special interest group, prompted by a sudden
new assignment to teach business English tobusiness majors or engineering English toengineering majors may be the only qualiﬁcation a person has to establish his/her identity in ESP. More substantial qualiﬁcations
are clearly necessary if universities plan torecruit ESP professionals to carry out thekind of reform that MEXT wants.
The movement for standards in English
language teaching
Fortunately, the situation is starting tochange. In its recognition that anyone canclaim to be an English professional in theabsence of standards, TESOL, for example,
has begun to spend considerable effort andmoney on developing standards for the ELT
profession and publishing them in various
forms—one of the most visible being theposition shown below, with sections of particular interest underlined.
TESOL Position Statement on Teacher
Quality in the Field of Teaching English
to Speakers of Other Languages
English language learners, whether inan English as a second language (ESL) or
12

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

right direction.
In respect to other ELT organizations, themovement toward developing professional
standards is slower. JACET, for example,
appears to have no published standards fordetermining one’s membership in the ELT
profession or status as an ELT professional;
however, it does confer three awards for
professional excellence:
JACETAwards for Professional Excellence
1. Excellence in Research
2. Most Promising Newcomer
3. Excellence in Teachinglearning in Japan” without mention of any
requirements for experience or employment
in ELT. This is not a criticism, but rather
further evidence that professional societies
in ELT (and their special interest groups,
such as ESP) are gathering places for persons
interested in ELT or ESP but not necessarily
for persons with any commonly agreed upon
qualiﬁcations in ELT or ESP.

How candidates are evaluated and whatcriteria are used remains considerably vague,
however. IATEFL has made less progress inthe area of standards, for it apparently publishes no criteria for evaluating one’s status
as a member or as a professional in ELT, andthere is no mention of any awards for excellence or expertise on its Web site.
The Japan Association for Language
Teaching (JALT) is similar in these respects
for it also requires no special qualiﬁcations
for membership in the organization, exceptthat one pays the membership fees, agrees
with the organization’s purposes, and abides
by its rules. The organization was createdto:foster research, hold conferences, issue
publications, cooperate with related
professional organizations, and carry out
other activities for those interested in the
improvement of language teaching andlearning in Japan and contribute to the development of activities in language teaching andlearning, social education, and international
cooperation. (JALT Constitution & Bylaws,
2003)—underlines mine.
The JALT Constitution speciﬁes that theorganization exists “for those interested in
the improvement of language teaching and
13

Feature Article: Orr

The movement for standards in ESP
In the ﬁeld of ESP, the movement forestablishing standards for membership in
the ESP profession and standards for qualiﬁcation as an ESP professional (vs. qualiﬁcations for simply membership in an ESP
special interest group) is a hot new topic ofdiscussion among those working in ESP,
but the discussions have yet to produce any
speciﬁc results. ESP professionals remain
self-proclaimed entities based on subjective
personal criteria that differ widely from person to person. Memberships in professional
ESP organizations serve as evidence of interest in ESP, but they do not yet certify theability to successfully engage in ESP work.
The creation of standards for identifying
professionals in ESP need not remain simply
a topic for debate, but rather it can be a rich
new area for research and development inJapan among interested persons in JACET,
JALT, or any other organization. Japan can
set the pace in the development of standards
and best practices within ESP that can impact
the profession in other parts of the world andserve to clarify professional development
goals for increasing the number of qualiﬁed
professionals who can meet the ESP demands
requested by the Japanese government andJapanese universities. Where might the work
begin? The following recommendations
point to excellent starting points.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Feature Article: Orr

On CUE

English includes not only knowledge of a
speciﬁc part of the English language but also
competency in the skills required to use thislanguage, as well as sufﬁcient understandingof the contexts within which it is situated.
Examples of English language instruction
for speciﬁc purposes contrasted with English
instruction for general purposes has been
illustrated as follows:

Potential criteria for membership in the ESPProfession
Criteria for determining membershipin the ESP profession (i.e., when one isjustiﬁed in claiming that he/she is an ESP
professional) are not yet ﬁrmly established;however, several publications have alreadymade considerable progress in clarifying
what ESP work entails. Some of the mostinternationally visible are the following threebooks and two international journals.

General Purpose English

Used to:initiate conversation
make a doctor’s appointment
order food in a restaurant
read a local newspaper
ﬁll out a credit card application
comprehend the TV news
shop via the internet

English for Speciﬁc Purposes: Case
Studies in TESOL Practice, Orr (Ed.),TESOL Press (2002)
Developments in ESP: A MultiDisciplinary Approach, Dudley-Evans
and St John, Cambridge University
Press (1998)
English for Speciﬁc Purposes, Hutchinson
and Waters, Cambridge University
Press (1987)
English for Speciﬁc Purposes: An
International Journal, Elsevier Press.
Journal of English for Academic Purposes,
Elsevier Press.

Speciﬁc Purpose English

Used to:negotiate a merger
write software documentation
engage in courtroom debate
read technical speciﬁcations
complete a grant proposal
write a medical perscription
explain how to operate a craneDeﬁnition of ESP
According to descriptions that have
evolved in ESP literature, a suitable starting
place for deﬁning ESP ofﬁcially might be thefollowing deﬁnition offered by Orr (2002,
p. 1):[ESP is] a branch of language educationthat researches and teaches subsets of English to assist learners in successfully carrying out speciﬁc tasks for speciﬁc purposes.
[The English] that is primarily taught or
researched consists of the spoken and written
discourse in academic and workplace settings, which is unfamiliar to most native andnonnative speakers and thus requires special
training. [Proﬁciency in] speciﬁc-purpose(Orr, 2002, p. 2)
Practices that ESP professionals normallyengage in are listed by Dudley-Evans and St
John (1998) as follows:
Primary Activities of the ESP Professional
1. Needs Analysis
2. Course Design
3. Materials Selection
4. Teaching
5. Evaluation

Articles that discuss the nature of ESP also
provide excellent starting points for developing standards of practice and qualiﬁcation
14

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEseek to address those needs in the best way
possible.
General ESP Competencies
1. Ability to identify and understanda learner’s goals in respect to target
tasks.
2. Ability to identify and understand the
linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge/
skills required to carry out those tasks
successfully.
3. Ability to identify and understand thelearner’s gaps in the required knowledge/
skills required to carry out those tasks.
4. Ability to prepare appropriate materials/
training to ﬁll in those gaps.
5. Ability to assess the learner’s progress
toward the speciﬁed learning goals.
6. Ability to evaluate and continually reﬁnethe entire process.
Speciﬁc ESP Competencies
1. Knowledge of the ﬁeld or profession
being served, in terms of academic orworkplace activities.
2. Knowledge of the ﬁeld or profession
being served, in terms of linguistic(e.g., words, texts), paralinguistic (e.g.,intonation, stress), nonlinguistic (e.g.,graphics, gestures) communication.
3. Knowledge of the ﬁeld or profession
being served, in terms of culture (e.g.,values, preferences, best practices).
4. Knowledge of the ﬁeld or profession
being served, in terms of content (e.g.,basic laws, principles, theories, concepts,
goals, methods, issues, problems).

Potential criteria for status as an ESP
professional
Although speciﬁc criteria for distinguishing professionals from novices are hard tonegotiate among practitioners and specialists, I propose the following criteria, whichmight qualify as potential candidates for ESP
standards:

These requirements might serve as starting
places for developing a set of speciﬁcations
for professional certiﬁcation in ESP thatpractitioners could aim at developing
and organizations could use to evaluate
the suitability of educators to address

Foundational ESP Qualiﬁcation
An ESP professional must possess a central, overriding concern for the genuine needsof learners, above other considerations, and15

Feature Article: Orr

in ESP, such as the following, abstracted
here:
ESP has become central to the teaching ofEnglish in University contexts and there canbe little doubt of its success as an approachto understanding language use. This successis largely due to ESP's distinctive approachto language teaching based on identiﬁcationof the speciﬁc language features, discourse
practices and communicative skills of target
groups, and on teaching practices that recognize the particular subject-matter needs
and expertise of learners. Unfortunately,
however, this strength is increasingly threatened by conceptions of ESP which moveit towards more general views of literacy,emphasizing the idea of ‘generic’ skills andfeatures which are transferable across different disciplines or occupations. In thispaper I argue the case for speciﬁcity: that
ESP must involve teaching the literacy skills
which are appropriate to the purposes andunderstandings of particular academic andprofessional communities. The paper traces
the arguments for a speciﬁc view, outlines
some supporting research, and advocates theneed to reafﬁrm our commitment to researchbased language education. (Hyland, 2002,
p.385). – underlines mine.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Feature Article: Orr

speciﬁc English learning needs. The actual
development, reﬁnement, and acceptancewould require participation and agreementby many in the ESP profession, however,before the criteria could be given muchcredibility. But at least this proposal initiatesa start in the right direction with a potential
rough draft for others to reﬁne further.

References
Dudley-Evans, T. and St John, M. (1998).
Developments in ESP: A Multi-Disciplinary
Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
English for Speciﬁc Purposes: An International
Journal. Amsterdam: Elsevier Press.
http://authors.elsevier.com/JournalDetail.
html?PubID=682&Precis=DESC
Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987). English
for Speciﬁc Purposes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hyland, K. (2002). Speciﬁcity revisited: How
far should we go now? English for Speciﬁc
Purposes, 21 (4), 385-395.
JALT (2003). Constitution & Bylaws.
http://www.jalt.org/download/
constitution&bylaws.pdf
Journal of English for Academic Purposes.
Amsterdam: Elsevier Press. http://authors.
elsevier.com/JournalDetail.html?PubID=62
2440&Precis=DESC
MEXT (2003). Regarding the Establishmentof an Action Plan to Cultivate “Japanesewith English Abilities.” http://www.mext.
go.jp/english/topics/03072801.htm
Orr, T. (Ed). (2002). English for Speciﬁc
Purposes: Case Studies in TESOL Practice.
Alexandria, VA: TESOL Press.
TESOL. (2003). TESOL Position Statement
on Teacher Quality in the Field of Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages.
http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/bin.asp?CID=3
2&DID=374&DOC=FILE.PDF

Conclusion
If the ﬁeld of ESP wishes to make genuine
progress toward clarifying its criteria formembership in the ESP profession as wellas its standards for status as an ESP professional, there needs to be clear speciﬁcations
and clear goals. At present, the ﬁeld of ESP
has yet to establish any criteria along theselines. This is a fruitful area for research anddevelopment within the ESP community,
for it clariﬁes for teachers who are interested in ESP the nature of ESP work andthe standards by which that work can beprofessionally judged. Potential criteria for
determining membership and ranking within
the ESP community might begin with someof the ideas suggested above; however, professional standards must ultimately evolvecommunally and be accepted widely before
criteria can be ofﬁcially established and goals
for professional development be clearly identiﬁed. If standards can be developed for ESP
within Japan, it will become clearer as to who
is able to help Japanese universities develop
quality instruction in workplace English, andit will become clearer as to what professional
skills language teachers should aim for toqualify for this kind of work.

Note: This article is based on an invited speechdelivered at the JACET ESP Symposium, English
Education for Health Care Professionals, held on
January 10, 2004, at St. Luke’s College of Nursing
in Tokyo, Japan, followed by a simpler version ﬁrst
published in the Annual Report of the JACET-SIG
on ESP, Vol. 6, March 2004. This paper has been
considerably revised and refocused for On CUE
to draw wider attention to the issues that currently
concern Japanese universities so that more people
may participate in the discussions.
16Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Learners and Writing Instruction
Backgrounds: A Preliminary Study
Matthew Apple
Himeji Dokkyo University

17

Feature Article: Apple

to discover the writing instruction backBackground
When Japanese students take university grounds of students beginning a university
writing classes with native English speak- writing course.
ers for the ﬁrst time, their instructors often
assume that students have had paragraph Methodology
The total number of students surveyed
writing instruction, when that may not be
the case at all. At the same time, many stu- was 43, roughly evenly divided between
dents are also introduced to process writing two sections of Advanced Performance A, a(brainstorming, outlining, drafting, etc.) and required once-per-week, year-long English
reading and writing course
to the art of essay writing.
for all ﬁrst year students at
Unfortunately, many stuFew
seemedtounderstanda private four-year college
dents have difﬁculty withthatwritingasastrucin western Japan. One secwriting skills above thesentence level, often as a tured, creative process was tion consisted of Chinese
result of the ongoing gram- something which could be language majors; the other,business majors. The quesmar-translation focus oftaught.
tionnaire itself consisted
English writing classes inof 6 “bio-data” questions,Japanese secondary educa6 “yes/no” questions and 2 open-responsetion (Hirayanagi, 1998; Takagi, 2001).
In the university classes I currently teach, questions. A ﬁnal question asked students
students seem to expect a grammar or a to write down any proﬁciency tests they hadreading class, with writing coming as either taken. The questionnaire was distributed ingrammar practice á la ﬁll-in-the-blanks, or the ﬁrst class of the spring 2004 semester.
as questions to a given reading passage withJapanese translation provided. The notion of Questionnaire results“rhetoric” appears new to them. Even when
Questions 1 through 6 were “bio-data”
the term is translated into Japanese, few seem questions about students’ hometowns, ages,
to understand that writing as a structured, and so forth. These questions have beencreative process was something which could omitted here for the sake of space. The
be taught. Wondering about the high school “meat” of the questionnaire began at Quesinstruction students had received, not only in tions 7 and 9, which asked the students for a
English writing but also in Japanese, led me “yes,” “no,” or “I don’t remember” answer,
to devise a short questionnaire in an attempt while Questions 8 and 10 asked those whoWinter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Feature Article: Apple

responded “yes” to explain their answer inan open-response format. As these four questions (Q7-10) are concerned directly withstudent writing instruction history, they arelisted directly below. Questions 11 through14 were all “yes” or “no” questions concerning diaries and computer usage.

written “personal opinion essays” (go-kansou-bun), while another student said he readthe book and listened to the teacher’s explanation. Somewhat confusingly, one student
wrote that the teacher singled out students totranslate from English to Japanese in frontof class. Whether this was oral or written on
the blackboard was not clariﬁed.

Q7: Did you practice writing English
paragraphs in high school?
Don’t
Yes No remember
N=43
Raw number
12
24
7Percentage of total 28
56
16

Q11: Do you currently have a diary inJapanese?
Yes
No
N=42
5
37
Raw number
1286Percentage of total
Q12: Have you ever written an English
diary for class?

Question 8 asked students how they
practiced English writing in high schoolclass. Responses fell into 5 main categories:
translation from Japanese, grammar or ﬁll
in the blank exercises, memorizing wordlists, copying what the teacher wrote on theblackboard, and copying the text itself. One
student wrote somewhat enigmatically, “I expressed things around me in English,” while
another simply wrote, “I don’t understand[the question].”

Don’t

Yes
No
N=43
remember2
40
Raw number
1
5
93
Percentage of total
2
Q13: Do you own a personal computer?
Yes
No
N=43
27
16
Raw number
63
37
Percentage of total
Q14: Have you ever used word processing
software for class work?

Q8: Did you receive lessons about writingin Japanese in high school?
Don’t
Yes No remember
N=43
Raw number
20
19
4
Percentage of
47
44
9
total

N=43

Yes

No

Don’t
rememberRaw number
Percentage of total

15
35

28
65

0
0

Not all of those who answered “yes” toquestion 13 also answered “yes” to question 14. Comparing answers to those twoquestions, only 30% of students who own
computers have used word processing forclass work. All of these students were in thebusiness majors section.
The ﬁnal question (15) asked students tolist any standardized proﬁciency exams taken. Forty-seven percent of students surveyedhave taken the Eiken. Of those, 5% took 5th
grade, 12% took 4th grade, and 21% passed
3rd grade. Only 9%, or 4 students among the
43 surveyed, claim to have passed pre-2nd
grade of the Eiken. This also includes theThose who responded “yes” to question
8 gave various answers to the follow-up
question (9) about the method of practicing
Japanese writing. The categories were nearly
identical to those concerning practicing
English writing: practicing writing Chinesecharacters (kanji), memorizing kanji, writing
kanji in ﬁll in the blank sentences, copying
the blackboard, and translation from English
to Japanese. Two students claimed to have18Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUElone student who listed a TOEIC score (249).
These scores indicate a fairly low level ofEnglish proﬁciency, as might be expected
for non-English majors. At the same time,
there are quite a number of students who
have some experience of success on ofﬁcial
English tests.
Discussion and analysis
Results of the survey clearly indicate thatin addition to receiving little or no instruction
in English writing, students also received
little or no instruction in writing Japanese.
The majority of students surveyed cited classmethodology indicative of traditional grammar-translation, a method of teaching writing which persists in Japan apparently due
to translation questions on entrance exams.
Other students cited methods of a typicalteacher-centered class structure with emphasis on memorization and drills, and little
or no actual output. Many students seemed
confused by the very question “how did
you practice writing?” One student told theexaminer, “What do you mean by, ‘how did
I practice writing Japanese?’ I’m Japanese,so I already know how to write Japanese.”
While one or two students mentioned actual essay writing in their native language,
none of those surveyed appear to have been
instructed in organizational or drafting andrevising techniques.
Many students appear incapable of forming an English paragraph, or even a wellformed sentence in some cases, without
the labor-intensive step of ﬁrst writing inJapanese and then translating word by word.
This explains why those learners in the two
sections who managed to produce English
paragraphs generally wrote incoherent sentences with little or no logical structure ortransitions between sentences, a jumbled mixof random ideas. This appeared to support
19

Feature Article: Apple

Takagi (2001), who surveyed 25 students
who had studied both in the US and Japanand found that only one student had experienced paragraph writing in high school. She
theorized that this was due to an “emphasis
on prescriptive forms and mechanics” (p. 6)
instead of on organization or process writingin English writing classes in Japan.
In the questionnaire, students also indicated in questions 11 and 12 about diaries
that they do not write even in Japanese ona regular basis. Researchers of contrastive
rhetoric argue about differences between
L1 and L2 and inﬂuences of L1 rhetoric patterns on L2 writing (Cahill, 2003; Kobayashi& Rinnert, 1996; Kubota, 1997), but if thestudents in question don’t know the rhetoricof their own language, it seems pointless toeven consider written L1 as much of a factor.
Writing is primarily a means of communication and should be taught as such, especiallyto non-native speakers, nearly all of whom
are used to the idea of writing as a way ofpracticing grammar for a test (Gates, 2003;
Shih, 1999). The meaning should always takeprecedence over form; personal expression
should always be more important than “correct” English. However, students can hardly
develop their own expressive abilities if they
don’t practice writing at all. The fact that lessthan 5% of all students surveyed have ever
had a diary in any language clearly indicatesthat these students do not see themselves
as writers. Leki (2003) comments that her
learners generally regarded writing tasks as“necessary evils they would have preferred
to avoid” (p. 317). Any rhetoric instructor
should bear such a fact in mind—many of ourstudents may not be interested in writing of
any kind, let alone essay writing for a classthat they would rather not take.
The most surprising result of the questionnaire concerned computer usage. NearlyWinter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Feature Article: AppleOn CUE

which, incidentally, many native speakers do
not possess” (Johnson, 1982, p. 177). Nunan(1989) has also pointed out that many native
speakers ﬁnd it difﬁcult to write ﬂuently andmany don’t use essay writing in real life
situations.
Taking a quick glance at real life situations, the increasing dominance of web logs
(blogs) on the internet shows that younger
native speakers of English display an amazing lack of regard for style, coherence, grammar, and spelling. Much of what is publishedin online journals and diaries consists of
run-on sentences, confusing punctuationand capitalization, and overuse of ellipses
and parentheses, all of which combine to
produce a nearly incomprehensible “rhetoricmush.” Online, native speakers often seemto eschew clear writing in favor of a postmodern, deconstructionist “cool.” This, too,
TEFL instructors should keep in mind whenasking non-native speakers to rigidly adhere
to what may be perceived as a restrictive orconservative writing style. One must consider what students need to use writing for
before we show them what we want them todo, where students are coming from before
showing them where we want them to go.

two-thirds own computers at home, yet only
one-third say they used a computer wordprocessing program for class. This may be
because of the prevalence of the genkouyoushi, or the vertical box grid sheets inwhich Japanese students write one kana or
Chinese character at a time. The genkouyoushi are used starting in elementary school
all the way up to the tertiary level. It goes
without saying that few Western universities
would accept hand-written reports or essays
these days from students. Few businesses
would accept such a report, either. Sincetyping skills are deﬁnitely more applicablein the real world of English, continuing tohand-write all writing assignments in English
seems of questionable value.
Conclusion
In this study, despite one or two exceptions, most students ﬁnd academic writing
an incredibly daunting task, completely unlike anything they have done before in highschool English or Japanese class. I cannot
claim that other university instructors willﬁnd exactly the same patterns of educational
background in their students, nor the sameacademic level. However, many of us haveto teach English writing to non-English
major students for whom English writing
may seem of little importance. In order not
to demotivate students, it might behoove
instructors to temper their writing rhetoricdemands, asking for more gradual steps andtrying to instill in students the communicative enjoyment of writing for self-expression
and meaning.
Of course, our job is to teach paragraphand composition structure; however, evenfor many native speakers, learning rhetoricstyle is not simple. Students must learn thepatterns of English paragraphs, a feat which
requires “an organizational ability—and one

References
Cahill, D. (2003). The myth of the“turn” in contrastive rhetoric. Written
Communication, 20 (2), 70-194.
Gates, S. (2003). Inconsistencies in writing
within the Japanese junior high school EFL
education system. JALT Journal, 25(2),197-217.
Johnson, K. (1982). Communicative syllabus
design and methodology. Oxford:
Pergamon Press.
Hirayanagi, Y. (1998). Writing to improveanalytical and organizational skills. The
Language Teacher, 22(12), 21-23.

20

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Kobayashi, H. & Rinnert, C. (1996). Factors
affecting composition evaluation in an EFL
context: Cultural rhetorical pattern andreaders’ background. Language Learning,
46(3), 397-437.
Kubota, R. (1997). A reevaluation of theuniqueness of Japanese written discourse:
Implications for contrastive rhetoric.
Written Communication, 14(4), 460-480.
Leki, I. (2003) A challenge to second

Writers Needed!
On CUE seeks writers of feature articles, research notes,
opinion essays, book and conference reviews, andclassroom applications.
On CUE is now a refereed journal. All feature submissions
are vetted by our professional review board.
Whether you are a previously unpublished author or aseasoned veteran, your submissions are welcomed andencouraged!
Inquiries to Mike Hood: mikehood85@hotmail.com

21

Feature Article: Apple

language writing professionals: Is writing
overrated? In B. Kroll (Ed.) Exploring the
dynamics of second language writing (pp.
71-92). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nunan, D. (1989). Designing tasks for thecommunicative classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Shih, M. (1999). More than practicing
language: Communicative reading
and writing for Asian settings. TESOLJournal, 8(4), 20-25.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Opinion & Perspective
The Future for University English
Language Instructors in Japan
Opinion & Perspective

John Burrell
Tokai University
to do for the rest of my working life and I
believed that there were really no long termprospects for native-speaking English teachers in Japan. To my surprise, after completinga Master’s in TESOL in the US, instead ofgoing to the gulf, through exceptional luck
and timing, I was offered an excellent limited
term contract at a private university in Japan.
Desperate for money after graduate school,
and having previously enjoyed living inJapan, I accepted it. After spending the last
few years in the university environment, I am
convinced that the future for native-speaking
English teachers at universities is even lessencouraging now.
I grew up and worked in an industry indrastic decline, the timber industry in southern Oregon in the late 1970’s, and I remember very well what it felt like. The English
teaching industry in Japan felt that way when
I left in 1997 and even more so now.
The primary reason should be no surprise
to anyone who has been in Japan for any
length of time; the rapidly declining numberof children means fewer students for all
schools. Recent government reports havebeen quite chilling for the future of many
foreign teachers at all levels. One stated thatthe birthrate in 2003 was the lowest ever recorded in Japan, another that the number ofplaces in tertiary institutions will outnumber
applicants as early as 2007. The most recent

In the OP column for this issue, John Burrell
offers a grim view of future employment
possibilities for foreign teachers involved in
tertiary level education in Japan and gives someadvice for those who plan to stick it out.

If you are a university instructor on alimited term contract, with plans to stay inJapan, it is past time you took an objective
look at your situation and perhaps madesome hard choices. The future is extremely
bleak for foreign university instructors inJapan, primarily because the demand forforeign instructors is dropping and willcontinue to do so. In the case of full-time
positions, the situation is particularly dire,as a look at the job ads in JALT publications
will show: the hours have increased but thepay hasn’t. The real shocker is how high therequirements/qualiﬁcations have gone up
for positions that seem more or less on parwith NOVA conversation schools. Some of
us may be in a position to leave teaching inJapan if conditions get worse. However, forthose with very strong ties to Japan, like a
spouse and children, this may not be a desirable option.
As for myself, I did not think I would evercome back to Japan after leaving in 1997. After eight and a half years I had topped out interms of teaching positions and salary I could
command with only a BA. More importantly,
I decided that teaching was what I wanted22Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEare fast retiring. As the new generations ofJapanese teachers come up, the institutions
are going to realize, correctly, that it does
not necessarily require a native speaker toteach a foreign language. The new Japanese
instructors are ﬂuent, well educated, andeasily function in the Japanese workplace,which is a huge bonus for the institution. I
personally think this is good for Japan in thelong run, but unfortunately it is not good for
my future job prospects.
I have heard the opinion that the shrinking
job market and higher standards will cut out
the deadwood that exists in the profession. To
this I answer, perhaps. I think the instructors
who will be successful in the future in Japanare those who play the academic game thebest. Their actual classroom teaching will
have even less to do with them getting andkeeping a position than it does now. They
will have lots of publications and presentations. They will network like ﬁends. In short,
EFL teaching will become just like otherdisciplines in universities. When universities
hire a new math professor, how many applicants are asked to give a teaching demonstration or show that they really take that muchnotice of what happens in the classroom?
They really want to know if the newly hired
person will ﬁt in, because the bulk of hisor her work will not be teaching. It will beworking on various committees and administrative tasks where the ability to get along
will be critical for the smooth functioningof the institution. As the EFL departments
become more like the other departments
in universities, time spent on actual classroom teaching and preparation will come tocomprise the minority of a professor’s timecompared to research and administrative duties. Unfortunately, it may be that rather thanthe best teachers surviving the change in theindustry, it will be deadwood of a different
23

Opinion & Perspective

one reported that a record number of private
universities failed to get as many students asthey needed for the 2004 academic year. The
two-year tertiary schools are a dying breed
and many low-end private four-year schools
are in serious economic difﬁculty because ofa lack of students. The institutions are being
forced to cut costs, and they often do this by
cutting the numbers of foreign instructors
who in their eyes are extraneous and often
difﬁcult to manage. There is a trend towards
reducing the numbers of full-time contracted
foreign instructors. A private university in
my city did it last year with no warning. At
least one university in Fukuoka also did it
recently. The universities are looking more
to part-time instructors, outsourcing for
instructors from conversation schools, ordecreasing the number of part-timers andincreasing the number of classes for the
full-timers that remain. With the continuing
decline in enrollments the situation will only
get worse.
There is another reason why there will be
far less need for native-speaking English: theyounger Japanese instructors as a whole arevery different from their elders in that they
are more ﬂuent and better trained, and they
will continue to develop. In my Master’s
program in the US there were at least nine
Japanese nationals enrolled. If my relatively
small program had these numbers, I thinkthat it is true for larger programs in the US
and other countries as well. They are being
exposed to the same changes in the ﬁeld as
the native speakers and there is no reason toassume that they will not be able to apply
them as competently. In addition, programsin Japan at institutions such as Temple andColumbia are also producing large numbersof trained Japanese graduates. The generations of Japanese instructors who teachEnglish, yet can barely say “How are you?”Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Opinion & Perspective

On CUE

type who will succeed.
If you are a younger teacher and arethinking of staying in Japan long term, you
should start working on a PhD in TESOL,
Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, or similar ﬁeld. I think that very soon, a PhD, or
progress on one, will be a prerequisite forany full-time position, contracted or not. At
the better universities it will become true
for part-time positions as well. Publish andpresent as much as humanly possible. Joinas many professional organizations and takepart in them to the extent you can stand andbeyond. They are invaluable for information
on positions and for expanding your resume.
Do your research, ﬁnd out which universities
actually offer real full-time positions and do
whatever it takes to get a position. Embrace
the academic way of life and develop a specialty. Just being a general speaking/listening
instructor is not going to be enough in itself.
You should have a demonstrated ability toteach test preparation, such as TOEIC or
TOEFL, CALL, or another specialized area
within EFL. You may not end up doing a lotof classes in your specialty, but it will besomething that will set you apart from theother applicants. As unpleasant as it is, you
may have to be in permanent job search mode
for a long period of time with all of the stress
this entails. You should also study Japaneseand get to a level where you can function
reasonably well in a Japanese institution, inJapanese. This would include reading andwriting. If all of this is anathema to you,maybe you should get out now while you
are still young enough to do something else.
The worst thing you can do is ﬂoat along, led
by a couple of good limited term contracts.
Along the way you get married to a Japaneseperson who doesn’t want to live in anothercountry, have some kids, and then are reallystuck when you are too old and not qualiﬁed

for the few positions offered.
In the case of older instructors, such as
myself at 45, and given the ageism in theindustry, the situation is the worst. At theleast, you should do all of the above. In addition, there is no excuse, especially for thosewith spousal visas, not to at least explore
other areas of employment. They could be
education related, publishing, home stayprograms, whatever, but you must think
about another option to support yourself
and your family. As for teaching, with fewer
opportunities you will have to be more ﬂexible about where you are willing to work.
The qualiﬁcations that may not get you afull-time university position may be perfectfor one in a secondary school. I have seensome very good positions in high schools,
and with the declining enrollments andincreased competition those positions will
also be raising their requirements. Do not
panic if you have to settle for a number ofpart-time positions. I have known a numberof full-time contracted instructors whosetime at a particular university was coming
to an end and they refused to even consider
taking only part-time positions. They put
themselves under extreme stress trying toﬁnd a full-time position; even a limited term
contracted one. Some settled for positions
that were terrible, but which were at least
full-time. I really do not understand why.
The contracted positions with limited terms
are ultimately no more secure than part-time
positions because they end. The conditions inthese positions are getting worse. Part-time
positions have far fewer responsibilities,
and with judicious schedule juggling, total
income can be adequate. I think in somecases it has to do with ego. The perceived
need to be a full-time professor with all theperks and status seems to be strong in some.
However, to be fair, it is always difﬁcult to24Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

of another good full-time position, even of
the limited term type, is probably remote.
I have thought about doing only part-time
positions, but that would entail moving to amuch larger metropolitan area to be practical. Moving to another country is the most
likely choice because living and teaching inother countries was one of the reasons I got
my MA in TESOL in the ﬁrst place. I haveenjoyed my time in Japan and probably
would not leave if I could have my present
position indeﬁnitely.

What do YOU think?

You have an opinion—express it!
The Opinion & Perspecive section invites
short opinion pieces, perspectives onteaching and learning, point-counterpoint,
and responses to previous articles inprevious issues.
Inquiries to Keith Ford: fordkeith@hotmail.com

25

Opinion & Perspective

go from a good position at one institution toscrambling around with multiple positions
and getting to various locations with often
long commutes. Also, in recent years there
are fewer part-time positions available.
At the end of my present limited term
contract I will “almost” certainly leave Japan. I say almost even after writing all of
the above because one never really knows.
I said one more year for nine years the lasttime I was here. I could even get lucky again
and fall into another good position. Realistically though, I will be 47 so the possibility

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

From the Chalkface
World Populations as Pronunciation
Exercise
Brian Nuspliger
From the Chalkface

International Buddhist University
ing American English Pronunciation. Firth,notes that it is generally easier for students
to modify production of consonant sounds
than it is to modify vowel sounds. Thus
consonants would seem a good place tostart when teaching pronunciation, at least
when focusing on the micro level of individual sounds. A diagnostic proﬁle of each
student is helpful to the teacher in assessing
their needs and progress, while a proﬁle ofthe class as a whole can be used to plan apronunciation syllabus. By focusing thestudents’ attention on numbers, the teacher isbetter able to determine their ability to carryover the production of isolated sounds into
real-life communication focused on content
rather than form.

Introduction
The World Polulations activity is ﬂexible, adaptable and extendable. I have used
it with very basic level students as well asquite advanced classes. It has been very wellreceived by my students. It is an excellent
chance for them to practice using cardinal
numbers, something that is often neglectedin the EFL classroom. Numbers are usually
one of the ﬁrst things learned during naturalacquisition, showing their importance andusefulness in daily life. Yet in an EFL setting often even advanced students still havetrouble expressing large numbers ﬂuently
and accurately. This activity also provides
an excellent chance to review geography andnames of areas that many Japanese students
are often unfamiliar with. By using real ﬁgures, in this case from United Nations’ 2001
data, students may gain some interesting
insights into the distribution of the humanrace. Finally, it is a chance to learn the stressand pronunciation of numbers as well as
characteristic aspects of the articulation of
consonant sounds in English.

Materials
Population cards
Worksheet to record data
Chalkboard or ﬂashcards
Materials available online at
http://allagash.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/CUE/

Procedure
Pronunciation and Stress
Teach the pronunciation and stress of numbers as well as all consonant sounds—or theareas matched with each sound (Firth, 1992).
In teaching the units used to count from one
to one billion, I focus particular attention
on the difference between the teens andPurposeThis lesson can be used as simply acommunicative pronunciation exercise fornumbers, consonant sounds, or both. It canalso be used to create a diagnostic proﬁlefor each student, as explained by Suzanne
Firth (1992) in Avery and Ehrlich’s Teach26

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

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27

From the Chalkface

multiples of ten. I ﬁnd using hand motions
Pass out the worksheet for the students
is useful, especially for lower level students. to record their classmates’ data. The top of
The teens get a quick chopping motion fol- the sheet has a question and answer patternlowed by a lengthening gesture. Although that can be used or deleted depending on thethese numbers may be stressed on either class. Sometimes I teach the stress and intonation patterns for these
the ﬁrst or second syllable,
Country Popluationin the previous class. In
I ﬁnd stressing the second
Poland38,577,000
lower level classes or if I
syllable is very helpful
Bolivia
8,516,000
am pressed for time I often
for students. Also this is
Mexico 100,368,000
skip these and simply havethe stress pattern native
Finland5,178,000
the students read the namespeakers would choose toVietnam 79,175,000of the country they haveclearly differentiate from a
Lithuania
3,689,000
and its population. Howmultiple of ten. The gesture
UnitedStates285,926,000
I use for 20 thru 90 is two
ever I never neglect thisTanzania 35,965,000
quick chopping motions.
chance to practice useful
Denmark
5,333,000
I also indicate that theseclassroom language (seeSingapore 4,108,000
numbers are predictably
bottom of worksheet). The
Zambia9,959,000
stressed on the ﬁrst syllable.
procedure is simple. Each
Norway4,488,000
The consonant sounds canstudent takes a turn (often
Libya 5,408,000
be taught in isolation ﬁrst or
standing) and tells the
Romania
22,388,000
simply as part of the nameclass his or her data. The
Bangladesh 140,369,000of an area. When this latterother students listen and
Malaysia
22,633,000
approach is adopted it iswrite this information on
China*
1,284,972,000
fun to have the students try
their papers. Thus recepJapan 127,335,000
tive as well as productive
to guess the pronunciation
Canada31,015,000
from the spelling.
skills are practiced. StuGuyana 763,000
dents usually get immediHong Kong 7,303,000
ate feedback from their
Population cards.
Wales 2,946,000
classmates on how well
Give each student one
Yemen 19,114,000
they did or did not do.
population card. I like to
Hungary 10,075,000
print mine on business card
Conclusion
stock and then laminate
The ﬂexibility and adaptability of thisthem for future reuse. The card has the nameof a country or area and its population. This is activity make it suitable for a wide range ofa good point in the lesson to discuss politics classes and students. It also offers tremenand geography with higher-level students. dous opportunities for expansion. A simple
For example, Wales/UK and Hong Kong/ explanation of where the country is locatedChina quickly come to mind.
is often needed, especially for developing
The populations are fairly current at the countries. A map is quite useful here. Dismoment, but they can be updated from the cussion can be elicited about travel, culinary
Internet as needed (UN, InforNation).
or business interests. Political issues, suchas the handover of Hong Kong to China in
1997, are also appropriate for some students.
WorksheetWinter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

From the Chalkface

On CUE

Comparisons between different countries areinteresting. For example, many students areunaware that Bangladesh has a larger population that Japan. Introducing nationalities isalso another possibility and could be used
to show how stress in a word changes withthe addition of a sufﬁx, such as CAnada &caNAdian. The range of expansion activities
possible means it can be recycled extensively
while still remaining fun, fresh and interesting for the teacher.

References
Firth, S. (1992). Pronunciation Syllabus
Design: A Question of Focus. In P. Avery& S. Ehrlich, Teaching American English
Pronunciation (pp. 173-183). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
InfoNation. (2003, May). http://www.un.org/
pubs/cyberschoolbus/

Developing Students’ Strategic
CompetenceAlex Gilmore
Kansai Gaidai University

Do Japanese students lack strategiccompetence?
A number of years ago, shortly after my arrival in Japan, I went into a Subway sandwich
shop for lunch. At that time I was studying
Japanese twice weekly at a language school
and approached the challenge of negotiating
my sandwich in Japanese with great enthusiasm. Initially, I was successful, “Veggies
ando cheezu onegai shimasu, zenbun irete
mou ii” but then the young girl behind thecounter asked if I wanted salt, a word I hadn’t
yet encountered on my basic Japanese course.
I looked confused and said “Sumimasen?”at which point the girl panicked and dashed
off to get her supervisor who strolled overwith a very ﬂuent “Yes sir, how can I helpyou?” I had failed in my attempt to resolve
the communication problem. But the failure
was not mine alone; my speaking partner

had avoided the process of ‘negotiation of
meaning’ by running away. It would havebeen very easy for her, at the point of the
breakdown in our communication, to holdup the salt shaker, point at it and say, “Korewa shio desu, hoshii desu ka?” thus allowing
me to develop my vocabulary and exploit thislearning opportunity.
This type of scenario must be all too
familiar to teachers in Japan. It has alreadybeen well documented in the literature (e.g.,
Brown, 1979) and clearly indicates a lack ofstrategic competence. Strategic competencerefers to a speaker’s ability to exploit verbal
or non-verbal communication strategies
when communication problems arise, compensating for deﬁciencies in other areas ofcompetence (Canale & Swain, 1980; CelceMurcia, Dornyei & Thurrell, 1995). Why is itthat Japanese students seem to lack strategic28

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

some use to other teachers. The activities are
based loosely around a listening activity from
Learning to Learn English (Ellis & Sinclair,1989) – a book which comes highly recommended as a useful source for learner training– but teachers can easily adapt the procedureby recording native speakers role-playing asimilar scenario. I usually introduce thesecommunication strategies over two lessons
and then try to recycle the language throughout the course where instances of communication breakdown occur in class.
Day 1
1. Hold up an unusual object (for example,
a bottle opener/corkscrew) and tell students
that you want to buy one of these in a shop
but don’t know its name in English. Ask
students to brainstorm ideas in pairs, thenconduct a feedback session, summarising
their ideas on the whiteboard and adding any
strategies that they miss. You should end up
with the following list:a) Using a foreign word: I’d like to buy a“wain oupunaa.”b) Describing what an object is for: It’s
used for opening wine bottles/It’s used toopen wine bottles.
c) Describing what an object looks likeor is made of: It looks (a bit) like a screw
with handles/It’s silver (brainstorm othercolours)/ It’s about xcm long/wide/tall/ It’s
about this big (demonstrate with gestures)/It’s made of metal or plastic (brainstorm
other types of material).
d) Using a word close in meaning (e.g. ahyponym or superordinate): It’s like a bigscrew/ It’s a kind of kitchen equipment.
e) Inventing a new word or expression: I’dlike a cork puller.
f) Using a substitute word: It’s a thingy /thingummyjig / thingummybob / watchamacallit for opening wine bottles.

How can we develop students’ strategiccompetence in the classroom?
Developing strategic competence issomething which can and should be donevery early on in students’ English language
learning careers, since the ‘linguistic tools’
needed are fairly basic and the skill of being
able to negotiate meaning when communication breakdown occurs will increase theirconfidence and aid their L2 acquisition.
Below, I outline one way for teachers to
begin developing this type of competencein their learners in the hope that it may be of29

From the Chalkface

competence, even in their own language? The
answer may stem from the fact that Japan is
not a multi-cultural society, so instancesof communication breakdown between interlocutors are limited. In a homogeneouscommunity, speaker styles converge so thatthe possibility of misunderstandings (which
trigger the deployment of communication
strategies) are minimised. It may also be dueto the fact that Japanese is more ritualisedthan many other languages; for many communicative events, there are often a very limited number of preferred responses. This has
also been noted in the literature, for example
Loveday (1982) gave Japanese and English
native speaker informants a questionnaireasking: 1) What would you say to someone
who saved you from drowning? And; 2)What would you say to someone who gave
you a present? The majority of the Japanese
used the same formula to respond to bothcues while the English-speaking informants
showed a preference for more individualised
and varied responses. This, of course, is notmeant to be judgemental in any way. Bothinteraction styles achieve their own aims in
the context in which they are produced; theJapanese stressing group harmony and theEnglish speakers stressing differences.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

From the Chalkface

On CUE

mies (paciﬁers), clothes racks and so on. Askpairs to work together to describe each of
the objects using as many of the strategies
as possible. They should be able to come up
with descriptions such as: It’s a thingummyjig
used for opening nuts/ It looks like the letter‘V’ and it has teeth in the bottom part/ It’s
made of metal/ It’s about 20 cm long/It’s akind of kitchen equipment/It’s a nut-breaker.
The teacher should monitor carefully during
this writing stage, helping individuals andcorrecting any mistakes.
2. Students then form new pairs anddescribe objects at random to their partner
who tries to guess what is being talked
about. Again, the teacher monitors and notes
down examples of particularly successful or
unsuccessful strategies for feedback at the
post-speaking stage.
3. The ﬁnal stage is to see how well students can use these communication strategies
without preparation. Prepare some more pictures of unusual objects and tape one picture
onto each student’s back. Allow students tostand up and mingle, describing the objects
on other people’s backs. After 10 minutes orso, the students should have a good idea what
object they have on their back.

g) Other strategies: mime/drawing noises.
2. Next, learners listen to three native
speakers trying to buy an unknown object
in a hardware store and have to try to guess
what it is. In Learning to Learn English, theobject sought is a rawl plug, an item, whichis unfamiliar to most Japanese, but this is notof major importance since the focus of theactivity is on how the native speakers use
communication strategies to negotiate meaning. Teachers may choose to re-record similarinteractions using an object more familiar inJapan; if this is the case, make sure that thefull range of strategies are employed in thelistening activity.
After this listening task, students listen to
the tape again and note which strategies areused by each speaker. At the post-listeningstage, students can be given the tape script
to check their answers and be asked to underline all examples of strategies used by thenative speakers.
3. Highlight the target language and focus
on pronunciation problems with some quick
choral/individual drilling. Areas to focus
on might include the pronunciation of thesubstitute words, the use of the weak form
(schwa) and linking in, It’s a kind of… or It’s
used to… etc.
4. Hand out a couple of other unusual
objects (or pictures of objects) and ask pairs
to work together describing them using allseven strategies focused on above, then summarise their ideas on the whiteboard.

Conclusion
Communication strategies are extremely important for Japanese learners and, as shown
above, can be taught quite simply even to
fairly low-level students. As well as giving
learners the linguistic tools to effectively use
communication strategies it is also important
to encourage a change in attitude in the classroom: to see breakdown in communication
not as some insurmountable obstacle to be
avoided but as a wonderful opportunity forlearning. This message needs to be reinforced in each lesson through the teacher’s
own attitude to communication problems. If

Day 2
1. Review the communication strategies
taught in the previous lesson and hand out
sheets with around 10 pictures of unfamiliar
objects on them. I use pictures of nutcrackers, tweezers, razor blades, hinges, hot waterbottles, jack plugs, hampers, wallets, dum30

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

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students don’t know a word in English, theyshould be encouraged to describe it rather
than looking for an instantaneous translationin their bilingual dictionaries. If the students
don’t understand a word used by the teacher,he or she should use it as an opportunity toreview the strategies taught earlier without
supplying the meaning in Japanese. Most
importantly, students should be encouraged
to relax in the face of communication breakdown. In cosmopolitan Western cultures,
people tend to be very familiar with this typeof problem and are not at all embarrassed—learners need to develop a similar type of
conﬁdence.

References

WHAT ARE YOU DOING

in your classroom?
Successful classroom applications?
Techniques? Lesson Plans?
Share them with your colleagues throughOn CUE.
Now accepting submissions
Inquiries to Tim Micklas: tmicklas@yahoo.com

31

From the Chalkface

Brown, J. (1979). Vocabulary: learning to be
imprecise. Modern English Teacher, 17(1),25-27.
Canale, M. & Swain, M. (1980). Theoreticalbases of communicative approaches tosecond language teaching and testing.
Applied Linguistics, 1, 1-47.
Celce-Murcia, M., Dornyei Z., & Thurrell,
S. (1995). Communicative competence:
A pedagogically motivated model with
content speciﬁcations. Issues in Applied
Linguistics, 6(2), 5-35.
Ellis, G. & Sinclair, B. (1989). Learning to
Learn English. Cambridge: CUP.
Loveday, L. (1982). Communicativeinterference: A framework for contrastively
analysing L2 communicative competence
exempliﬁed with the linguistic behaviourof Japanese performing in English. IRAL,
20(1), 1-16.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUERESEARCH DIGEST

Research Digest

A Letter to Researchers
You probably noticed Research Digest no longer posts snippets in the back corners of On CUE,
but spotlights full-length articles and reviews. This section now covers, and uncovers, the latest
resources, tools, and methods. These pages will inform you of developments in theory and practice,bare the research processes from your favorite people, and provide a forum where methodology itself
gets critiqued. Potential contributors, please read the submission guidelines on the inner ﬂap.
In this issue, Christopher Sullivan exposes a world where many have yet to venture, Systemic
Functional Grammar. He asserts this model reinvents the way we look at language, and he invites
you for a peek. Also in these pages, Parrill Stribling takes SPSS 12.0 for a test run, and assesses thisnew version of the statistical software package.
CUE encourages its members to lead the way we think and teach at the tertiary level in Japan.
This SIG avidly sponsors retreats and conferences to get people connected. Our homepage <http://allagash.miyazaki-mu.ac.jp/CUE/> offers downloadable materials, and we will soon host a database
where your buried in-house publications can be unearthed for good use. And do not forget—On
CUE promoted to a refereed journal last year. This is a supportive community, and I hope Research
Digest stands as a cornerstone in it. So stick around, pitch in, and read on.

Joe Falout
Section Editor

Systemic Functional Grammar: Two
Recent Views
Christopher Sullivan

Komazawa Junior College

Introduction
M.A.K. Halliday's Systemic Functional
Grammar (SFG) has been a major inﬂuencein linguistics for some time now, and iscurrently making in-roads into the world of
language education as well (Kilpert, 2003,
p. 201). Its increasing popularity is due tothe fact that it is a comprehensive, articulate,and pliable model that completely reinvents
the way people look at language. This paper
presents a brief overview of SFG in light of
two recent articles on the theory, "Language
Education in English Education: Grammar

Instruction, Grammar Plus, or Critical Social
Analysis?" by Judy Diamondstone (2002)
and "Getting the Full Picture: a Reﬂection
on the Work of M. A. K. Halliday" by Diana
Kilpert (2003). By examining SFG's advantages, criticisms, and applications, I hope toencourage educators to discover more about
the SFG model of language for themselves.
Systemic Functional Grammar
SFG divides language into two sets oflevels: the extralinguistic, and the linguis32

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEThe level of lexicogrammar comprises thesystem of words and the way that they arearranged. Here, the term 'lexicogrammar' isused because SFG argues that there is no
explicit distinction between the grammar
and lexicon of a language. Finally, the levelof expression contains the systems throughwhich the language is physically manifested:sound, gesture, and writing. For a more comprehensive introduction to the SFG model,
the reader is directed to Butt et al. (2003).
Advantages Of Systemic Functional
GrammarThere are many advantages to adopting
the SFG model. One of the biggest is thatSFG demonstrates how a language systemand society are inextricably intertwined.
While other models have traditionally treatedlanguage as an entity in its own right, SFG
recognizes that language and society coexist
and are inseparable. This is one of the mainarguments in the Diamondstone article. "In
my view," she writes, "SFG offers a conceptual advantage to those who want to make thelink between grammar and broader concerns"(2002, p. 317). Kilpert makes a similar point
when she states that SFG "brings language
and society together in the grammar" (2003,
p. 179). Society is reﬂected in the ﬁeld,
tenor, and mode of a situation, and these inturn are manifested in the language throughthe three metafunctions. As an example,
Diamondstone describes how a focus on thegrammar of the interpersonal metafunction isnecessarily a focus on the social positioning
and identities found in the tenor of a situation(2002, p. 324). By introducing SFG into theclassroom, educators can demonstrate thatgrammar represents more than just 'rules oflanguage'; the grammar of a language is alsoa reﬂection of the society it belongs to.
Another advantage to the SFG model is
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Research Digest

tic. The extralinguistic level provides the
background for a text. It is comprised of
two different contexts: the context of culture
and the context of situation. The context ofculture represents the entire collection of
meanings that are possible to express in any
one culture. The context of situation refers
to three different areas: the social processes
a text fulﬁlls (ﬁeld); the social relations between the participants in a text (tenor); andthe way the text is organized (mode).
The linguistic level provides the structure of a text. It is comprised of the level ofsemantics; the level of the lexicogrammar,
and the level of expression. At the level ofsemantics we ﬁnd the system of meanings
present in a language. Meanings are encodedin the language simultaneously by way of
three so-called metafunctions: the experiential, the interpersonal, and the textual.
These metafunctions operate simultaneously
in every instance of language and they are
directly related to the ﬁeld, tenor, and mode
from the context of situation. Field corresponds with the experiential metafunction,
tenor with the interpersonal, and mode withthe textual.
The experiential metafunction refers to
the existential ideas, qualities, and entities
found in a text. An utterance such as "please
open the back door" contains the experiential meanings 'open', 'back', and 'door'. Theinterpersonal metafunction refers to the typeof interaction manifested in the text. In theprevious example, the interpersonal meaning
would be 'request'. The textual metafunctionrefers to the way in which a text organizes its
experiential and interpersonal meanings into
a coherent whole. The textual meaning in
the previous example is manifested throughthe word 'the': it allows both requester andrequested to understand which back door isbeing referred to.

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that it builds on, instead of attacking, thework of others. SFG does not attempt to clear
a space for itself in the world of linguistics
by attempting to discredit the theories which
contradict it. Instead, SFG “picks as valid asa new one for a particular purpose" (2003, p.
162). Halliday's SFG allows that a number ofdifferent views might be correct at different
times and for different purposes (ibid.). Thisis a refreshing viewpoint, and as educators
or linguists, I believe that it behooves us toadopt a similar philosophy.
Related to the idea that there may never
be a single complete and correct model oflanguage, is the idea that we may never beable to neatly dissect language into clean
and compact units. Because language has
evolved, and is still evolving, there is a great
deal of indeterminacy and 'fuzziness' built
into it, and a third advantage of the SFG
model is that it recognizes and accepts thisfact. "The point we would want to convey
to students," Kilpert states, "is that it is nota case of ﬁnding the 'right' interpretation,of saying [a certain] clause deﬁnitely 'is'
one thing or the other, but of accepting theindeterminacy as an aid to engaging with language in all its complexity" (2003, p. 188).
A few of the other advantages of the SFG
model identiﬁed by the two articles include
the concepts that: while other theories divide
language into opposing elements (systemvs. use, competence vs. performance), SFG
shows how language is a whole system(Kilpert, 2003, p. 184); SFG shows how language is a network of choices made available
through and constrained by cultural experience (Diamondstone, 2002, p. 326); SFG
can identify signiﬁcant pieces of language
because these detach themselves from thetypical patterns of everyday text (Kilpert,
2003, p. 192); and SFG has been designed
to be accessible not only to the linguist, but

to the layperson as well (ibid., p. 199).
Criticisms Of Systemic Functional
Grammar
SFG is not without its criticisms. One of
the main complaints, and one that is recognized by both Diamondstone and Kilpert, isthat SFG requires an elaborate terminology,
especially for describing the experiential
metafunction (Diamondstone, 2002, p. 324;
Kilpert, 2003, p. 172). The experiential
metafunction is the part of the SFG model
which most closely resembles traditional
grammar, and it contains a similarly large
collection of terms and categories. Compounding the problem is the fact that muchof the work of SFG linguists relies on liberaluse of charts, boxes, graphs, diagrams, andtables in order to illustrate various aspectsof the model (Kilpert, 2003, p. 172). All of
this can be very intimidating to the linguist
not familiar with SFG, even more so to thestudent or language learner. Unfortunately
there is no real counter to this criticism aside
from accepting that it is the nature of themodel that demands such detail. Some of theintroductory SFG texts do an admirable jobof keeping the terminology to a minimum;
again, the reader is directed towards Butt etal. (2003) for an example.
Another serious complaint is that SFG
requires a fundamental shift in perspectiveon what counts as grammar (Diamondstone,
2002, p. 324). Kilpert describes how adopting the SFG model, "requires a change ofmind-set, and a background in formal syntax
may prove a stumbling block, because of thehabit it inculcates of looking at sentences
as autonomous entities" (2003, p. 191).
Because of the experiential metafunction's
resemblance to traditional grammar, it is theeasiest of the three to relate to. The textual
metafunction can be difﬁcult to comprehend
because people are used to concentrating on
34

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEthe language by the three metafunctions, andthe meanings that the three metafunctions
express affect the way in which the lexicogrammar is structured. By teaching students
to become aware of the ﬁeld, tenor, and modeof a situation, and by familiarizing them withthe concepts of the metafunctions and how
the metafunctions organize language, educators can help students produce language thatis more appropriate and correct.
Diamondstone's article therefore contains
several examples of classroom activities developed to show "that grammatical choices
are sensitive to situational and culturalcontext, that grammar is used to do things
with words, and that it varies systematicallydepending on what is done" (2002, p. 325).
As an example, she relates how she asked
one student to answer a set of questions
orally and record and transcribe the answers,
and then answer the same two questions inwriting. By doing so, she was able to demonstrate to the student how the structure ofspeech and writing differ, and made it possible for the student to identify some of thepatterns of language speciﬁc to narrative anddescription (ibid.)
She also offers a link to the Systemics andEducation Home Page (http://www.wagsoft.com/Systemics/Education/index.html)
which contains further teaching resourcesthat utilize the SFG framework.

Applications Of Systemic Functional
Grammar
SFG has applications in psychology, psychotherapy, and speech therapy, as well as inthe ﬁelds of computer software design andforensic linguistics (Kilpert, 2003, p. 200).
The main application of the model, however,is in language teaching. SFG allows students
to see how the ﬁeld, tenor, and mode of asituation determine the form that a text takes.
The ﬁeld, tenor, and mode are represented in

The Two Articles
Before concluding, I would like to offer abrief review of the two articles. In comparing
the two, the Kilpert article appears to be thebetter organized. She presents her overview
of Halliday's work clearly, with each part ofher analysis building on the one that comes
before it. The sections also segue into eachother well: the ﬁnal thoughts of one section alert the reader's attention to the ideas
35

Research Digest

sentence rather than discourse level patterns.
The most difﬁcult of the three metafunctions to understand may be the interpersonal
metafunction. Until now, grammar and interpersonal relationships have not been dealt
with together, as they are in the SFG model(ibid.).
Diamondstone has another complaint: "A
SFG-based approach to grammar instruction
requires an elaborate infrastructure—the
support of policy statements, curriculum
documents, and knowledgeable practitioners as well as linguists who are available toteachers" (2002, p. 324). I agree with her
to an extent. Her criticism is valid if SFG
is to be implemented on a large scale—if itwere adopted by the language departmentof a university, or by a local school board.
It would require curriculum designers who
were completely familiar with the theory,
as well as training programs to introduce
teachers to the model and its mechanics.
Asking teachers to teach SFG-based lessons
without giving them enough prior instruction would only result in frustrated teachersand confused students. It is much easier for
SFG to be implemented into the classroom
at the individual level. Once teachers feel
conﬁdent enough in their own understanding of the theory, they can begin to use it in
the classroom.

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that will be developed in the next. The title,
abstract, and content of the Diamondstone
article, on the other hand, seem to be at odds
with one another. The title mentions “grammar plus,” a term which is never explained;
the abstract describes “a one-semester course
for preservice teachers” which is never mentioned again; and the content tends to wander from topic to topic within each section.
Furthermore, she refers to the ATEG “scopeand sequence” document several times, yetnever provides a reference. Although Diamondstone’s argument (that meaning should
be included in language education, and that
SFG is the best way to achieve this) is strong,her presentation detracts from its force.
Pedagogically, the Diamondstone article
has more to offer than its counterpart. As
well as arguing why SFG should be used in
the classroom, she also provides examples of
SFG in use, and links to sites which contain
SFG-based teaching resources. Kilpert’s
article does make mention of the pedagogic
applications of SFG, but remains essentiallya linguistic exercise. In this sense, the two
articles complement each other well: theone provides a concise examination of thepedagogical applications of SFG; the other amuch lengthier look at the theory’s linguistic
aspects. Reading both texts allows one a better view of the scope of the SFG model.

Conclusion
In her introduction, Kilpert writes, “[SFG]
has enlarged our current picture of language
by foregrounding motifs of opening up,
expanding, and seeing things from multiple
perspectives and . . . it has broadened thescope of linguistic inquiry and enabled thediscipline to extend its sphere of inﬂuenceand to speak to the needs of the consumer”(2003, p. 160). These are very large claims,
and yet I believe that they hold true. It is
hoped that this paper has given the reader anidea of how revolutionary SFG is, and thatthe reader will be encouraged to discover
more about the theory on their own.
References
Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks, S., &Yallopet, C. (2000). Using Functional
Grammar: An Explorer's Guide. Sydney:
Macquarie University, National Centre forEnglish Language Teaching and Research.
Diamondstone, J. (2002). Language education
in English education: Grammar instruction,
grammar plus, or critical social analysis?
Teaching Education, 13(3), 317-328.
Kilpert, D. (2003). Getting the full picture: A
reﬂection on the work of M.A.K. Halliday.
Language Sciences 25, 159-209.

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Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUESPSS Version 12.0: A Review
Parrill Stribling
Massey College of Education
clearly and concisely written. It also offers
useful examples illustrating which analysis
to administer on different types of data, andit suggests how to interpret the results.
Entering and labelling the data has been
made far more practical than previous
versions. It is also possible to assign likevariable attributes to multiple variables
simultaneously, and it is faster and easierto switch rows and columns. Downloading data off the web is now feasible. The
program will read and recode data saved inother programs such as the Excel software.
It claims to be able to use a larger databasethan previous versions. I practiced on it using
a database of 278 variables and 264 cases,
and there were no problems regarding speed
and management.
Working with tables and graphs are moremanageable than previous versions. It iseasier to save a table in Word software. I
practiced using a table of about thirty variables and the result was easily passed on to
one A4 page. Graphs have also become
more utilitarian and instructional; one can,for example, observe the change on a factor
analysis with the click of the mouse. Thiscan be quite enlightening.
Another aspect I appreciated was the tablelabelling. Tables in version 12.0 are far more
understandable. Now the program labels partand partial coefﬁcients that it did not previously perform. Determining signiﬁcance,
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Research Digest

SPSS version 12.0 is now standard software for many research-based departments.
Considered by many departments user
friendly and more comprehensive than otherstatistical programs, SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is the statisticalprogram many students were introduced to.
The software program has become an important tool in quantitative research. There
are some negative aspects of the program;namely expense and the availability for
Macintosh users.
I need to confess, before proceeding withthis review, that I am not a statistician. I
use SPSS for my research only and do notconsider myself an authority on the SPSS
program. I use the program because I am
familiar with it and have only brieﬂy employed other statistical programs. I like SPSS
because it performs the analysis I need toanswer my questions.
One positive aspect of the program is thatit has evolved through various previous versions and is now far easier to manipulate. The
instructional language style is uncomplicatedand comprehensible, which had been an
obstacle for the novice statistical student.
There are fewer anagrams in the descriptionsof various analytical procedures. Deﬁnitions
and instructions for those less versed in statistical jargon are understandable. The help
section actually does make sense to someone
non-versed in statistical jargon, and it isWinter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Research Digest

On CUE

however, requires a long scroll down. It isalso possible to keep more windows open
as one switches from the sub-procedures ofanalysis to the output. This can be helpful
to determine which procedure to pursue inthe research.
The program also claims to offer morestatistical procedures than the previous versions, which I am not able to verify. I tried
to perform Statistical Equation Modelling onsome old data, but the program did not run.
Perhaps one must purchase the additional
AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures)companion program to perform this procedure. SPSS 12.0 is more adaptable thanprevious versions. The document I used
had been saved in Word. Just to be difﬁcult,
I asked a PC to open it. It opened the document and read the data without any loss ofvariables, labelling, or cases.
There are some negative aspects for Mac
users: expense and limited availability. One

must purchase an extra SPSS basic program
before installing other versions, and as
mentioned, some analytical procedures are
not included in this version. It is difﬁcult tounderstand why Mac users are penalized thisway. SPSS version 12.0 is available only forPCs. But Mac software is either unavailable(AMOS), or two or three years behind. Now
version 11.0 is available for Macintosh OS X.
Yet there is a newer version (13.0) for PCs,
only available in North America.
I like the new version, warts and all.
There has been a sincere attempt to makethe software program easier to use and understandable for the beginning or even average statistical researcher. I think, however I
will wait to see what version 13 has to offer
before I make the extra purchase.
Note
More product information is available at
http://www.spss.com

Read any good research lately?
Research Digest seeks up-to-date surveys andanalyses on speciﬁc areas in SLA or related ﬁelds,
and how they can apply to pedagogy; perspectives on
research, including critical analysis or personal
reﬂection, up to 2500 words. Reviews on the
researcher’s resources and tools, up to 1500 words.
Inquiries to Joe Falout: falout@penta.ge.cst.nihon-u.ac.jp

38Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Conference Reviews
A Bridge to Laos
Martha Robertson, Obirin University
Lewis Malamed, Tokai University

Overview
Leaving the Friendship Bridge behind,our battered taxi enters the dusty, two-lane
highway into Lao’s capitol, Vientiane. Our
driver weaves through all six lanes of oncoming trafﬁc with the precision of a surgeon’s
scalpel, slowing down only to let a proces39

Conference Review

sion of square, black sedans escorted by a
motorcycle guard whisk some important
personage toward Thailand. The personage was most likely an ASEAN tourism
conference delegate ﬂeeing the sparse accommodations and meager nightlife in thiswould-be Southeast Asian tourism capital.
Lao PDR has recently opened its country toprivatization and a free market economy, and
ASEAN tourism promises a much–needed
inﬂux of foreign money and jobs. Attracting
international business, however, requires
a skilled workforce. Only three percent of
Lao’s labor force has completed secondary school, and sixty-eight per cent of theworkforce has never attended school, or
has failed to complete primary school (TheWorld Bank Group, 2002, Project description). Except for Vientiane, where a surplus
of foreign-educated professionals reside,
the low educational attainment and the poor
quality of education outside the capital citypresent formidable obstacles to Lao’s economic development (Venkman, 2002).
Lao PDR is an unusual setting for aninternational conference on education. The
literacy rate of 66% of the adult populationis one of the lowest in Asia. Efforts to improve the educational system are hamperedby crippling poverty. According to The
World Bank Group and United Nations data
proﬁles, 46% of Laotians live below the Laopoverty level. Life expectancy is about 55

Lao TESOL held its 5th annual conference
February 3- 4, 2004 at Vientiane College inVientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). The College works closelywith the Ministry of Education to develop
English language curriculum in the publicschools and to provide training programs
for future teachers. The College also has
been instrumental in the inception and development of Lao TESOL. The Lao TESOL
conference brings together educators fromall over the country to share knowledge anddiscuss how to best foster the development ofEnglish language education in this diversely
populated and impoverished nation. The
constraints of social and economic conditions upon language teaching are an inescapable, daily reality for Lao TESOL conference sponsors and participants. Overcoming
these constraints was a recurrent theme ofthe sessions and informal discussions at theconference. Therefore, we will ﬁrst present
an overview of the status of education in
Laos followed by a review of one exemplary
conference session.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

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On CUE

years, and the infant mortality rate is 87 per1000 births. Nearly one half of the children
suffer from malnutrition, and only about 53%
of the population have access to clean, safe
drinking water. Laos hopes to move out of
the World Bank’s “least developed status”
by the year 2020, but insufﬁcient funding for
education and the inequities of the educationdelivery system present formidable challenges to meeting this goal (United Nations,
2004; World Bank, Lao PDR data proﬁle,
2004; World Bank, edstats, 2004).
From the taxi window, the landscape unfolds like something from a National Geographic special. Weathered teakwood houses
line the road. Water buffalo graze peacefullyin the distant ﬁelds. Scrawny chickens scrabble in the red clay, dogs seek shelter from theheat, barefoot children play tag, and adults
go about the business of buying, selling, andfarming in much the same manner as they
have for generations. Bucolic, rather than
impoverished, is the impression that comesto mind. However, the picturesque setting
along the Vientiane highway belies the grim
realities of Laotian life. We do not yet knowof the schools that hold half-day sessions sothat teachers can work a second job to feed
their families or of the minority tribes in thenorth where young girls rarely receive any
schooling and are married off when theyreach puberty. We have not yet heard about
the young monks who are so eager to learn
English that they beg for a visitor’s English
language newspaper, nor of students who
cannot afford a 10-cent notebook, nor of theresourceful high school teacher who arranges
for her students to tour the local paper factoryin hopes they will be given enough paper towrite essays. These are the stories of courageand desire shared in the Lao TESOL conference sessions where teachers have gathered
to support and encourage one another andto develop a modern education system thatwill enable Laos to emerge from decades of
conﬂict and poverty.
Later, on a day trip to Vang Viang, we recall the Lao teachers’ stories as we see ﬁrst
hand the serious gap in equality between thecapital and the rural areas, where schools
are built by community members and primary school teachers are sent to teach with
only one month’s training. Schools here arelong, low, open whitewashed buildings set
in the middle of an open ﬁeld. The school
ground is a community area where students
eagerly gather at recess and before and after
school. There is strong community support
and pride in the local schools, even thoughclassrooms are bare and there is no money
for materials. Early mornings and again atnoon, when some schools ﬁnish for the day,swarms of laughing children line the roads
to and from their school, but middle schooland high school students are noticeably few
in number. All but the fortunate few have left
school to ﬁnd work or to help their familieson the farm.
At the conference, we learned that, inboth primary and secondary schools across
Lao PDR, class size frequently ranges from60 to 120 students, and, in many cases, theteacher possesses the only textbook. In therural areas, at least half the pupils do not receive instruction in their native language. For
teachers who may not speak the language of
their students, but who are charged with introducing English as a second language, thediversity of cultures and languages presents
a formidable challenge. Lao English teachers’ own inadequate grasp of the English
language is an additional barrier to instruction. For the rural teachers in particular, Lao
TESOL is a rare opportunity to improvetheir English skills. A government-funded
conference stipend is available for travel40Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

however, were often more enlightening than
the wisdom offered by the presenters. The
small, intimate setting of Vientiane College
encouraged informal conversations withconference participants during and between
sessions. Teachers asked questions and eagerly discussed the ideas introduced. They
shared their experiences, told incredible
stories, and humbled us with their resourcefulness and courage. We envied the hunger
for learning exhibited by the teachers andtheir students, and we wondered about ourown ability to function in the teaching situations they face.
As we attended the sessions, and as we
listened to the participants respond andshare their experiences, a door was opened
upon a world that we never knew existed. It
was exciting to be part of the dreams taking
shape. We in the developed world have manytechnological and economic advantages, but
the future of Laos lies in the hands of thisremarkable group of educators. From what
we saw and heard during the two days ofthe conference, Laotians will do everything
in their power to make the dream become areality.
Exemplary session report
The following account of a conference session, The Questions of Questions, presented by
Dr. Alan Maley, demonstrates the typical session
format and the engagement of the participantsthat makes Lao TESOL such a dynamic andinspiring event.

Most Lao TESOL conference sessions arepresented as workshops. The Question of
Questions, led by Alan Maley, visiting professor at Assumption University, Bangkok,
demonstrated the effectiveness of this presentation style for the Lao TESOL audience.
Dr. Maley is an experienced presenter whosetalks are ﬁnely tuned to meet the special
41

Conference Review

expenses, enabling teachers from the mostimpoverished areas to meet once a year with
their colleagues.
In the ﬁve years since its inception, Lao
TESOL has become the Ministry of Education’s major facilitator for teacher education.
This year, the conference participants included approximately 200 local high school
teachers, 80 teachers from the Ministry,and 62 teachers from provinces all over thecountry. For many attendees, this was theﬁrst time they had an opportunity to meettheir colleagues and share ideas and experiences. Each day of the conference ended
with a special session for Lao teachers.
These sessions gave teachers, many of whom
had never attended any sort of professional
symposium, an opportunity to ask questions
and discuss the sessions they had attended.
These sessions were also the occasion forestablishing ongoing networks that are theteachers’ primary, and often only, resourcefor professional development.
For those of us from economically developed countries, the conference was a reality
check. Some presenters began talking about
using video and computers in the classroom.
“We don’t have computers,” interjected theLao teachers. “We don’t have videos,” said
another. In a country without advertising,even old magazines to cut up for visual aidsand student projects are not affordable nor
easily obtained. A blackboard and chalk
are the coveted high-tech features in manyrural classrooms, causing those of us withaccess to so many sophisticated materials to
re-evaluate our resourcefulness as teachers.
Most sessions were offered twice during theconference. By the second round, presenters
had adapted their presentations to better support the Lao teachers’ needs without diminishing the value for a wider audience.
The contributions of the Lao participants,

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

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needs of his audience. In Laos, Dr. Maley
incorporated English language instruction
into a presentation about teaching, knowingthat Lao teachers would beneﬁt from bothobjectives. Dr. Maley began by having us
think of one question to ask. Almost immediately, there were hands in the air, and an
active session was underway.
Dr. Maley used our questions to makea distinction between “display questions,”
used to demonstrate a point, and “referential questions,” which are the usual type ofquestions people ask to gain information. To
answer these questions, the respondent mustrefer to previous knowledge. Maley thendistinguished between “convergent questions,” with one right answer, and “divergent
questions,” with many right answers. Maley
explained that a question like “What time isit?” has a “narrow range,” whereas a question
about feelings, thoughts, and experiences has
a “wide range.” Why, Dr. Maley asks, doso many teachers give so much attention to
the ﬁrst kind of question and so little to theother kind when it’s clear that the wider therange of the question, the more likelihood
there is for discussion and variety in ourconversations?
We then were asked to write as many questions as possible about the following statement: “Jane lives in Castle Street.” The ﬁrst
question created was: “Why do British people say, “in” Castle Street?” Many questions
followed: “Does Jane live alone?” “Does she
enjoy living there?” The participants’ ability to phrase grammatical questions varied
widely, but even the teachers who could
barely keep up made enthusiastic contributions. This was an English lesson as well as alesson about teaching, and participants werehighly motivated to get all they could fromthis opportunity.
Moving onto pair-work, we were asked

to share one unusual piece of information
about ourselves with our partner. Our partner
would ask two questions about the information. This didn’t go smoothly. When I said,“I broke my foot one week ago,” my partner
asked, “What country are you from?” It tooka while to communicate the purpose anddirection of the task to my partner, but wewere ﬁnally successful.
We were then asked to read a simple folktale about a man called Nasruddin:
Nasruddin was on his knees outside hishouse, looking for something.
“What are you looking for?” asked hisneighbor.
“My keys. I dropped them.”“But where were you when you dropped
them?” asked the neighbour.
“In my bedroom,” said Nasruddin.
“So why are you looking for them outside
the house?”“Well, there’s more light out here,” replied Nasruddin, “so I should be able to seethem better.”
We formed groups and created factual andinterpretative questions about the folktale,such as “Where is this folktale from?” and“What is the moral of the story?”
The questions generated lively discussion
and elicited some very interesting answers.
Concerning the moral of the story, two particularly insightful answers were offered:
1. We may need to look in uncomfortable
places if we really want answers.
2. We teach what is easy to teach, but notnecessarily what students need to learn.
Dr. Maley concluded the session by
pointing out that factual, cause-effect, andinferential questions are necessary, but are
overused. Interpretative, personalized, andspeculative questions offer more opportunities for engagement and discussion, but are
not asked enough. Dr. Maley’s presentation
42

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEstyle conﬁrmed that divergent, wide-range
interpretive questions are more thoughtprovoking and facilitate greater student
involvement.
Conclusion
When the conference ended, our own
questions still resonated: What is essential
for education to ﬂourish? What makes a goodteacher? Could we be good teachers under
Laotian conditions? From where does thehunger for learning come, and why have somany of us lost it?
Some writer whose identity is lost in therecesses of my mind once opined, “It is more
important to ask the right questions than tohave the right answer.” At the Lao TESOL
conference, inspired teachers were asking
References
United Nations. (2004). The Lao PDR’s
development context. Retrieved November
14, 2004, from United Nations Lao PDR
website: http://www.unlao.org/country/
page.htm

Pragmatics Heaven on the 7th Floor

David Woodﬁeld
Poole Gakuin University

Over the weekend of May 22nd and May
23rd the 2004 JALT Pan-SIG conference washeld at Tokyo Keizai University’s campus
in Kokubunji. The conference focus was
the interface between pragmatics, language
teaching, and assessment.
It was a particularly stimulating time thatprovided opportunities for members of theCUE, Pragmatics and Testing fraternities(SIGs) to catch up with the latest in their own
ﬁelds and to ﬁnd out what was happening inother ﬁelds. Not only that, though. Some ofthe presentations developed a real synergy.
As I attended the various lectures, I noticed
two themes coming through. Some presenters emphasized the facility of drawing uponobserved language use when selecting material for teaching language. As Andrew Cohen
put it (and I paraphrase) – “obtain knowledgeof how language is used, teach it and test it.”
Others, in describing, in a very detailed way,
conversations through which learners orient
to language form, implied how discourse
might be structured in the classroom. In other43

Conference Review

Venkman, Peter. (2002, May 18). Settling
down with a good book most un-Laotian.
Retrieved November 14, 2004 from http://
www.atimes.com/se-asia/DE18Ae02.html
The World Bank Group. (2004). edstats.
Retrieved November 14, 2004 fromThe World Bank Group website:
http://devdata.worldbank.org/edstats/
SummaryEducationProﬁles/CountryData/
GetShowData.asp?sCtry=LAO,
The World Bank Group. (2004). Lao PDR
data proﬁle. Retrieved November 14, 2004,
from The World Bank website: http//
devdata.worldbank.org/external/CCProﬁle.
asp?CCODE=LAO&PTYPE=CP
World Bank Group.(2002). Lao People’s
Democratic Republic – Second education
development project. Retrieved November
14, 2004 fromhttp://www-wds.worldbank.
org/servlet/WDS ContentServer/
WDSP/IB/2004/03/19/000104615_
20040319091055/Rendered/ INDEX/PID0P078113.txt

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

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On CUEwords, analyses of how language is used may
provide appropriate content for the language
classroom, and analyses of how language
is learned may provide useful models forlanguage learning activities.
So how is language used? This is what thepresenters had to say . . .
Jenny Thomas of the University of Walesin her plenary focused on the organization ofknowledge in the mind. To describe the topic
of her talk she coined the word “psychopragmatics.” She pointed out that knowing
a language involves having an understandingof concepts that is particular to that language,
and that different understandings of suchseemingly simple concepts as “cat” can leadto cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Here she
drew upon prototype theory, explaining thatin a language a word has “an abstract set ofcharacteristic qualities.” Cat she explained,
in British English has the following qualities“living, cuddly, responsive, tame, soft, lives
in house, friendly.” She pointed out that inmany African languages the characteristics
of cat are very different, and don’t include
such features as “cuddly” and “lives inhouse” (and she wasn’t talking about big“cats” here, such as lions and tigers). As aresult of such a mismatch in meanings she
pointed out that while it may be simple fora language student to learn the word “cat”,
it is another matter for that student to knowwhat the word actually means.
In response to this situation, teachers
should draw students’ attention to the prototypical qualities of important concepts.
For those of us teaching English in Japan,
we should consider which key concepts
have different qualities in English than they
do in Japanese, and mark these for special
attention. For instance, we might teach that“love” in English can be used to describea strong affection for food, as in “I love

chocolate” unlike the Japanese equivalent“aishiteimasu,” which cannot be used todescribe one’s feelings about food.
Andrew Cohen, the other plenary speaker,
pointed out that speech acts are realizedin each language in a unique manner. He
advocated drawing upon research-based
descriptions of speech act realizations inteaching students how to apologize, invite
and so on. Cohen and his colleague Noriko
Ishihara have summarized the research ona number of speech acts and have createdsuccinct descriptions of how these acts are
performed. They have placed these descriptions on a University of Minnesota website
in order to make them available to teachers.
So in order to ﬁnd models to teach speechacts or to check the accuracy of the models
in the textbook you have been using go to
http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/descriptions.html.
Cohen’s presentation made it apparent tome that the explicit teaching of strategies
for performing speech acts can go a longway. Cohen discussed strategies that could
be taught to Japanese Second Language(JSL) students such as “speaking hesitantly
to appear humble” and “using repetition.”
In Japanese for instance one needs to repeat
statements of thanks more often than inEnglish in order to display the appropriate
amount of appreciation. The statement “konomae domo” (“Thanks for what you did earlier”) is often used in Japanese discourse,
and if learners of Japanese use it too, theirinteractions with Japanese speakers are likely
to be smoother.
Cohen said in his talk, “a powerful inﬂuence is working against the appropriate
application of L2 forms—namely how we
do it in our native language.” Such negative
language transfer was also a theme of Thomas’s address. She talked about how one’s
44Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

istics of English rhetoric and the paragraph.
Once again the answer advocated is to turnto models of communication in the target
language, and to teach their particular features.
This is also the approach followed by Alex
Gilmore. In his presentation, he focused on
the use of “authentic materials” in the EFL
class. He pointed out that many course books
provide dialogues which do not reﬂect either
how people actually speak or what they tend
to talk about. He cited research which foundgossip and story telling have the importantfunction of building rapport. So he decided toteach his students how to tell stories in English. Using a scene from the movie Reservoir
Dogs in which a cop tells a fellow cop about
an incident when he pulled over a driver,
Gilmore provides his students with a numberof consciousness-raising activities, whichempower them to discover layer upon layerof patterning in the story-telling exchange.
He encourages them to consider the various
stages in a story-telling routine, the tense thattends to be used, and the register, intonation
and body language.
Gilmore’s goal is to use authentic materials to develop students’ communicativecompetence. It struck me that his approach
might well succeed in assisting students todevelop just that, as it challenges them tonotice exactly how speakers of the target
language communicate. But as Cohen said,
regarding the introduction of material in his
address, “do it humorously … with hooks.”
And I think here too Gilmore has succeeded,as the ﬁlm clip he chooses is highly entertaining: simply full of the “colorful language”
and emotional display college students tend
to be interested in.

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Conference Review

understanding of a concept in one’s native
language can make the discussion of thisconcept in another language incomprehensible. Masako Kondo and Kazumi Kimura also
took up the theme of negative transfer.
In their presentation, Kondo and Kimura
contrasted the Japanese concepts of shuujigaku and danraku with the English conceptsof rhetoric and paragraph. In examiningreference books and writing texts they foundthat the purpose of shuujigaku is to “impress”
readers, while rhetoric’s emphasis is on the“effective communication of an opinion.”
A danraku they discovered is deﬁned as “asection of a long passage” while a paragraphis deﬁned as a “basic unit of organizationin writing in which a group of related sentences develops one idea.” They found thatparagraphs were described as having threecomponents – a topic sentence, supporting
sentences and a concluding sentence; however, they couldn’t ﬁnd any mention of thecomponents of a danraku.
Kondo and Kimura had 72 Japanese university students write compositions on thesame topic in English and Japanese, and theyfound that many of the paragraphs the students wrote in their English compositions did
not conform to the description of a paragraphthey had established from English writing
resources. Many of the students’ paragraphs
had no topic sentence, some had two topic
sentences, and others lacked unity. Kondo
and Kimura suggested that the students’paragraphs took that form because they werewriting them as if they were danraku, which
it appears have no hard and fast requirements
regarding structure.
To deal with the problem of their students
writing compositions in English that would
not be highly evaluated by the typical usersof English academic writing, Kondo andKimura began teaching about the character-Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Conference Review

On CUE

talk with their classmates.
What light did the presenters shed on
how language is learned?
Yuri Hosoda and Erica Zimmerman both
To answer this question I would like to discussed talk between learners of JSL andturn to some of the presentations given dur- Japanese native speakers, in their presentaing the colloquium on conversation analysis. tions. Both discussed extracts of conversaConversation analysis (CA) is a method of tion in which a Japanese native speaker andanalyzing talk that has its origin in sociol- a JSL learner take on the identities of teacher
ogy. At the colloquium, Gabriele Kasper of and learner, the Japanese native speaker in
the University of Hawaii described it as the one case explaining the meaning of a word atstudy “of how co-participants maintain order length, and in another correcting the learner’s
in social activities
pronunciation of athrough their verbal
word. Such discusand nonverbal consions of language
duct.” I believe themay have potential
approach is usefulfor language learnto the study of SLA.
ing. In structuring
It requires the rigopportunities in classorous transcription
for language learnersof conversations so
to discuss texts theythat volume, pauses,
are creating together,breaths, occasions
such as reports or
CUE Members at Pan-Sig 2004
when two people
projects, we may be

are talking at once, and other features are
noticed. In applying the rigor of CA to conversations that language learners have, it ispossible to notice features of talk that may
lead to language learning.
We may ask, then, what do language
learners get from conversation with otherlanguage learners, and is there any point
structuring this activity in class?
Jack Barrow has found through his analysis of the conversations of college English
students that they tend to try to repair theirutterances within their current turn. An example is as follows:
Um:: (2.0) I um: (0.9) I: ah: (4.8) I studied ah (.) I studie:du, (0.7) I’m studyingu
homework.
It is possible that the stimulus to repair
that talk provides may consolidate theirgrammatical knowledge. It may then be
worthwhile giving students opportunities toable to make it more likely that the students
will orient to language form, and take on theroles of language teacher and learner, andvice versa, in their discourse.
Well my reﬂections on the 2004 Pan-SIG
come to an end. It was a great weekend. I
would like to commend those who organized such a great conference. They brought
together three of the world authorities in theapplication of pragmatics to SLA. The venueof the conference was perfect. Everything
was on one ﬂoor, with a spacious registration and mingling area, supplied with coffee
and cookies, surrounded by equally spacious
seminar rooms. Sure, there were some equipment glitches. The presentations, though,were typically well organized, well presented
and thought provoking. I don’t know if I
have been treated to as much “mind candy”
in a two-day period for a long time! Roll on
next Pan-SIG.
46

Photo by Tim Newﬁelds

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUEBook Review

Professional Development in Language Education Series:
Volumes I, II and III.
Murphey, T. (Series Ed.). (2003). Virginia: TESOL. vol. 1, 124 pp.; vol. 2,
126 pp.; vol. 3, 128 pp.

Reviewed by Debra L. Simms-Asaiteachers who want to make their ESL experience more meaningful and rewarding. It will
be particularly valuable to those who teach inisolated communities or ﬁnd themselves surrounded by uninspired coworkers. Readerslearn how to make the most of professionalorganizations, how to begin sharing teaching ideas, and how to take advantage of newtechnologies. Ideally, this ﬁrst volume would
be included in the TESOL membership package. It makes TESOL appear to be what it is– not a bureaucracy in a far away land, but a
network of living, breathing teachers.
Volume Two, “Extending Professional Contributions” assumes that the readers’ professional development feet are wet and thatthey are looking for greater challenges. The
contributors share stories of collaboration,
research, and graduate studies. Particularly
inspiring is the chapter by Patricia L. Miller.
Miller began her Ph.D. work in composition
and TESOL at age ﬁve-ﬁve. Her story is agood reality check to those who assume it is
too late for graduate school.
The third volume, “Sustaining Professionalism,” offers advice from masters in the ﬁeldof TESOL. The experience of these language
education veterans makes excellent reading
for those of us who may have trouble imagining our personal and professional lives overthe long term. Included in this volume is a
“Checklist of Activities to Enhance Careers
Over Time” which lists twenty-one profes47

Book Review

Truly helpful professional development
resources for language educators are generally in short supply. It is fortunate then, thatTESOL has produced a three volume series
loaded with concrete advice from successful practicing professionals. While certainly
not written exclusively for a readership inJapan, a surprising number of contributors
have Japanese experience. The focus on Japan may be due to the fact that the series isedited by JALT’s own Tim Murphey, himself
a highly active contributor to the language
education scene in this country.
Thus far there are three volumes in theseries. A fourth volume is currently in development. Each volume is slim, none over 130
pages. The series is formatted for maximum
reader accessibility. Each chapter follows
the same pattern. First, there is a brief narrative to set the context of the contribution
and introduce the author or authors. Eachnarrative is followed by a description of aprofessional development activity, the steps
involved, and a conclusion. The conclusion isfollowed by a resource section. More than abibliography, this section has short explanations of each item. Lastly, a short biographyof the contributor is provided, complete withhis or her email address.
Volume One, “Becoming Contributing
Professionals,” assumes that the reader has
yet to pursue any career enrichment beyond
initial teacher training. It will appeal to thoseWinter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

Book Review

On CUE

sional development ideas. Items include“edit a book,” “take on an administrative
position,” and “become a teacher educator.”
The list reinforces the message of the whole
series -- namely that learning isn’t over after
initial teacher training. Nor is it complete
when one becomes comfortable teaching in
the classroom.
The Professional Development in Language Education Series demonstrates thatcareer satisfaction is largely in the handsof the teacher. Given the predominance ofcontributors with Japanese experience, it isa particularly useful resource for language
educators here.
The PDLE series can be obtained from the
TESOL catalog or online at <http:www.tesol.
org/>. The books are available individuallyat 29.95 USD for non–TESOL members
or 19.95 USD for TESOL members. The
most economical way is to get them as a
package set and pay 70.00 USD for nonTESOL members or 54.00 USD for TESOL
members. As noted above, TESOL would doteachers a great service by giving away theﬁrst volume with the membership.

CONTRIBUTE!
to On CUE

On CUE seeks reviews of books, textbooks, videos,presentations, etc. 600 words; 1500 words forscholarly review essays.
Inquiries to Steven Snyder: snyder@phoenix.ac.jp
Reviews of conferences and individual presentations
are also welcome.
Inquiries to Phil McCasland: mccaslandpl@rocketmail.com

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