Feature Article

Some Expatriate Faculty Members’

Assumptions about University
Entrance and Entrance Examinationsin Japan
Melodie Cook
University of Niigata PrefectureThis paper reports on part of an exploratory country-wide survey of tertiary-level expatriate
English-language teachers’ beliefs and opinions about entrance examinations and theircreation. Based on grounded theory, this particular study presents findings which indicatethat expatriate English-language teachers, especially those who come from BANA
(British, Australasian, North American) contexts make assumptions about the purposes ofEnglish entrance examinations, how Japanese students choose universities, and faculties/
departments in which to study. These assumptions appear to be related to three factors:
the ways in which expatriate respondents selected institutions for undergraduate study intheir home countries, their graduate-level education, and their experience with large-scale
English language testing. As more Japanese universities ask foreign faculty members forassistance with entrance examinations, these findings may be helpful to assist expatriate
colleagues understand why they may find examination creation perplexing as well as help
Japanese colleagues who, when co-creating such tests with their expatriate colleagues, comeup against differences in opinions or questions about university entrance policies in generaland entrance examination construction in particular..
本研究では、入試やその作成に関する高等教育レベルの非日本人英語教師の信念や意見について全国的調査の一部を報告する。グラウンデッド・セオリ
ーに基づき、本研究では、非日本人英語教師が、特にBANAコンテクスト（英国、北米、オーストラリア）出身者が、入試英語の目的や、日本人生徒の大学や学部・学科の選定方法に関して推定することを示す調査結果を提示する。これらの仮定は、非日本人回答者が自国の学部教育機関を選択した方

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法、彼らの大学院レベルの教育、大規模な英語のテストの経験といった、３つの要因と関連があるようだ。外国人教員に入試の支援を求める日本の大学が増えるにつれ、本研究での調査結果は、日本人教員が非日本人教員と入試問題を共に作成する際、総論的な入試方針と、各論的な入試作成に関して意見や疑問に相違が生じた際、有益な知見を与える可能性がある。

In Japan, around 5700 expatriate English teaching faculty work full-time at
Japanese universities (McCrostie & Spiri, 2008). Those with tenure are often
required to sit on committees that construct the English component of their
university’s entrance examination; these are crucial administrative bodies inJapanese tertiary institutions because entrance examinations determine the future
lives of many young Japanese people. What some expatriate English-teachingfaculty members may not realize, however, is that some students studying intheir institutions are there for reasons for which they might not have considered.
Because they are educated in a different country, possess graduate degrees in
TESL/TEFL (these days, the minimum requirement for employment in tertiary
education in Japan) and are familiar with large-scale testing systems in their own
countries, many expatriate English-teaching faculty members bring with themnot only a certain skill set and knowledge base, but also a number of assumptions
about how and why Japanese students choose to study where they do, and whattests admitting these students should be like.
As there are few published accounts of expatriate English-instructor voicesin the English examination construction process, this exploratory research seeks
to understand what roles foreign faculty members play with regards to creationof their university’s English entrance examinations, what they believe about theexaminations in general, and if they have been successful at effecting change orincorporating innovations into their university’s English entrance examinations.
This particular part of the study seeks to understand the assumptions that
expatriate English-teaching faculty members make, find the sources of theirassumptions, and offer recommendations for greater communication among
members of entrance examination committees. These recommendations mayhelp prevent or at least ease potential tensions among committee members when22

Some Expatriate Faculty..., OnCUE Journal, 6(3), pages 21-41

they arise.
University Choice in Japan
In Japan, while some people believe that entrance to any tertiary institution is
sufficient, many continue to consider that future success in life is predicatedon entrance to a good university (Aspinall, 2005). One study found that when
Japanese, British, and German respondents were asked about the importance of theinstitution of higher education as a recruitment criterion, Japanese respondents
tended to rate it more highly than the other two nationalities (Schomburg& Teichler, 2002). This is because in the gakureki shakai or “educationallycredentialized society” that is Japan (Poole, 2003) in which “… the extraordinaryemphasis on ranking colleges and universities has led to a brand-name sensitivity
that may affect a person for their entire life” (Poole, 2003). This “brand-namesensitivity” cannot be underestimated, since, according to Blumenthal (1992):[l]arge companies often recruit their workers from a few top universities
before they graduate, which means that enrolment in a prestigious university
secures employment in a large company. Japanese universities are ranked
in a pyramid structure, with a few national universities and fewer private
universities at the top. (p. 456)
This belief persists: Japanese students’ accept as true that they can, even in
the current economic climate, gain lifetime employment in prestigious fields byentering highly-ranked institutions (Lee-Cunin, 2005). Thus, one’s chances at
improving one’s lot in life, in other words, social mobility, may depend on one’s
entering the highest-ranked institution possible.
University Rankings in Japan
As of 2011, in Japan there are 780 universities (Ministry of Education, 2012).
Each year the rankings of these universities are published, so that parents andprospective students can select, often with the help of supplementary education
personnel (Roesgaard, 2006), the institution that the high school graduates will
most likely succeed in entering. The 2010 rankings by Nikkei BP Consulting,for example, listed Waseda University as the highest-ranked in Japan (Daigaku
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burandoryoku ranking, 2010, November 12). As an illustration of this “brandpower”, almost all government and industry leaders in Japan are said to be
graduates of Tokyo University (Cutts, 1997), one key player in the Japanese
university hierarchy, currently ranked second-place in Japan.
Prospective Students “Choosing” Universities andDepartments
Japanese students who search online may find articles recommending that when
they are choosing a university, they consider commuting times, the environment
around the school, and the degree of satisfaction they are likely to experience
after entering a particular university (Yoshida, 2009, April 1), in addition to
the brand power of the institution. Many are advised on which university they
will be likely to enter by their high school teachers and increasingly by juku, orcram schools (Roesgaard, 2006), which will look at students’ test scores andmake recommendations for universities. There seems to be scant information
written in English about how prospective students choose universities to enter,but, it appears that they are likely to try to enter the highest-ranked institutionthat will accept them and will study in whatever department their entrance
examination scores qualify them for. For example, Lee-Cunin (2005) found thatsome of her students at the University of Shiga selected the Faculty of Economics
for intellectual enjoyment and the usefulness of economics for a future career;
however, others said that they couldn’t find another interesting major or wereautomatically assigned to that faculty based on their entrance examination scores.
In other words, while some students may be genuinely interested in studying ina particular university in a particular faculty, some may only be interested in theuniversity’s brand name power.
University Entrance
Although there are alternative methods of university entrance such asrecommendation (students are admitted based on recommendation of theirhigh school principal), and students’ involvement in extra-curricular activities(through an admissions office [AO]), and although the number of accepted
students using these alternative methods is on the increase, especially in private
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universities, the majority of prospective students, especially those hoping toattend national or public institutions, take entrance examinations (Aspinall,2005). First they take a unified examination administered by the National Centerfor University Examinations, followed by “a secondary entrance examination
held by individual universities and colleges, although some institutions conduct
only the latter” (Arimoto, 2007), the focus of this paper.
University entrance examinations are considered “‘objective’, fair, and open
to everyone” (Cutts, 1997), and they remain the most common method forstudents to compete in the race to the top of Japan’s social ladder. Because they
are largely based on detailed, factual information (Aspinall, 2005), adolescents
spend long hours inside and outside of school studying to enter the highestranked high school, then university, possible.
Entrance Examination English
The English portion of entrance examinations has been the target of much
criticism in terms of which “standard” of English is being tested, the use ofarchaic vocabulary and structures, and the overall difficulty of reading passages(Brown & Yamashita, 1995; Kikuchi, 2006; LoCastro, 1990), as well as thetypes of tasks commonly occurring on examinations (Kikuchi, 2006). The
passive nature of entrance examinations is also considered the main reason
why secondary education Japanese teachers’ of English ( JTEs) continue to use
traditional (grammar translation) teaching practices (Cook, 2010; Sakui, 2004;
Sato, 2002; Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004; Wada, 2002). Some expatriate researchersand professors have attempted to address the problem by making examinations
more in line with what are considered to be, in western countries, good language
tests, such as validity and reliability, but they have met with resistance (Brown,
2000; Leonard, 1998; Murphey, 2004). One reason for this may be that many
expatriate English-teaching faculty may have only a partial understanding about
the ultimate purposes of English examinations (Cook, 2013); while, Japanesefaculty, having been schooled in Japan, may implicitly understand what the
purpose(s) of the test is (are) and see no reason to change them.
Perhaps this is because the English portion of entrance examinations at
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Japanese tertiary institutions is seen to not only serve (or not serve) pedagogical
purposes, but may largely just be a tool for gatekeeping and social stratification,
generating revenue, and projecting a certain kind of face to the general public(Blumenthal, 1992; Cook, 2013; Frost, 1991; Kariya & Dore, 2006; LoCastro,
1990; Shimahara, 1978). In other words, an entrance examination may not, infact, be a language test in the ways that it may be conceived by some expatriate
English language teaching (ELT) faculty.

Purpose of the ResearchThis exploratory research hopes to open the discourse about Japanese entrance
examination development from the perspective of expatriate English instructors.
This paper discusses one aspect of my wider research, and focuses on a country-wide
survey of expatriate English-teaching university faculty and their participation inand beliefs about their institution’s entrance examinations. This particular study
focuses on two questions:
1. What assumptions do expatriate English-teaching faculty members makeabout university entrance and entrance examinations in Japan?
2. What are the origins of these assumptions?

Data Collection and Analysis

An online survey was constructed and made available to respondents throughsnowball sampling, “a ‘chain reaction’ whereby the researcher identifies a
few people who meet the criteria of the particular study and then asks theseparticipants to identify further members of the population” (Dörnyei, 2003, p.
72). The survey asked respondents to give demographic information, elaborateon their roles in entrance examination creation at their institutions, share nonspecific information about test design, and give their general opinions and beliefs
about the English portion of entrance examinations. Respondents agreeing toparticipate in a follow-up interview were contacted and interviewed via Skype,
telephone, or face-to-face session. Interviews generally lasted between 30 minutes
to one hour. For this study, Creswell’s (2009) generic guide for analysis andinterpretation was followed. Data were collected and prepared for analysis and26

Some Expatriate Faculty..., OnCUE Journal, 6(3), pages 21-41

audio-recordings were transcribed. Data were then read through to gain a general
impression of ideas and tone, then typed cases—files containing transcripts ofinterviews, respondent demographic information, and other communication—
were prepared for all participants. Using NVivo software, Version 9 (QSR
International), material was organized into chunks (words or groups of words
referring to a theme), and coding processes were used to generate themes foranalysis (Bringer, Johnston, & Brackenridge, 2004). Finally, emergent themes
were identified.
It is important to note that data derived for this study arose from bothquestions asked directly to respondents as well as spontaneous mentions of or
anecdotes about how students choose universities and departments to enter.
Participants
One hundred and twenty-one expatriate English teaching faculty members who
work at tertiary institutions in Japan took part in the anonymous online survey,
and 24 of these took part in follow-up interviews. Eight of the 24 commented
particularly on university entrance and purposes of entrance examinations, aswell as gave their opinions on how examinations should be improved. It is theiropinions that are examined in this paper. In order to protect their anonymity,
Table 1
Interviewee Information

Pseudonym

Nationality

Years
Teaching
in JapanType of
University

Highest Level of
Education

CoursesTaken inTesting/
Assessment

Bob

Canadian

6-10

PrivateMA (TESL)

Yes

David

American

11-20

PrivateMA (TESL)

Yes

Diogenes

American

31-40

PrivateMA (TESOL)

Yes

Jack

Australian

1-5

National

MEd (Language andLiteracy Education)

Yes

Mike

British

11-20

PrivateMA (not listed)

No

Peter

British6-10

PublicEdD (Applied
Linguistics and TESOL)

Yes

Sam

Canadian

1-5

PrivateMEd (TESOL)

Yes

Steve

American1-5

PrivateMA (TESOL)

Yes

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pseudonyms have been used. As Table 1 indicates, all the participants who will bequoted in this study come from British/Australasian/North American (BANA)
countries, all are male, and all but two ( Jack and Peter) teach in private institutions.
All hold a master’s level degree in TESL-related fields (except for Mike’s which
was not listed), and all but Mike took courses in testing and assessment as part oftheir graduate-level study. In order to protect the privacy of the participants, their
university rankings are not indicated in the table.

Findings

Three major assumptions made by the respondents are as follows: 1) that an
entrance examination is, or should be, a language test; 2) that students want to
be in the institution they have been accepted to; and 3) that students want to bein the faculty/department they are currently studying in. It should be noted thatin some cases, assumptions stemmed from unprompted / unsolicited responses
from only one or two respondents during interviews.
Assumption 1: The English Entrance Examination is a
Language Test
One of the most fundamental assumptions made by respondents was that their
institution’s entrance examination is, or should be, by their standard, a language
test. Respondents’ answers to three questions seemed to uphold this hypothesis:
1. “What do you think the purpose of your university’s English entrance
examination should be?”2. “What, in your opinion, is the purpose of the English entrance examination
at your institution?”, and3. “What do you believe would improve the effectiveness of your university’s
English entrance examination?”
The purpose of English entrance examinations: Ideals andrealities.
Responses to the online questionnaire revealed a tendency for respondents toplace a high priority on pedagogical purposes for entrance examinations. The“should be” column of Table 2 reveals that the top three responses to the question28

Some Expatriate Faculty..., OnCUE Journal, 6(3), pages 21-41“What do you think the purpose of your university’s English entrance examination
should be?” were “To choose students who will be able to succeed in English
classes our university offers” (67.7%), “To get a detailed picture of students’English ability” (62.9%) and “To indicate if students have successfully understood
what they were taught in high school (43.5%). In other words, responses had a
primarily pedagogical focus. It is important to note that respondents could
choose more than one purpose.
Table 2
What the purposes of university entrance examinations should be and are
Purpose
Purposeshould be (%) is (%)

Responses from interviewees
To choose students able to succeed in English classes our university
offers

67.7

45.9

To get a detailed picture of students’ English ability

62.9

26.2

To indicate if students have understood what they were taught inhigh school

43.5

27.9

To find students’ strengths and weaknesses

35.5

16.4

To place students in appropriate faculties

30.6

14.8

To get an idea of students’ overall intelligence

22.6

14.8

To determine students’ diligence

16.1

18

To indicate the selective nature of the university

11.3

27.9

To enable students’ mobility levels

4.8

1.6

To support the university financially

3.2

42.6

However, for the question “What, in your opinion, is the purpose of the
English entrance examination at your institution?” the top three responses
were different, moving from pedagogically oriented in the “should be” column,
to pedagogical plus socio-economically oriented in the “is” column. As the “is”
column reveals, while the number one answer remained the same, although at alower percentage (45.9%), the second highest-ranked response was “To support
the university financially” (42.6%). This was followed by a two-way tie: “Toindicate the selective nature of the university” and “To indicate if students haveunderstood what they learned in high school” (27.9% each). These responses
suggest a difference in ideals and realities of entrance examination purposes in
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the minds of expatriate English-teaching faculty members.
Respondents’ suggestions for improvement
When asked how entrance examinations could be improved, Peter, in aninterview, said he thought that aligning his institution’s test with a large-scale
test would be beneficial, “... whenever I look at a university entrance examination
package, I always compare it to that IELTS package which is very well tried andtested over the years.” He also thought the following questions would help his
institution’s examination determine exactly the kinds of students he thought
were wanted by the school: “I think a little bit more clarity and discussion would
be very, very useful to just review what are our overall aims here. What kind of
students are we looking for? What kind of skills are we wishing to test?” What is
pertinent here is that Peter is expressing a wish for explication about the goals of
his institution’s entrance examination; in other words, what these goals actually
are is not obvious to him.
A pedagogical orientation is obvious when Bob wondered why his institution
did not “... try to test for things that we want our students to be able to do in thefirst year?” This is also true for Steve, who said, “Ultimately what matters to meis how the admitted students can be separated into levels for the English classes.”In other words, Bob would like his examination to resemble a diagnostic test andSteve would like an instrument for placement.
Both Sam and David felt that statistical analysis of test results would be
beneficial. Sam, in a discussion of validity and reliability said that he found it“shocking” that universities don’t bother doing statistical analyses of tests, since
discrete-point tests can be easily analyzed using a machine that costs a mere 10,000
yen. David said he tried to introduce such practices at his institution but felt that
his idea wasn’t “well received”; he also suggested running statistical tests on theentrance examinations, but that “no one really thought that was necessary.” Jack
felt that as an instrument for norm referencing, entrance examination “norms
have to be made apparent to the people. It’d be much better to just use Center
Tests or even just TOEFL as those benchmarks. At least people are quite clear
about what’s required to obtain a particular level.” What we can see from theabove suggestions for improvement is a tendency for expatriate English teachers
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to view entrance examinations as language tests as having a largely pedagogical
purpose; these teachers express a desire to make more robust language tests, too,
which includes making test aims transparent not only to test creators, but also the
public at large.
However, not all respondents feel this way. Mike, while acknowledging thatwhat he thought were commonly considered good tests—meaning those whichwere valid and reliable and were therefore also ideal—felt that testing experts
don’t understand the purpose of entrance examinations in Japan, and their ideas
about tests and testing are not necessarily relevant in the Japanese context. Whilehe confuses validity with reliability in the quote below, his point is that looking at
Japanese tests from a language-test-construction standpoint may not be necessary.
J.D. Brown1 has talked about issues of validity, meaning that students whotake the same test again, or another test made by that university, might get avery different result. I don’t think this is the case with our exam. I think our
tests are kind of reliable. In other words, you can have a narrowly-focused oreven stupid test that’s still reliable, right? I think that’s what we have at ourplace. If that is the case, who cares if it’s good or not unless a good test leads tosomething that’s useful for the university. But there is no reason to think that
it would. So that’s what I think about J.D. Brown. He knows everything there
is to know about Japanese entrance exams from a technical point of view, but
he doesn’t live in Japan or teach in a Japanese university, so I wonder if he fully
understands the reality – namely that there are no positive gains to be madefor any institution that attempts to make a better or more reliable test.
However, while Mike questions the assumption that entrance examinations
should conform to western standards, he does seem to suggest that many entrance
examinations may be, while perhaps on the surface, reliable, also “stupid.”
Assumption 2: Students Want to be in the Institution to Whichthey have been Accepted
The second major assumption expatriate English-teaching faculty members
might make about students is that they want to be studying in the institution towhich they have been accepted. Diogenes realized that this was, in fact, not true
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after confronting a group of male students at a second-tier national university
who, compared to the other students in the class, were not performing at thesame level as their peers. When asked why, they told him that they had applied
to get into a top-tier university, but were unable to; however, their scores weregood enough for them to enter the most prestigious department at Diogenes’
institution, and so that is what they did. Although they were not happy because
they had not entered a higher-tier institution, they took their next-best option.
In our further discussion, Diogenes mentioned an important point which is that
one does not “just pass the exam to get into a university, [one passes] the exam to
get into the department” which relates to the third assumption.
Assumption 3: Students Want to be in the Department in which
they are Majoring
In speaking of the group of male students above, Diogenes continued, “Andso, these kids who weren’t interested in English and really weren’t very good atEnglish nevertheless were able to and were interested in getting into the highest
rank in the hierarchy at a second-tier national university...” meaning that students
will enter whatever department their scores will allow them to at the highesttier institution into which they can be accepted. He then told me a related story
involving a junior high school teacher he knew:
She was bright, but not very bright, and she had always wanted to be a juniorhigh school teacher. And it turns out that she passed exams to “A” uni and“B” uni. So “A” uni is the national university and “B” uni is the well-regarded
private university... And so when she took the exam for “B” uni she chose theEnglish department and for “A” uni she chose the Persian department. And
she passed both exams, so which one do you think she took?
The answer to this rhetorical question is the Persian department, because
although her career goals were related to teaching, this woman was able tosuccessfully enter a higher-ranked institution by studying a subject not necessarily
related to her future employment. For her, entering the highest-ranked university
possible would ensure that she would be able to get the job she wanted after
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graduation.
For some teachers, such as Sam, however, the fact that students may choose
to enter departments they are not interested in, but are highly-ranked within
the university, is not clear until made explicit. He said that he “used to have apretty negative opinion” about his students, especially because they were English
majors. His Japanese wife “set him straight” (his words):
I just assumed that because they took English as their major that theywould have more motivation or interest in English or something; moredetermination. And they didn’t have it and it really irritated me, because
teaching the English major students was sometimes worse than teaching theelective courses. And I found that students who were studying international
politics, they were much more aware and active about their education. They
were more into it. And this really disappointed me and I went home andcomplained to my wife and my wife is Japanese and finally she got tired ofit and said, “You know, did you ever think that they didn’t want to study
English?”Again, what we see here is that perhaps the students in Sam’s department
probably didn’t want to be there. He admitted the “worst assumption” he madewhen he started working at his present institution was that students were taking
English courses because they actually wanted to. Since being enlightened by his
wife, he reported that he started giving students more space, at the same time
admitting that “we (expatriate English-teaching faculty members) come in with
our own background and our own bias”, and saying that he felt his Japanesecolleagues know what the realities for students are.

Origins of Expatriate English Language Teachers’
Assumptions
There seem to be three origins of respondents’ assumptions about university
entrance and entrance examinations in Japan: the influence of their own
experiences of choosing universities in their home countries, the influence of
graduate-level education on their thinking, and their own experiences working
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with large-scale language tests.
Assumptions about How Students Choose Universities
Bob felt that having grown up in Canada, where university entrance is largely
based on high school scores, coloured his opinions and led him to wish for a test
that would at least be re-usable as well as testing for abilities that students shouldhave upon entry. For him, the Canadian system of university selection was “thebetter way”:
I mean, where in Canada we don’t have any SAT2, we don’t have any entrance
exam; all we have are the marks from our high school and that’s it. And so
there is none of this, studying for an exam and a mark that you get on theexam determines the rest of your life sort of thing. So for me, if we’re goingto bother to make this big document and make sure that it’s perfect in every
way that we can possibly make it, well then why not try to use it again? Why
not try to test for things that we want our students to be able to do in the firstplace?
Graduate School Education
The online survey indicated that out of 121 respondents, 112 (92%) had
completed master’s degrees, generally the minimum educational requirement for
employment at universities in Japan. While some were in fields unrelated to ELT,
such as Japanese Studies, East Asian Studies, or Communication, the majorityof their degrees were for the most part in TESOL, Applied Linguistics, and
Education. Of the last group, 67.2% had taken courses in testing and assessment
as part of their graduate work. Such courses are likely to include readings about
language testing by authors such as Hughes (2003) and Bachman and Palmer(1996), to name a very few. Thus, it may not be surprising that expatriate
English-teaching faculty members take a largely pedagogical view of entrance
examinations and may be likely to view test construction based on what they havelearned in graduate school.

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Experiences with Large-Scale Language Testing
When asked what he felt would improve his institution’s entrance examination,Peter answered as follows:
I would like a speaking component, but I realize that it’s not feasible. You
know, that’s what I mean. I mean I come from a background of IELTS
preparation where IELTS examinations do have tests in the four skills andthey even at one time had this intertextuality thing like between the reading
component and the writing component and theoretically it looked really,
really good, but there were problems with that and they separate the skills.
But that four-skills testing is kind of the background I come from in my own
training for academic courses. And that kind of embedded in me, so wheneverI look at a university entrance examination package, I always compare it to
the IELTS package which is very well tried and tested over the years.
Here, Peter is acknowledging not only that he is influenced, not only byhis background or training, but also by familiarity with a specific large-scale
test which he trusts and believes to be a sound, that is to say, valid and reliable,
instrument. People who are familiar with large-scale language tests that areused elsewhere, such as in the UK, US, or Canada, will likely compare entrance
examinations in Japan to these kinds of instruments.
Sam, though, seemed to be questioning this kind of thinking. He contrasted
foreign large-scale tests with English tests generally used in Japan to make his
point:
This other thing, too, is entrance exams for foreign universities… they’resupposed to determine whether students are able to do the kinds of tasks theywould be doing if they entered the university, right? And that’s what the new
TOEFL’s supposed to be doing. Testing the ability to do university work,
right? But for university entrance exams in Japan, I don’t think it’s that atall. It’s just a way of separating people. … I mean, you have English exams forcompanies, for jobs where the person will never be required to use it. It’s justa way to separate people.
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Sam appears to understand that tests are generally used as a way to stratify
competitors in different areas of Japanese society.

Limitations/Directions for Future Research

Although the results of this study seem to point to some trends, there are also
several limitations. First, there is an obvious imbalance in that the respondents
tend to be employed at private universities for the most part. This may not be
surprising given that the majority of universities in Japan are private (599) andpublic and national institutions account for a much lower number (95 and 86,
respectively; Ministry of Education, 2012), thus more expatriate faculty are likely
to be hired at private rather than public or national institutions. Future research
could seek to focus on obtaining the opinions and beliefs of expatriate faculty
working at national or public institutions in order to provide a broader picture.
Another limitation is that this particular group of respondents were similar in thatthey were all male and all educated in BANA countries. Whether women or nonBANA expatriates report the same assumptions about entrance examinations
and university entrance needs to be studied further. Another limitation was dueto the secrecy surrounding entrance examination creation. Several respondents
to the online questionnaire mentioned that they would have liked to participate
in follow-up interviews, but in the end they felt unable to do that, due to their
institutions’ demand that their participation in examination creation remain asecret. One respondent revealed that their spouse didn’t even know that they
were on an entrance examination committee.
While the goal of this particular research project was to obtain the beliefs
and opinions of expatriate ELT faculty, it would also of course be useful to findout if our local Japanese colleagues hold the same opinions and beliefs and, if
they do, why or and if they don’t, why not. Since they are our partners in theprocess of entrance examination creation, it is necessary for us to know what
they think university entrance is about and how entrance examinations should
be constructed. Future research with local colleagues (assuming they will
participate) is thus, necessary.

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Conclusion

This research points to a possibility that expatriate English-teaching faculty
members’ beliefs about both university entrance as well as entrance examinationsin Japan are likely to be influenced by the educational system they experienced
as undergraduates in their home countries, what they learned about testing andassessment as part of their graduate school requirements, and large-scale testing
instruments they are familiar with. As a result, they may be inclined to believethat large-scale high-stakes entrance examinations should be made using testing
expertise, should be valid and reliable, and should serve primarily pedagogicalaims.
This may be problematic, then, when they are asked to create entrance
examinations with Japanese colleagues who have an implicit knowledge of theforms and purposes of such tests, having been through the Japanese systemof education, and perhaps feel it unnecessary to make the goals of such tests
explicit to item writers. Problems may arise when expatriate ELT faculty have
only a partial understanding of the examination’s real purpose, which may have abroader, rather than purely pedagogical, focus. In fact, one respondent not listed
in this particular paper, who was very experienced and who struggled to improve
his institution’s English entrance examination, was removed with all other foreign
faculty from the entrance examination committee. He was given the rationalethat expatriate faculty did not understand what entrance examinations were for.
Thus, if there is to be mutual understanding and cooperation on entrance
examination committees, it would be beneficial for both expatriate and Japanesefaculty members to understand each other’s points of view with regards to thereasons why students enter particular universities and departments, as well
as take certain entrance examinations, and in particular, English on entrance
examinations. Expatriate English-teaching faculty members, need to familiarize
themselves with more fully about entrance examinations in Japan and thus learn
to understand other purposes to which an entrance examination can be put andtry to do so without judgement or criticism. If they feel changes are needed, they
could make recommendations which will fit in with their institution’s overallaims of attracting the best possible students.
37

Cook

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the University of Niigata Prefecture.

Notes

1. J. D. Brown has spoken and taught courses in more than thirty countries
ranging from Brazil to Yugoslavia. He has also published numerous journal
articles and book chapters (on language testing, curriculum design, researchmethods, and program evaluation) and authored or co-authored numerous
books (on reading statistical language studies, language curriculum, language
testing, language testing in Japan, testing L2 pragmatics, performance testing,criterion-referenced language testing, using surveys in language programs,
doing research, language test development, ideas for classroom assessment,
connected speech, and heritage language curriculum). Source: http://www.
hawaii.edu/sls/sls/people/faculty/jd-brown/.
2. According to the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Web site: “The SAT is a
globally recognized college admission test that lets you show colleges what you
know and how well you can apply that knowledge. It tests your knowledge ofreading, writing and math—subjects that are taught every day in high schoolclassrooms. Most students take the SAT during their junior or senior yearof high school, and almost all colleges and universities use the SAT to makeadmission decisions.” Source: http://sat.collegeboard.org/about-tests/sat

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Author’s bio

Dr. Melodie Cook has been teaching at the university level both in Canada
and Japan since 1993. Her research interests are in teacher education, entrance
examinations and multicultural family use of supplementary education.
cookmelo@unii.ac.jp

Received: November 2, 2012
Accepted: July 30, 201341