Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEA Letter from the
EditorGreetings! We hope this latest issue of
On CUE ﬁnds you well. As usual, we havea diverse, full, and (we think) interesting assortment of articles for you. Here’s a quick
preview.
We offer two feature articles this time.
First, Blagoja Dimoski goes beneath thesurface of culture to examine the sourcesof miscommunication from a pragmatics
perspective. He also offers a framework forhelping students and teachers cope with challenges posed by cross-cultural differences.
Yoko Ichige trains her critical eye on theCenter Examination. Looking closely at
actual test questions, she demonstrates thatthe test lacks validity for assessment of communicative English ability—the stated goalof Mombukagaku-sho for English education
at school.
In Research Digest, Eddy White revisits
S.P. Corder’s 1967 article, The Signiﬁcanceof Learners’ Errors, and traces its impact
on our ﬁeld.
The Opinion & Perspective section ispacked. First, Tom Anderson shares his
surprising and inspiring experience of having
a visually impaired student in class. Then,James McCrostie laments the emphasis on
TOEIC preparation in university English
classes. In response, Robert Brock andSarah Brock offer alternative perspectives
on TOEIC preparation.

Not to be outdone, the Chalkface section
is equally loaded. First, Jason Williams
provides a means of helping students ﬁndand make the most of opportunities for using English outside of the classroom. David
Prucha follows with a method of using
collages to raise awareness of global issues.
Finally, Andrew Woollock offers a lessonin stimulus-based teaching in which thestimulus is particularly tasty.
For the more technically inclined, Steven
Snyder presents software options and online
resources for video projects in the Cyberpipeline section.
And rounding out this issue is a review ofthe 2006 Pan-Sig Conference in Shizuoka byAdam Murray.
On to CUE business: As always, CUE
needs your help. Your involvement makes
us a stronger SIG. If you are heading to the
JALT Conference in Fukuoka in November,
why not stop by the CUE desk. Or better yet,attend the CUE Annual General Meeting on
November 3rd at 1:50pm (Room AIM D).
You can learn more about the workings of
CUE and help us chart a course for the future.
We’d love to see you!

Mike Hood
On CUE Editor

1

From the Editor

Friends and Colleagues,

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEThe Pragmatics of Misunderstandings inJapan: Pedagogical and Cultural Perspectives

Feature Article: Dimoski

Blagoja Dimoski
Josai International University
本論は、英語を母国語とするネイティブスピー
カーと英語を話す日本人との間で、コミュニケーションの手法及び相手に期待する事柄の文化的差異が、誤解を始めとした様々な行き違いをもたらす仕組みについて考察する。こうした差異に対する認識を高め、それらが生み出す悪影響を最小限にするべく、本論は語用論および異文化分析手法に基づき、よくある誤解をもたらす原因の特定及びその解説を試みる。本論の知見が西洋人教師と日本人学生にとって、ひいては教室という範疇を超えて、教育的・社会的により深い相互理解を達成するための一助となれば幸いである。

cross-cultural sea would be sorely mistaken
to judge another cultural group solely on
what one can see.
Indeed, it is a lack of awareness of thishidden side of culture that can lead native
speakers of English (NSE) and Japanese
speakers of English (JSE) to form negative
perceptions about each other. This needs
to be acknowledged and addressed in thelanguage classroom. As a language teacher
and teacher trainer with experience working in contexts ranging from conversation
schools to universities in Japan, not only
have I witnessed countless incidents ofcross-cultural misunderstandings, I have also
experienced them personally. As educatorsand gatekeepers (individuals with decisionmaking powers), it is our responsibility tolook deeper, below the obvious, and use ourknowledge—not only to better understand
our learners but also to empower them, thatthey might navigate safely through the sea ofcross-cultural communication when we are
no longer at their side to guide them.
To this end, this paper provides a criticalsurvey of contemporary literature as well as
supporting anecdotal evidence to address
issues that affect Western language teachers
and their students in Japan in an attempt toraise awareness of pedagogical and sociocultural issues that scholars concur, and I
have come to believe, are central to building
a conducive language learning environment
and positive coexistence within the class-

As disimilar as they might at ﬁrst appear,certain aspects of culture and icebergs sharesome surprising commonalities. First, we
can liken the visible part of an iceberg to thevisible aspects of culture (i.e., art, fashion,etc.) as well as human behavior (i.e., verbal
and non-verbal communication styles).
These visible aspects, however, are but asmall part of a broader and deeper whole that
ultimately supports and dictates that which
we can observe. Second, because what lies
below the surface is not immediately visible,
indeed just as human attitudes, belief andvalue systems are concepts which, on theirown, are not visible, this largely hidden component can be easily overlooked. When we
begin to consider the multitude of icebergs
that surround us in all their varying shapes
and sizes, anyone attempting to navigate this2

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEroom and beyond.
After an initial overview of Japanesesociety, I will discuss (a) the pragmatics of
misunderstandings, (b) the underlying rulesthat govern Western and Japanese social interactions, including perceptions of silence,and (c) the pedagogical and social implications of all the above.

Japan – A Cultural and
Educational Overview
According to Sapir (1921), culture is a“socially inherited assemblage of practices
and beliefs that determines the texture of ourlives” (p. 221). In the case of Japan, however,the distinctive nature of these beliefs andpractices can be a source of both fascinationand frustration for some Western observers.
Undoubtedly, as Takemoto (1982) puts it, alarge part of its distinctiveness can be traced
to the nation’s history. This is hardly surprising, since, a combination of factors, such as
natural isolation, as well as an ofﬁcial policy
dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth
centuries which strictly forbade interactions
with the outside world, only served to widen
the cultural gap and helped solidify a collectivist mindset (Takemoto, 1982).
In contrast, modern-day-Japan has opened
its cultural and economic doors to the world,
so much so, that Japan now stands out asa nation that has gone to great lengths toensure that this and future generations arebilingual and bicultural (Noguchi, 1987). In
fact, English has become so important that it
is now studied more than any other foreign
language in both public and private institutions throughout Japan (Tanaka & Tanaka,
1995).
However, due to an education system
which, for the most part, placed a greater
emphasis on developing learners’ linguisticknowledge (i.e., knowledge of vocabulary

Pragmatics
Essentially, pragmatics refers to the studyof how we make meaning in social contexts
through our knowledge of the real world. It
accounts for speakers’ intent, the way theyuse speech acts to convey intent, and thestrategies interlocutors employ to interpret
such intentions (Davis, 1991). Pragmatics
is concerned with understanding intentional
human speech acts and can provide us withinsights into differences between Westernand Japanese conversational norms. Thus,
a greater understanding of the theory which
underlies these processes can help us better
understand how and why learners transfer
pragmatic norms from L1 to L2, as well asa range of possible outcomes.

Pragmatic Transfer
Pragmatic transfer occurs when non-native
speakers transfer norms and forms of speech
act realization from their native language(L1) to the target language (TL) (Saito &3

Feature Article: Dimoskiand grammatical items) than on the ability
to use language for communicative purposes(LaCastro, 1997; Miller, 1995; Morrow,1987), it is difﬁcult for many Japanese to
carry out basic oral communicative tasks in
English (Morrow, 1987). Such traditional
methods, although effective in preparing
students for university entrance exams, dolittle to develop learners’ pragmatic competence: that is, their ability “to use language
effectively in order to achieve a speciﬁc
purpose and to understand language in context” (Thomas, 1983, p. 92). Indeed, as many
linguists now concur (Kemp, 1997; Burt,
1991; Fukushima, 1990), pragmatics is vitalto understanding language in context, and assuch, to neglect it in the language classroom
would mean to compromise the process of
L2 acquisition.

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Feature Article: Dimoski

On CUE

L1 to the TL. For example, a literal translation of the Japanese suru beki is ‘should
do’ and suru hou ga ii is ‘had better do.’
In English, ‘should do’ and ‘had better do’
are often used to give advice. Note that thepragmatic force of the latter is stronger than
the former in that ‘had better do’ carries theimplication that if the advice is not carriedout there will be a negative consequence.
Unlike their English counterparts, however,the pragmatic force behind suru hou ga ii
is weaker than suru beki. In short, the way
the two are used, compared with English,
is reversed—pragmatically speaking, suru
beki suggests stronger advice than suru hou
ga ii. Therefore, an uninformed JSE wishing
to express the pragmatic equivalent of suru
hou ga ii (gentle advice) in English, may instead produce the opposite and stronger form‘you had better do.’ My wife, who is a JSE,
and I have experienced this not-so-pleasant
reverse-effect ﬁrst hand. Similarly, the Japanese equivalent for ‘I’d appreciate’is shiteitadakeruto ureshiinodesuga, however, if aJapanese speaker unwittingly translates thisexpression directly into English it becomes(literally) ‘I’m glad.’ Thus, in Fukushima’s
1990 study, pragmalinguistic transfer appears to account for unsuccessful attempts
by JSE to formulate polite requests, suchas, “I’m glad if you lend me some money
for me” (p. 322). As a result, JSE responses
were judged to be either too informal or too
direct, and thus rude for their given contexts,
by NSE. These ﬁndings conﬁrm the observation in Yoshida et al. (2000) that JSE are farless likely to produce very polite language
in English in situations where NSE would
normally be expected to do so.
Sociopragmatic failure, on the other hand,results from conﬂicting evaluations of what
constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior and stems from differences in cultural

Beecken, 1997). Specifically, pragmatictransfer can either facilitate (positive transfer) the L2 acquisition process or, conversely,
hinder (negative transfer/interference) it(Gass & Selinker, 1994; Odlin, 1989). While
the former occurs when there are positive
correlations between the L1 and TL, thelatter occurs more commonly when the two
languages do not share similar linguistic
and/or cultural assumptions (Odlin, 1989).
For example, in the case of JSE, negativetransfer may account for certain (verbal andnonverbal) behavior which, to the Westerneye, would appear to overemphasize psychological distance (i.e., differences in status
and age) between members of dyads (Beebeet al., 1990).
Thus, dissimilarities in cultural norms
and expectations can give rise to misunderstandings during interactions between JSE
and NSE, what Thomas (1983) has termed“pragmatic failure.” This may lead to otherunintended and potentially negative outcomes.

Pragmatic Failure
Broadly speaking, pragmatic failure occurs when an utterance fails to accomplish
the speaker’s intention (Nelson et al., 1996).
While recognizing that, potentially, behind
any misunderstanding there could be any
number of underlying causes, for the purposeof the following discussion this paper willaddress the two most salient varieties as discussed by Thomas (1983): pragmalinguistic
failure and sociopragmatic failure.
According to Thomas, pragmalinguistic
failure is language-speciﬁc and occurs whena speaker fails to apply the same pragmaticforce to an utterance that a native speaker
would given the same circumstances, orwhen there is negative transfer of speech act
strategies (i.e., politeness strategies) from the4

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

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speaker’s and listener’s expectations andassessments of the socio-cultural context(Thomas, 1983). This is because peopleinterpret others’ conventionalized forms according to their “own cultural grid” (Beal,
1990, p. 21). This helps to explain why aperson’s actions and system of beliefs can be
so ingrained that it is often difﬁcult for themto see the reason behind other people’s behavior if it contrasts their own (Beal, 1990).
This suggests that there is less likelihood of
conﬂict between dyads who share common
propositions that they regard as true of theworld (Marlos, 1981).
Thus, to better understand why communication breakdowns can occur between
JSE and NSE, we ﬁrst need to look at what
dissimilarities, if any, exist between what
JSE and NSE regard as appropriate social
behavior and the rules by which they engage
in social interaction. Moreover, we need to
examine how those differences might bemisinterpreted.

Different Rules— A Cultural
Perspective
For some Westerners, “Japanese social
behaviors are still regarded as complex andinscrutable” (Liu et al., 1997, p. 80). This is
not surprising since, traditionally, the two
cultures show marked preferences towardsocial behavior based on different ideologies;that is, one (Japanese) is based on collectivism (e.g., “Interdependence Is Sweeter than
Individuality” [Yamada, 1997, p. 20]) while
the other (Western) is structured on individualism (e.g., “Independence Is Stronger
than Dependence” [Yamada, 1997, p. 20]).
In fact, so conspicuous is this distinctionthat Sakamoto and Naotsuka (1982) liken
it (metaphorically) to two separate games.
They compare NSE interactional behavior,for example, to a game of tennis or volleyball
5

Feature Article: Dimoski

perceptions (Thomas, 1983). For example,
because it is customary to place san, as in
Suzuki san (out of respect) at the end of an
addressee’s (ﬁrst or last) name, a Japanese
speaker—in spite of a native English speaker’s attempts to minimize social distance byasking to be addressed by ﬁrst name—mayinsist on using ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs./Ms.’ Likewise,a Westerner’s dependence on a more direct,
low-context communication style, versus
the more indirect, high-context approachby Japanese, in which much is implied andnonverbal cues, context, and saving of face
are the key, can potentially trigger sociopragmatic failure. With this overt disparity
in communication styles, one might envisagea scenario in which a JSE’s polite reluctanceto say ‘no’ directly in an effort to maintainharmony or avoid confrontation, may instead
be misinterpreted to mean ‘yes’ by a NSE unaccustomed to reading between the lines.
We can say that sociopragmatic failure
has occurred when an agent, without intention, wrongly assesses socio-cultural norms
in an L2 context; that is, (a) social distance,(b) relative power, rights and obligations,(c) what is considered an imposition, and(d) when a face-threatening act—an act
that intrinsically threatens the (face) wantsof another individual (Brown & Levinson,1988)—is appropriate and when it is not(Thomas, 1983), because the values assigned
to those norms are not consistent with thosein the L1.
Thomas (1983) contends that errors arising from pragmalinguistic failure, unlike
sociopragmatic failure, can be treated much
like grammatical errors since they are essentially linguistic problems. Therefore, they
are rather easy to overcome. Sociopragmatic
failure, on the other hand, is a more delicate
matter to address, since it occurs when there
are fundamental differences between theFall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Feature Article: Dimoski

On CUE

Silencewhere no one waits for the other to hit theball. Instead, whoever is closest to the ball is
expected to jump in and hit it without waiting
for the other. According to them, however,native Japanese play according to a different
set of rules, which they compare to a gameof bowling. In this analogy, there is little
competition for the ﬂoor and interlocutors
wait patiently (i.e., self-restraint) for others
to ﬁnish their turn before contributing.
Generally speaking, Western cultures aredescribed as individualistic; that is, individuals can assert their own interests even if, indoing so, they may be in opposition to thoseof their group (Littlewood, 2001). Thus, theorientation is structured toward ‘I.’ In thecase of Japanese culture, however, the groupmodel is the dominant social characteristic,
meaning that Japanese society is based oncollectivism, with its orientation clearlyshifted toward ‘we’ (Maynard, 1997). Typically, people’s identity, attitudes, and actions
are largely determined by the group; that is,‘We’ always comes before ‘I’ (Gudykunst &San Antonio, 1993). Interestingly, schools inJapan appear to cultivate characteristics thatwill not impose on others (i.e., respect, andavoidance of speech) which may account forJapanese students’ reluctance to state theiropinions for fear of disturbing class harmony(Sasaki, 1996). These underlying values andbeliefs are reﬂected eloquently in the common Asian expressions Speech is silver, but
Silence is gold and The nail that stands out
gets hit. In stark contrast, the familiar Western expression Squeaky wheels get the grease
represents a very different notion. Thussilence, like language, is meaningful and isperceived and evaluated differently acrosscultures. It follows that negative transfer ofsilence, just like speech acts from L1 to L2contexts, can be a predicate for misunderstandings and negative stereotyping.

Unlike western conversation norms, silencein Japan (even long silence) “is anything but
a breakdown” (Yamada, 1997, p. 77) and isin fact tolerated. Teachers who are unfamiliar
with Japanese socio-cultural norms are lesslikely to identify non-verbal cues—behavior
which stems from values that are fosteredand even encouraged in Japanese culture,such as empathy, dependency, self-restraint,
and harmony for the sake of the group—thata student may be displaying. Thus they are
more likely to interpret moments of silence
negatively. To take one example, Fiyouzat(2003), a Western language teacher, after
having recently arrived in Japan, recalls his
initial response to one of his English classes
at a Japanese university:“OK. Let’s see. If you understand what
I am saying raise your hand.” Nothing
but dead stares. “Do you understand?”Nothing. “Understand?” Not a singularthing. Dead silence.” (p. 41)
In fact, desperate comments similar tothese, or others like ‘What a boring bunch’
were ripe at an English conversation school
where I once worked, particularly after
teachers had completed their scheduled timein a “conversation room” where JSE could(in theory) participate in general conversation in a non-classroom setting. Without atextbook to fall back on, since the sole purpose of the sessions was to engage learners
in real English conversation, some sessions
would turn into little more than an hour longmonologue by a disgruntle teacher unlesssome learners were hard-pressed to speak.
Indeed, it even appeared that with certain
learners the more the teacher pushed themto speak, the greater their resistance (i.e.,silence). One very real danger from all

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Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

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bafﬂing (McPake & Powney, 1998). Hence,by looking from a Western ESL classroom
perspective, two potential implications stemming from a native Japanese student’s useof silence come to light: such ingrained attitudes toward silence may (1) interfere withpedagogical goals, and (2) frustrate both the
JSE and other Japanese observers.
These effects have been documented bynumerous researchers (e.g., King, 2005;
Krieger, 2005; Fiyouzat, 2003; Harumi,1999). In Harumi’s (1999) study particularly, NSE and native Japanese informants
were asked to comment on a Japanese
female university student’s use of silence
during a video-recorded English session ina conversation room. Her ﬁndings help to
expose fundamental differences in attitude
that Westerners (here British) and Japanese
have toward silence and underscore the signiﬁcance of conﬂicting interactional styles
and underlying values of both cultures. Wheninterviewed about the female student’s useof silence during the class, the Japanese
informants typically—and predictably, in
accordance with the preceding analysis—responded: 1) “she doesn’t want to stand out”
(2) “she is waiting for the teacher’s help” and(3) “she wants the teacher to understand thatshe doesn’t understand even without sayingit” (Harumi, 1999, p. 3). Equally predictablewere the British informants’ responses: (1)“she is rude because she doesn’t answer” (2)“she ﬁnds it (teaching or topic) boring” and(3) “she appears lazy as she does not try tounderstand” (Harumi, 1999, p. 3) etc.
The Japanese informants’ responses, then,seem to reﬂect the principles and underlying
values associated with the concepts omoiyari‘empathy,’ amae ‘dependency,’ enryo ‘selfrestraint’ (i.e., ‘reserve’ for the good of thegroup), and wa ‘harmony’ and demonstrate
the way they can influence perceptions.
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Feature Article: Dimoskiof this is that if we neglect to look below
the surface, such experiences may lead tonegative stereotyping of JSE as reﬂected incomments such as “What a boring bunch,”“you obstinate THINGS” (Fiyouzat, 2003,
p. 41), or “[they] don’t have opinions, can’t
think on their own” (Anderson, 1993, p. 35).
Equally worrying is that these same experiences may lead students to perceive theirteachers as “being very insensitive and evenrude” (Anderson, 1993, p. 35) leading them
to form negative stereotypes as well. Noneof this is conducive to creating an effective
language learning environment.
Taking a closer look at the socio-cultural
norms which govern the interactional style of
the Japanese, one ﬁnds that reserve, formality,
and silence are qualities that are encouraged
and fostered within the Japanese education
system and in society as a whole (Barnlund,1989). As one might expect, unlike Western
attitudes toward education, classroom culture
in Japan generally discourages students fromtalking and sees silence as a virtue (Miller,
1995; Sasaki, 1996). Indeed, Japanese students commonly participate in lectures respectfully without expressing disagreement
since the teacher’s role is primarily that ofa “transmitter of knowledge to the silent,unquestioning student” (King, 2005). Unfortunately for JSE, silence is hardly perceived
as appropriate behavior in Western contexts
and does not conform to what Anstey (2003)
calls the “rules of engagement” for effective
discourse in an English as a second language(ESL) learning environment. In fact, to theaverage Western teacher, whose primary roleis that of “facilitator” (King, 2005), “suchpassivity implies a negligent attitude towardlearning” (Miller, 1995, p. 32), and as such, it
is normal practice for teachers to encourage
their students to talk; a strategy which native
Japanese students and their families may ﬁnd

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Feature Article: Dimoski

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Equally revealing are the British informants’ responses—reﬂecting a preference forindividualism and independence. This shows
how fundamentally different interactional
styles, and a lack of awareness about others’ cultural assumptions, can give rise tonegative evaluations of others. This leads
us to concur with Murata (1994) and Tannen(1985) that ignoring differences that exist
between individual speakers’ conversational
styles can lead to these differences being
perceived negatively as a speaker’s personal
traits from which far-reaching social implications can arise.

the ﬁndings suggest that it was their overly
passive behavior that was the likely cause ofunfavorable perceptions by their classmates
and teachers. This view is supported by Sasaki (1996), who claims that negative classparticipation of the kind observed above canhinder and/or disrupt pedagogical objectives
in ESL learning and should therefore be“minimized, if not eradicated” (p. 237).
Despite its obvious social and pedagogical implications, we have seen that teachers
often fail to recognize and respond to pragmatic failure when it occurs, and instead tend
to view such occurrences as rude behavior
on the part of students (Thomas, 1983). One
possible reason for this oversight may bethat, unlike grammar, which is inherently arule-based system, pragmatic competence“entails probable rather than categoricalrules” (Candlin, 1976, p. 238). In otherwords, sociopragmatic decision making requires one to make value judgments based on
one’s own value/belief system. Accordingly,
teachers may either simply be unaware of its
signiﬁcance in language learning, or may
be wary of grappling with “a potentiallyexplosive area” (Thomas, 1983, p. 109) of
language that, by its very nature, is subjective
and therefore potentially face-threatening.
Regardless of these challenges, pragmaticcompetence needs to be reinforced in the language instruction of Japanese ESL learners(Kemp, 1997; Burt, 1991; Fukushima, 1990).
Therefore, we must not only focus our learners on the linguistic elements of the TL, but
we must also show them “what beliefs andvalues are assigned importance by the local
culture” (Kemp, 1997, p. 274). This in itself
can be problematic for both learners andteachers. To begin with, the term ‘communicative’ is a culturally-laden reality since, as
we have seen, what constitutes appropriate
communicative behavior can vary across cul-

Pedagogical Implications
To suggest that JSE and their Western
language teachers are “worlds apart” (Miller,
1995, p. 38) regarding their views about
what constitutes appropriate behavior in thelanguage classroom may be somewhat harsh.
However, these differences do manifest
themselves in very real outcomes in the realworld and, as scholars and educators, we cannot afford to downplay their signiﬁcance.
According to McPake and Powney (1998),
for example, even though (expatriate) Japanese children living and studying in England
were able to do well academically by behaving as they would in a typical Japaneselearning environment (i.e., remaining silent,participating minimally, etc.), some were
unsure about how to deal with the relaxed
nature of their new learning environmentand consequently appeared very isolated interms of social relationships. The outcomeof this dissonance was that over time, eventhough the children were able to achieve
high proﬁciency levels in English, it was rare
for them to contribute to classroom discussion, and some appeared “pathologicallyshy” (McPake & Powney, 1998, p. 173).
Unfortunately for the Japanese students,
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Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEof cultural enlightenment, foreign language
teachers may acquire what he has termed‘involuntary empathy’ unknowingly througha process of stock taking, self-interrogationand negotiations with “informed colleagues”(p. 272). Conversely, ‘emergent empathy’
can occur through conscious attempts by theteacher to get to know the students’ culture
as well as the students themselves. Kemp
describes this developmental process as ongoing. He adds that teachers can achieve thiseither through reading, studying, or being
directly involved with the Japanese people
ﬁrst hand. Through this process, it is hopedthat teachers can develop a better awarenessof aspects from their own cultures that JSE
might interpret as “ethnocentric or objectionable” (Kemp, 1997, p. 274). To achieve this,teachers need to familiarize themselves withthe beliefs and values that Japanese people
hold dear: that is, “seniority, politeness, communal responsibility and sensitivity to face,
inner versus outer worlds, modesty and abandonment of individual self for a more collective identiﬁcation” (Kemp, 1997, p. 274).
Developing such awareness would lessen thelikelihood of JSE evaluating Westerners as
arrogant or uncultured (Kemp, 1997), andwould therefore aid in establishing a platformfrom which mutual understanding and positive outcomes can grow.
This was demonstrated by Miller (1995)
who surveyed Japanese university ESL students and found that what they wanted wasfor their Western teachers to be culturally
sensitive and aware of their communicative
style (i.e., Japanese students are reserved,
modest, and silent even when they havesomething to say, etc.). The study also foundthat, when the Western language teacher
was empathetic to this need, it led to morepositive outcomes in students’ behavior andgeneral attitude toward participating in com9

Feature Article: Dimoskitures (Miller, 1995). It is therefore essentialthat teachers are careful to avoid rigidly applying “standards that stem from their (own)ethno-centric perspective” (Miller, 1995, p.
32). Only by taking a more ethno-relativist
approach can teachers be in a better position
to recognize that what an untrained observer
might view as a student’s unwillingness to
respond may instead be intended as an act ofrespect (Miller, 1995), in which the student
resists taking up the teacher’s time or avoids
a situation in which the teacher may lose face
(King, 2005). This is particularly importantconsidering the overt power imbalance (age& status) that exists between native Japanese
students and their teachers.
Indeed, because Japanese culture places
great value on social hierarchy, teachers are
generally highly regarded. Thus, the teacher
is often honored as “the unquestioned embodiment of power and authority” (Nakamura, 1997). There is also a strong tendency
for Japanese students to rely unquestionably
on a teacher’s knowledge. While keeping thisin mind, and the fact the ability to think independently is not particularly prized in Japanese schools (McPake & Powney, 1998) andthat Japanese students are expected to listen
to teachers without expressing disagreement(Miller, 1995), Western teachers need to beaware that their students may expect little orno negotiation of meaning with either teachers or classmates (Korst, 1997).
A broader cultural understanding canhelp to instill greater tolerance, and with it“more realistic expectations regarding theclassroom expectations of their students”(Miller, 1995, p. 32). Empathy, therefore,
plays a crucial role in the language teachers’
professional development—and a vital rolein the development of students’ communicative competence.
According to Kemp (1997), in their pursuit

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municative based lessons.
Thus, for all of the reasons above, it isimportant to stress that the role of language
teachers is not to “enforce Anglo-Saxon
standards of behavior, linguistic or otherwise” (Thomas, 1983, p. 96). Instead, theprimary concern of teachers should be to empower their learners with knowledge that will
ensure that, at the very least, they are awareof fundamental differences (linguistic andcultural) between the L1 and the TL. With
such knowledge, our students will be better
equipped to make more informed decisions
when trying to avert misunderstandings.

interlocutors are able to transform theirassumptions about the physical and socialworld which, in turn, is limited by their own
egocentric tendencies as well as their ability to empathize with others (Langness &Frank, 1981). Hence, the less people know
about each other on linguistic, social andcultural levels, the greater the potential for
misunderstandings.
It is important to remember that learninga second language also occurs in a social
setting and, therefore, learning outcomes
depend as much on affective considerations
and social interactions within the classroom
as they do on course content. As gatekeepers,
educators are responsible for giving learners adequate exposure to both the linguistic
and cultural elements of the target language,
while at the same time ensuring that they arecross-culturally savvy themselves. Theseare pedagogical objectives that language
teachers in present-day Japan cannot afford
to overlook. To do so, in my opinion, would
be tantamount to expecting novice drivers,
instructed only in the technical aspects ofdriving a car (i.e., changing gears, parking,reversing, etc.) but knowing nothing about
the road rules to suddenly be able to maketheir way safely through rush hour trafﬁc.
As absurd as this expectation would be, thereality is that teachers, because of curriculum
and time constraints, are sometimes forced
to limit their teaching to only the technicalaspects—grammar, structure, pronunciation,
ﬂuency, etc.—of the target language, withlittle or no chance to expose students to thesubmerged, less obvious aspects of the cultural iceberg that they desperately need.

Social Implications
Thus far, we have seen that more often
than not, misunderstandings can and do
occur when interlocutors fail to comprehend why something was said, or not said,rather than what was said. In large part, thisis because pragmatic failure often passes
unnoticed by untrained observers, such as
unsuspecting teachers, students, and dyads
outside the classroom (Thomas, 1983). Andvery often, interlocutors “are unaware that
there has been a faulty message transmission
and/or reception” (Varonis & Gass, 1985,
p. 331). Hence, unlike grammatical errors,
which show a speaker to be less competentwith the structural elements of an L2, pragmatic failure can often reﬂect badly on thecharacter of the speaker himself (Fitzgerald,
2003; Thomas, 1983). For example, he may
be perceived as rude. Consequently, NSE are
far more likely to associate such apparent
impoliteness with “boorishness or ill-will”(Thomas, 1983, p. 97). This can lead to serious consequences when ‘gatekeepers’ do notshare the same communicative style as the
non-native speaker (Fitzgerald, 2003).
How and when a misunderstanding occurs depends, in part, on the extent to which

Conclusion
Although some of the challenges facing
Western language teachers and JSE may
seem, on the surface, insurmountable, this10

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Some universals in language usage.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burt, S. (1991). Word choice indirect quotationin Japanese: Some considerations forteaching. IRAL. XXXX, 3, 197- 212.
Candlin, C. N. (1976). Communicative
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DC: Georgtown University.
Davis, S. (Ed.) (1991) Pragmatics. A reader.
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FitzGerald, H. (2003). How different are we?
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Fiyouzat, R. (2003) Eat this, Amsterdam!
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Harumi, S. (1999). The use of silenceby Japanese learners of English incross-cultural communication and its
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development. JALT Journal 19(2), 271-278.
King, J. E. (2005). The discourse of silence in
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References

Anderson, F. E. (1993). The enigma of thecollege classroom: Nails that don’t stickup. In P. Wadden (Ed.), A handbook forteaching English at Japanese colleges anduniversities (pp. 101-110). Oxford: Oxford
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perspective on the problems of crosscultural communication between native
speakers of French and native speakers ofAustralian. English in the workplace. ARAL
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Feature Article: Dimoski

paper has provided at least some steps toward developing a greater awareness of,and hopefully a framework for overcomingsome of the challenges they face. In the end,
I concur with King (2005), that it is a combination of empathy and a greater awarenessof cross-cultural differences that can help
to minimize misunderstandings, which inturn can translate into more positive socialand pedagogical outcomes for educatorsand learners alike. Only by familiarizing
ourselves and our learners with both the visible and hidden parts of the cultural iceberg
can we help our students become not only
bilingual, but also bicultural.

Winter 2006:
2005: Volume 14,
13, Issue
Issue 21

Feature Article: Dimoski

On CUE

Nelson, G., Al-Batal, M., & Echols, E. (1996).
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Takemoto, S. (1982). Cultural implication of
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Thomas, J. (1983). Cross-cultural pragmatic
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Varonis, E., & Gass, S. (1985).
Miscommunication in native/nonnative
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Morrow, P. (1987). The users and uses ofEnglish in Japan. World Englishes. 6(1),49-62.
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The Language Teacher 21(11), 62-63.

12

2005: Volume 14,
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Issue 21Winter 2006:

On CUE

Validity of Center Examinations forAssessment of Communicative Ability
Yoko Ichige
Temple University Japan

Introduction
Mombukagaku-sho announced in 2003
its guidelines for developing English communicative ability in Japanese or Eigo ga
tsukaeru nihonjin no ikusei. The guidelines
contained several proposed actions that
could lead to this end, including the suggestion that entrance examinations forcollege and high school (2005) be revised toproperly assess the communicative ability
that students should have acquired throughEnglish education at school. The guidelines
also address the signiﬁcant effects of theentrance examinations on teaching, students’motivation, and students’ attitudes towardlearning English.
The effect of tests on teaching and learning,called “washback,” has been widely studied.
Weir (1990) points out the positive washback
13

Feature Article: Ichige

effect of testing on communicative language
teaching. Gates (1995) writes, “The closer alanguage test meets the ﬁnal language needsof the students, the stronger the washback
will be” (p. 102) and refers to direct tests as
having strong positive washback on students’motivation. On the other hand, the negative
washback of current entrance examinations
has been pointed out (e.g., Brown & Yamashita, 1995a, 1995b; Tsukada, 1991). Brown
and Yamashita conclude that developing testwiseness in students and discrete-point andreceptive skill-centered language teachingmight be the result of current university entrance examinations. They also write: “Students who are preparing for examinations of
one type or the other, may quite reasonably
want to focus on discrete grammar points, ortranslation tasks, and have very little interestin the communicative language learning or
task-based learning” (1995b, p. 98). This tendency might be changed if the discrepancy
between course and test objectives is reduced
as Gates (1995) suggests. Therefore, there isa need to develop a test on the basis of a clear
deﬁnition of what it intends to measure, andhow it intends to do so.
Brown and Yamashita (1995b) analyzed
the entrance examinations of ten private andten public universities, as well as the center
examination in terms of the test length, passage difﬁculty, types of items and types ofskills measured by these examinations. The

2003年、文部科学省は英語によるコミュニケーション能力向上を目的とした活動計画に於いて、高校、大学入学試験（英語）が及ぼす指導方法、学習意欲等への影響を指摘し、試験の改善を提案している。本稿はセンター試験（
英語）がコミュニケーション能力を測定するという点に於いて、どの程度適しているかを調べた。Bachmanが定義するコミュニケーション能力を構成する要素を基に、試験の各セクションを分析し、試験全体としてのコミュニケーシ
ョン能力テストとしての妥当性について考察した。その結果、主に知識としての英語能力の測定に適し、その運用能力を測定する上では大幅な改善が必要と考える。

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Feature Article: Ichige

On CUE

center examination is a standardized normreferenced test administered nationwide asa preliminary test before the examination
given by individual public universities.
Ten years later, Kikuchi (2006) conducteda follow-up study on the examinations of
the same universities studied by Brown andYamashita and the center examination. However, all the examinations studied, except thecenter examination, were from the English
or English literature departments of those
universities. It can be inferred that the examinees of these tests were more motivated andhad more positive attitudes toward learning
English than those who planned to major
in subjects other than English or English
literature. Therefore, when investigating thewashback effect of entrance examinations
on teaching and learning, the center examination provides the most reliable measure,
as it is administered nationwide at public
universities, regardless of the departments
the examinees plan to enter. Moreover, an
increasing number of private universities
are replacing their own tests with the center
examination.
In this paper, I will investigate the validityof the center examination as a measure ofwhat Mombukagaku-sho intends to develop
in students during the six years of English
education at school. In other words, does
the center examination adequately measure
English communicative ability?

sho’s guidelines, it was presumed that there
might have been changes in the design of thecenter examination during this period.
These three examinations are identical inorganization, length, and number of questions in each section, which suggests thatthe same abilities are being measured in thesame way in all the three examinations. Eachexamination consists of six sections (i.e.,
six types of tasks). All items are multiplechoice type.

Analysis
The three center examinations were analyzed in terms of Bachman’s (1990) communicative language ability. The abilities
and skills that each section of the center
examination measures and the item type ofeach section were analyzed to answer thefollowing questions:
1. What ability does each section of thecenter examination measure?
2. What is the language theory that underlies the center examination? How does
the theory inﬂuence its design?
3. What are the features of a communicative language test? To what extent
does the center examination have thesefeatures?

Results
1. What ability does each section of thecenter examination measure?

MethodSection 1
Section 1 consists of Part A and B. Part
A asks the examinee the location of stress,
or where to put the stress in the pronunciation of a particular word. Thus, the task isintended to assess the examinee’s knowledgeof phonology and graphonology, compo-

Materials
Three center examinations administeredin 2003, 2004, and 2005—the latest materials available at the time this study was
conducted—were analyzed. As these three
examinations were administered before andafter the announcement of Mombukagaku14

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On CUE

Maya: Oh, yes. During the morning rushhour (2)they’re twice as bad.
Jeff: I can’t imagine a train being more
crowded than this. Where I’m from,(3)we can always get a seat.
Maya: You were lucky, but you’ll have to
get used to the crowds here. How do you
get to school? Do you take a train?
Jeff: No. (4)I walk to school.
Q 1. ① get ② any ③ worse ④ than
Q 2. ① they’re ② twice ③ as ④ bad
Q.3. ① we ② can ③ always ④ get
Q 4. ① I ② walk ③ to ④ school(Nyuushi sentaashiken, 2005)

Q 2. I was (a)embarrassed when my joke
was taken as an (b)insult.
① (a) émbarrassed (b) insúlt② (a) émbarrassed (b) ínsult③ (a) embárrassed (b) insúlt④ (a) embárrassed (b) ínsult(Nyuushi sentaashiken, 2005)

The most signiﬁcant difference between
Part B and Part A is that the task in Part B is
more contextualized than the one in Part A.
Therefore, it can be said that Part B measuresthe examinee’s knowledge of language use
in communication more than Part A.

In Part B, the examinee identiﬁes the primary stress of a speaker’s utterance in a conversation. The knowledge of phonology at
the suprasegemental level is assessed—that
is, whether the student knows how suprasegmentals are used to focus information or
express emotions. However, as the utterancesin question are taken from conversational
discourse, examinees must also draw upongrammatical competence and knowledge ofrhetorical organization, which Bachman puts
under the heading of textual competence.
In this case, suprasegmentals of phonology
work as the means by which speakers control
the discourse by intoning their utterances toemphasize a particular word. In the following
example, from the same test cited above, theexaminee chooses the word stressed most ineach underlined part:

Section 2
Section 2 consists of Parts A, B and C.
Part A is a discrete-point task requiring theexaminee to ﬁll in the blank with a word orphrase chosen from four options. The wordor phrase in question should be selectedbased on its meaning, grammatical formor the idiom of which the selected word orphrase is a part, as in the example below:
Q1. Thank you, Hiromi. This book isexactly
I wanted.
① what ② which ③ of which ④ thatto theQ 2. We have to ﬁnd theworld’s environmental problem.
① results ② causes ③ solutions ④ beneﬁts
Q 3. The mechanics said that it would cost
700 dollars to ﬁx my car.
① on me ② me ③ to me ④ for me(Nyuushi sentaashiken, 2005)

Maya: Here comes our train. It’s not too
crowded.
Jeff: Do the trains (1)get any worse than
this?
15

Feature Article: Ichige

nents of what Bachman (1990) deﬁnes asgrammatical competence. In some cases, theexaminee must identify the part of speech aswell. Even though the word in question ispresented as a constituent of a sentence, theanswer requires only knowledge of phonology at the segmental level, as shown in thefollowing example. The examinee chooses
the pair of underlined words that notes thecorrect pronunciation:

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Feature Article: Ichige

On CUEAs the tested word or phrase is presented
in a sentence, the examinee must select thecorrect answer in context. However, themultiple-choice format does not allow interaction with the text; rather, as Bachmanpoints out, “the input material in the stems
and choices serves solely as a medium for focusing the test taker’s attention on the grammatical form” (1990, p. 141). The examineemust rely solely on knowledge of syntax orvocabulary, which might have been learned
devoid of context, independent of any realuse of English. For Q 2. in the example
above, the correct choice, ③, can be selectedby knowing the combination of a noun anda preposition (i.e., ① results / of, ② causes/ of, ③ solutions / to, ④ beneﬁts / of). For
this reason, the examinee may assume that
English tested by this task is one thing andEnglish in real communication is another. An
examinee may also think that it is necessary
to learn English differently depending onwhether it is for real use in communicationor for entrance examinations. Therefore, it
is likely that when applying knowledge to areal-life situation, learners may be confusedby these apparently different types of English—and this may drive them to silence outof fear of making mistakes. In this regard,
Oller (1990) says that discrete-point testing
reﬂects teaching methods that center aroundde-contextualized, meaningless pattern drills.
He distinguishes pattern drills according towhether a drill is based on meaning speciﬁc
to a particular context or not. The task in Part
A is more likely to result from the drills thatare not contextualized.
Compared with Part A, Part B of Section
2 is more contextualized. The examinee selects an utterance from options to completea short conversational discourse between
two people. As the context is given in conversational discourse, the examinee needs tointeract with the text as one of the speakers
in the conversation. So, the ability requiredin this task seems to be more authentic thanthat required in Part A. The examinee needs
to understand the natural sequence of conversation and how the conversation develops.
He or she has to know natural expressions
or lexical items to make the discourse coherent and natural. Bachman (1990) deﬁnes
this ability as “textual competence”(pp.
88-89). In this task, however, the exchange
is too short (usually three to four turns) tomeasure communicative competence properly. Speakers need to follow conversational
conventions, such as topic nomination, topic
development or attention getting and soforth in order to organize spoken discourseand engage in appropriate turn taking as a
co-constructor of discourse. Therefore, theexchange should be long enough to measure
not only textual competence but also theconversational conventions described above.
The same holds true with the following example from Part C:
Q2. Does having pictures on a menu ___22 ___ 23 ___ to order?
① to decide ② what ③ make ④ easier⑤ it
Q3. All the students ___ 24 ___25 ___ next week’s meeting.
① studying abroad ② interested in ③ attend④ should ⑤ who are(Nyuushi sentaashiken, 2005)
These questions test how to order words
in a sentence on the basis of formulaic
knowledge of a particular phrase or grammatical usage of English. The examinee has
to mark the options on the answer sheet only
for the second and fourth part of the phrase
in question, but not for the whole sentenceor phrase. Options are not provided in the16

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEmight solve the problem.
B. In spite of such efforts, trains are
sometimes delayed for long periods oftime.
C. In some areas, those leaves have tobe removed by an army of cleaners.
① A-B-C ② A-C-B ③ B-A-C④ B-C-A ⑤ C-A-B ⑥ C-A-B(Nyuushi sentaashiken, 2005)
From Section 1 through Section 3, we canobserve that most questions deal with only aparticular linguistic element independently.
For instance, the question in Part A of Section
1 tests knowledge of the stress of two words
in a sentence but does not ask the examinee
how the words are pronounced when thesentence is used in discourse. Furthermore, it
seems that the questions measure knowledgeof linguistic elements progressively, froma lower level to a higher level for each linguistic category (i.e., from a segmental levelto a suprasegmental level for phonology in
Section 1; from word level to sentence levelfor structure in Section 2; from phrase levelto sentence level to passage level for coherence and cohesion in Section 3). Therefore, it
can be inferred that the test designers regard
language as a kind of system consisting of
independent elements with several hierarchical levels.
The other three sections (Sections 4
through 6) test reading comprehension.
Each section is composed of a relatively
long text, from one and a half to two pages(about 400 to 600 words), followed by ﬁve
to seven questions. However, each reading
comprehension section is different in termsof text type, genre, mode of discourse, orinteractiveness. Interactiveness means thatthe task requires that the examinees process
information from more than one source inorder to complete the task. (i.e., combining

Section 3
In Section 3, the tasks are given at the discourse level to measure textual competence.
The examinee makes a passage coherent andcohesive by putting jumbled sentences in thecorrect order, inserting a sentence chosenfrom a list in the proper place in the passage,or selecting the adverb or adverbial phrase
appropriate for each blank in the passage. In
these tasks, the examinee comprehends themeaning of the text, identiﬁes the relation
between pronouns and their antecedents,
and recognizes the organization of a whole
passage. The example below requires theexaminee to put the sentences A, B and C in
the correct order in the missing part of thepassage:
Q1. Did you know that things as small
as leaves can delay trains? When leaves
fall onto the tracks, they can cause wheels
to slip and then the brakes may not work
properly.
They claim that it could
blast leaves away easily and quickly.
A. Some scientists suggest that a laser device ﬁtted onto the front of a train
17

Feature Article: Ichigesame form consistently. They take the formof a word or phrase even in a question. Thismay cause some confusion in marking,which may effect the reliability of the task.
It is uncertain whether wrong answers result
from the examinee’s lack of knowledge orjust careless mistakes made in the process ofmarking the answer sheet. For instance, in
Q3 above, an examinee who can make thecorrect sentence might easily make a mistake
break up the clause incorrectly (i.e., who areinterested in studying abroad should attend
next week’s meeting) and mark the answer
sheet incorrectly. As a result, one might markoption ② for blank 24 and option ① for blank
25 instead of option ③.

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Feature Article: Ichige

text, graphs, and/or photos). As a result, thelevel of transparency of the text is also different for these three sections.

lating the text literally. Thus, Section 6 may
be regarded as measuring translation skill
rather than reading comprehension. Brown
and Yamashita (1998b) pointed this out about
the reading section of the college entrance
examinations they researched (p. 98).

Sections 4 & 5
The text in Section 4 is an article aboutsome aspect of the Japanese economy orindustry; Section 5 is a conversation between two or three people talking about
topics related to school life. Examinees
need to adjust their reading so that the textof each section is understood appropriately
according to its text type, topic, and modeof discourse. Hence, these two sections appear to measure sociolinguistic competence
pertaining to pragmatic competence. In these
sections, examinees read graphs or identify
pictures provided with the text on the basisof the information from the text and attempt
to interpret it appropriately. This requires thatexaminees use both linguistic skills and otherkinds of cognitive skills—which is what theexaminee is likely to do when reading materials in English in college. Bachman (1990)
refers to this kind of interactiveness as an
essential feature necessary to make a test authentic (p. 317). In this sense, Section 4 and5 can be considered relatively authentic.

2. What is the language theory that underlies the center examination? How does
the theory inﬂuence the design of the center
examination?
We can infer from the features revealedin the analysis above the language theory
underlying the center examination.
First, the abilities measured by the threetests are quite limited and classiﬁed underwhat Bachman (1990) terms “language competence” (p. 84). This includes grammaticaland pragmatic competence. The main focus isplaced on whether the examinee has speciﬁcknowledge of linguistic elements. The othertwo competencies in Bachman’s frameworkof communicative ability, strategic competence and psychophysiological mechanisms,
appear to be totally ignored—even thoughthese two competencies must be employed
for execution of linguistic knowledge inreal-life conversations. Therefore, the center
examination can be seen as primarily measuring “usage” of English, but not its “use”(Widdowson, 1978, p. 3). It is designed basedon a theory that regards language as a systemcomprising linguistic elements and operating
according to rules.
Second, the discrete-point testing type thatpedominates the center examination suggests a heavy emphasis on English usage.
Most of the questions are discrete-point typewith a multiple-choice format concerning aparticular linguistic element or rule. Evenin the reading sections, the multiple-choice
format makes the questions discrete-point
rather than integrative. They can only be

Section 6
Section 6 contains a narrative based on
the personal experience of a person about
the same age (typically 17 or 18) as most
examinees, requiring them to interpret the
text more subjectively. But the section employs a multiple choice format which forces
examinees to select an option from a list.
This may undermine authenticity, which thetask might have reﬂected had examinees theopportunity to answer in their own words (asin a short answer or a short essay format).
Furthermore, it is likely that the questions in
Section 6 can be answered solely by trans18

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

ously with other types of competence—byvarying test methods and item types. The
discrete-point testing and multiple-choiceanswering format of the center examination
seems less likely to assess strategic competence and related competence effectively. On
the contrary, they are more likely to develop
testwiseness, as students practice for a particular test by familiarizing themselves withthe features of the center examination. They
may attend solely to the linguistic elements
and contexts provided by the text.
This observation supports the claim thatthe center examination is based on theidea that language is a system consistingof linguistic elements governed by rules.
This kind of view and discrete-point testing
are often claimed to be the main causes ofnegative washback in teaching and testing
practice (Oller, 1979). Domination of thegrammar-translation method in the classroom is thought to be obvious evidence of
this effect. Thus, it is apparent that there isa distinct contradiction between what thecenter examination intends to measure andwhat the Mombukagaku-sho aims to develop
in students. If a test is used as an incentive
to enhance communication-centered English
education, it should be designed on the basisof current communicative language theories.
From the perspective of current communicative language theories, language should belearned not as a linguistic system consistingof syntactic rules and vocabulary, but as
one of the components necessary for communication that works together with otherextra-linguistic components, or pragmatics,
to make and interpret the meaning appropriately in particular situations. Therefore, notonly language teaching but also language
testing should be based on language use, noton language usage.
It is often pointed out that the correspond19

Feature Article: Ichige

answered through knowledge of vocabulary
or cohesive devices, such as paraphrasing or
identifying pronouns and antecedents. Thismay be largely attributed to “the nature of
the alternatives offered to the examinee on
each item” (Oller, 1979, p. 233). As Ollersuggests, multiple-choice format questions
can be revised to measure reading ability ina more authentic way, by asking examinees
the main topic of the passage or the ideas thatthey infer from the text. But no question in
the center examination asks for this kind of
information.
Third, as observed in other studies oncollege entrance examinations (Brown &Yamashita, 1995b; Kikuchi, 2004), all theskills measured are receptive, not productive. It may be no exaggeration to say that
all tasks can be managed by using reading
skills alone. Even though a listening section
was introduced in the center examination
this year, no signiﬁcant changes toward thetesting of productive skills has been seen.
The tendency to focus on receptive skills
arises from test methods and item types thatare not speciﬁc to the ability or skill thateach section intends to measure. Bachman(1990) emphasizes the relationship between
the method types, item types, and the kindsof abilities measured. He holds that different communicative language abilities are
required in order to do different types of test
tasks, saying “it is not surprising to ﬁnd that
aspects of the test method, which provide
much of the context of language tests, affectperformance on language tests” (1990, p.
113). Furthermore, he refers to the different
effects caused by the same method on different examinees and asserts that this variability
can be attributed to one of the componentsof communicative language ability, strategiccompetence. In this sense, strategic competence is measured indirectly—simultane-

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Feature Article: Ichige

On CUEence between language learning goals, content of language teaching, and assessment
is essential. Kasper and Rose (2001) write,“Especially in instructional contexts whereformal testing is regularly performed, curricular innovations that comprise pragmatics
as a learning objective will be ineffective
as long as pragmatic ability is not included
as a regular and important component oflanguage tests” (p. 9). Childs (2004) ascribes the persistent reliance of teaching
vocabulary and syntactic rules at school inJapan to practical reasons, such as large classsize or the heavy schedule of teachers, andan economical system that beneﬁts from a“comfortable old deﬁnition of language” (p.
14), as do publishing companies and cramschools. In this regard, the center examination plays a crucial role, for it motivates what
is taught and practiced in this system. If we
expect positive washback in teaching, thecenter examination should be revised basedon current language theories and designed tomeasure language use rather than language
knowledge. As a result, positive washbackwould lead to curriculum innovation placing
pragmatics in the center of course design andlanguage testing as Childs proposes (2004,
p. 22).

an authentic interaction with the abilities of agiven group of test takers” (p. 317). Bachmanholds that language tests should be designed
to maximize the interaction between theexaminee’s abilities, test tasks, and the testing context, and refers to TOEFL as one of
the typical examples of this approach. Thisapproach appears to correspond to Oller’s
pragmatic naturalness criteria (1979, p. 33),
which stress the interaction between theexaminee’s abilities to process language andcontext, both linguistic and extra-linguistic.
Pragmatic tests (or integrative tests) basedon these criteria include dictation, cloze tests,
and variations of the two. Bachman differentiates interactiveness from authenticity
later, but still maintains that interactivenessis essential for language tests as an indicationof construct validity (Bachman & Palmer,
1996, p. 24).
The RL approach emphasize the context
or situation where actual communication
occurs. Taking this approach, Weir (1990)
strongly advocates direct tests (or performance tests). Direct tests require the examinee
to actually perform in a particular context
that should be as representative as possibleof his or her real use of language, in order
to assess integrated performance under “realistic linguistic, situational, cultural andaffective constraints” (Weir, 1990, p. 12).
He argues against Oller’s pragmatic tests
in that they lack “the productive and receptive processing of discourse” (1990, p. 5)
under these constraints. Weir further criticizes “integrative tests” (a term Oller uses
interchangeably with pragmatic tests) for
assessing only linguistic competence and still
being usage-based. He points out that they
may induce negative washback if students
are taught how to succeed in indirect tasks
other than authentic use of language. Even
though he acknowledges the weak validity

3. What are the features of a communicative language test? To what extent does thecenter examination have these features?
In Bachman’s view, the authenticityof language tests, the essential feature oflanguage tests based on current language
theories, is achieved by two approaches: theinteractional/ability (IA) approach and thereal/life performance (RL) approach (1990).
The IA approach takes the language abilityof the language user as the primary sourceof authenticity, and deﬁnes the authenticity
of a test task as “its potential for generating
20

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEmeasure language ability from the perspective that takes the knowledge of vocabulary
and grammar as essential or even sufﬁcient.
Thus, a mismatch arises between the language theories that underlie communicative
language teaching and the one on which
the center examination is based, and thenegative washback of the center examination might be attributable to this mismatch.
The primary reason for this mismatch can befound in the ambiguity of the purpose of thecenter examination. In other words, what thecenter examination is intended to measure
is not clear.
If we intend to exploit the entrance
examination to facilitate communicative
language teaching and make it appropriate
to assess students’ communicative ability
acquired at school, the center examinationmust be designed to measure communicative ability. The new TOEFL may provide
a good example in this regard, and using it
as a possible alternative to entrance examinations would satisfy the change in testing
practice suggested by Mombukagaku-sho. It
is also recommended that performance tests
be included as at least part of the entrance
examination. However, the extent to which
the examinee’s actual language use should
be included in the examination and how it
should be performed and measured must be
addressed in depth. These issues, as well as
the purpose of the center examination, should
be dealt with on the basis of needs analysesof all parties concerned, including universities, high schools, Mombukagaku-sho, as
well as the examinees themselves. In addition, technical concerns such the feasibility
or economics of concurrently administering
performance tests nationwide have yet to be
discussed fully.

Conclusion
Using the center examination for assessing communicative ability in English is far
from rational from the perspective of current
communicative language theories, although
its construct validity might be high enough to
21

Feature Article: Ichigeof direct tests and the low generalizabilityof test data for inference of the examinee’s
overall proﬁciency, he stresses the potential of direct tests to enhance beneficial
pedagogical effects at school (1990). To thisend, however, it is necessary to analyze thediscourse the examinees need to learn andspecify the purpose of testing. The resultsof these processes should be the basis fordesigning a direct test.
It seems that direct tests, or the RL approach to authenticity, have now gained
a perceived value greater than integrated(pragmatic) tests or the IA approach partly
due to their washback in teaching and partly
for theoretical reasons. This trend toward
including the examinee’s actual language use
in tests can be seen in the recent revision of
TOEFL. Educational Testing Service (ETS)
announced the new TOEFL in late 2005.
It includes “more constructed-response or
performance tasks (including speaking) that
require the integration of more than one
language skill (e.g., writing or speaking in
response to listening and reading materials)”(Enright, 2004, p. 147).
In terms of authenticity, whether it isdeﬁned based on the RL or AI approach, it
can hardly be said that the current center examination measures communicative ability
appropriately. It does not ask the examinee
to perform in a real communication situation, nor does it require interaction between
the examinee and the text in authentic ways
because of its discrete-point questions andmultiple-choice format described above.

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Feature Article: Ichige

References

Mombukagaku-sho. (2003). Eigo ga
tsukaeru nihonjin no ikusei no tame no
koudoukeikaku [Guidelines for developing
English communication ability inJapanese]. Retrieved January 24, 2005,
from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/
shingi/chukyo3/siryo/015/0404230/011
Nyuushi sentaa. (2003). Center examinations.
Retrieved January 30, 2006, from http://
www.dnc.ac.jp/center_exam/15exam/
mondai_pdf/15eigo_qpdf
Nyuushi sentaa. (2004). Center examinations.
Retrieved January 30, 2006, from http://
www.dnc.ac.jp/center_exam/16exam/
mondai_pdf/16eigo_qpdf
Nyuushi sentaashiken mondai to zenkaitou[Center examination all questions andanswers]. (2005, January 16). Asahi
shimbun, p. 23.
Oller, J. W., Jr. (1979). Language tests at
school. New York: Longman.
Tsukada, M. (1991). Student perspectives on
juku, yobiko, and the examination system.
In B. Finkelstein, A. E. Imamura, & J. J.
Tobin (Eds.), Transcending stereotypes:
Discovering Japanese culture andeducation (pp. 178-182). Yarmouth, Maine;
Intercultural Press.
Weir, C. J. (1990).Communicative language
testing. Hemel Hempstead, UK: Prince
Hall.
Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language
as communication. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental
considerations of language testing. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1996).
Language testing in practice. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Brown, J. D., & Yamashita, S. O. (1995a).
English language entrance examinations at
Japanese universities: What do we know
about them? JALT Journal 17(1), 7-30.
Brown, J. D., & Yamashita, S. O. (1995b).
English language entrance examinations
at Japanese universities: 1993 and 1994.
In Brown & Yamashita (Eds.), Language
teaching in Japan (pp. 86-100). JALT.
Childs, M. R. (2005). The place of pragmatics
in language teaching. In D. H.Tatsuki (Ed.),
Pragmatics in language learning, theory, &practice (pp. 13-23). Tokyo: JALT.
Enright, M. K. (2004). Research issues in highstakes communicative language testing:Reﬂections on TOEFL’s new directions.
TESOL Quarterly, 38, 147-151.
Gates, S. (1995). Exploiting washback fromstandardized tests. In J. D. Brown & S.
O. Yamashita (Eds.), Language testing inJapan (pp. 101-106). Tokyo: JALT.
Kasper, G., & Rose, K. R. (2001). Pragmatics
in language teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kikuchi, K. (2006). Revising English entrance
examinations at Japanese universities after
a decade. JALT journal 28, 177-96.

22

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUESLA Beginnings: The Signiﬁcanceof Corder’s 1967 Article
Eddy WhiteTokyo Woman’s Christian University
second language learning, (2) the input andintake distinction, (3) the built-in syllabus
concept and transitional competence, (4)the error/mistake distinction, (5) a systematic view of errors, and (6) reasons for thesigniﬁcance of learner errors.
Professor Stephen Pit Corder (1919-1990),
former head of the Department of Applied
Linguistics in Edinburgh University, published a series of inﬂuential articles in thelate sixties and early seventies which havesince been viewed as pioneering papers in
SLA. The American linguist, Larry Selinker,
who studied with Corder in Edinburgh andwas very much influenced by his work,sums up how Professor Corder is viewed:“It is generally and genuinely acknowledgedthat . . . SLA studies could not have comeabout without the pioneering, theoretical andspeculative work of S. Pit Corder” (Selinker,
1992, p. 144).
While there is much in the impressive
body of work produced by Corder that is ofinterest, the 1967 article is widely recognized
as the starting point of second language acquisition as an independent ﬁeld of inquiry(Sorace, 2000). Before looking at the numerous insights contained in “The signiﬁcanceof learners’ errors,” it is appropriate to frame
this discussion by sketching the then current
thinking about language learning and teaching that was dominant in the late sixties when
Corder’s paper was ﬁrst published.

The year 2007 marks the 40th anniversaryof one of the most important articles written
on the subject of second language learning;
one which has been hugely inﬂuential inapplied linguistics, language teaching, andin particular, second language acquisition(SLA).
Despite the fact that language learningand teaching has for so long been a partof the human experience, the ﬁeld of SLA
and the body of research it incorporates isa surprisingly recent development. As an
area of academic study, it is a relative newcomer. While existing for a little over three
decades, SLA has expanded and diversiﬁed
dramatically, and become a research area
encompassing a number of applied, theoretical, and experimental approaches (Sorace,2000). Looking back to the beginningsof this discipline in the late 1960s and its
establishment in the 1970s, one particularname and article stands out: S. Pit Corderand his “The signiﬁcance of learners’ errors,” published in 1967 in the International
Review of Applied Linguistics. This article
was partially stimulated by research being
done at the time with immigrant children
in Glasgow, Scotland (Howatt, 1997). The
adjective “seminal” is often applied to thisgroundbreaking, inﬂuential work. This essay will review six major insights presented
in Corder’s article: (1) the impact of L1 on
23

Research Digest

Introduction

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Research Digest

Background

Corder’s Insights

Corder’s 1967 paper makes reference tothe widespread hypothesis of behaviorism,
and in a later work (Corder, 1981) he tells
us that the prevailing SLA theory in the late1960s was behavioristic, holding the viewthat language learning was primarily a question of acquiring a new set of language habits. The habits of a learner’s native language
were believed to be transferred, and wereregarded as an element “interfering with”
the newly acquired habits of the L2 (Benson,
2002). Subsequently, learning a second language was seen as a process of overcoming
native language habits to acquire the new
habits of the target language. With respect
to learner errors, they were viewed as “badhabits” and perceived to be damaging to successful language learning because they impeded the development of correct language
learning habits (Ellis, 1994). In dealing withlearner errors, the preferred strategy of theaudiolingual approach, which was heavily
inﬂuenced by behavioristic thinking, waserror prevention through a process of overlearning. Drills providing intensive practice,fundamental to this approach, supported theconcept of practice makes perfect. Perfectmeant error free, or at least kept to a minimum (James, 1998).
Such beliefs about L2 learning became
widespread in the 1950s and 60s, but by theend of that last decade such behavioristic
views began to be seriously questioned.
Corder’s 1967 paper helped speed the demise of such approaches, and presented anumber of insights that caused a paradigm
shift in how second language learning andlearner errors were seen. It also proved to be
the impetus for the establishment of SLA asa recognized discipline in its own right. Six
inﬂuential views in particular were presented
in this pioneering paper.

The Impact of L1 on Second
Language Learning
As mentioned, during the period surrounding the publication of Corder’s paper,
behaviorist theories contended that the main
impediment to L2 learning was interference
from the L1. In the 1950s and 60s the widely
held belief was that a student’s mothertongue played a decisive and negative role inacquiring an L2 (Larson-Freeman & Long,
1991). Contrary to these views, in his 1967
paper Corder writes, “...the position taken
here is that the learner’s possession of his
native language is facilitative...” (p. 27).
This “important notion” contends that it is aserious mistake to view the native language
as simply negative and interfering (Selinker,
1992, p. 157). Instead, researchers shouldlook for parallels between L1 acquisition andL2 learning as both are governed by similar
underlying mechanisms, procedures, andstrategies (James, 1998). In contrast to thecurrent thinking at the time, Corder took an
optimistic view of the role of the native language’s impact on L2 learning. As a result,much subsequent research has been devoted
to determining the nature and extent of thisrelationship.

The Input and Intake Distinction
Corder was the ﬁrst to make an importantdistinction between these two terms. The
difference he expressed was that input issimply what the learner is presented with,while intake is what the learner is actually
ready to process, what is actually internalized (“taken in”). Selinker (1992) writes of
the continued relevance of this distinction,
and a major and on-going issue for SLA researchers has become the determination of24

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

how parts of input are converted into intake(Johnson, 1998). For language teachers in
the classroom, the input/intake distinction is
also highly relevant: “Corder’s paper raises
a question crucial to an understanding of
language teaching: What is the relationshipbetween what we teach and what is learned”(Richards, 1974, p. 2).

The Built-In Syllabus Concept &Transitional Competence
These connected notions of built-in syllabus and transitional competence may havebeen the most important insights in thisformative paper. They gave rise to what has
become known as the concept of interlanguage, which provided SLA research with
an identiﬁable ﬁeld of study that belongs
to no other academic ﬁeld (Cook, 1993).
According to the interlanguage hypothesis,
L2 learners have an in-built syllabus; they
construct a mental grammar different fromboth L1 and L2 which can be studied not
only in comparison with the grammar of thetarget language, but in its own right (Sorace,2000).
Corder’s argument was the ﬁrst to proposethat the L2 learner may well possess aninternally programmed sequence for learning various aspects of the target grammar.
He additionally ventured that this sequence
may or may not match with the syllabus imposed on the learner from the outside by theteacher. The term “transitional competence”
to describe a learner’s current mental rulesystem is derived from Chomsky’s notion ofcompetence. It stresses that the learner is inpossession of a certain body of knowledge
which underlies the language he produces
and which may, or may not, be constantly
developing (Corder, 1981).
A number of terms were later coined todescribe this inherently programmed se25

Research Digest

quence, the best known of these being “interlanguage” (Selinker, 1972). As mentioned,
Selinker studied with Corder in Edinburgh.
Selinker (1992) refers to him as “my intellectual father in interlanguage and second language acquisition,” and goes on to explicitly
state that without Corder’s intellectual input,“there would be no interlanguage hypothesis.
It is as simple as that” (p. xi).
The interlanguage hypothesis, firmly
grounded because of Corder’s insights, wasresponsible for a whole new era of L2 teaching and research (Brown, 1994). Selinker(1992) reported that because of Corder’sseminal paper there have been literally
hundreds of empirical studies about interlanguage. More recently, Lightbrown (2000,
p. 441) reports:
This generalization [that the learner creates a systematic interlanguage] is at theheart of modern SLA research. Corder (1967)
suggested that learners’ errors provided
insight into the system underlying second
language learners language use and in theyears since that time, innumerable studies
have conﬁrmed that learners develop an “interlanguage” which has systematic properties
that are not explained in any simple way by
the input learners have been exposed to.
Corder’s 1967 speculations about a built-in
syllabus and on its dynamic, developmental
nature (transitional competence) have provenvery perceptive and far-reaching indeed.
According to Ellis (1997, p. 24), one of themost important research ﬁndings of SLA is“the discovery of common patterns in theway in which learner language changes overtime.” The idea of development sequences,
systematic and reliable stages of language
acquisition (Lightbrown and Spada 2003),
is a key element in the concept of a learner’sinterlanguage. The development of this concept is ﬁrmly rooted in Corder’s insights into

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

provide evidence as to how the L2 is learned
and structured.

the built-in syllabus and transitional competence ﬁrst presented in the 1967 paper. Hadad (1998, p. 55) noted that “Corder’s work
(1967) sets the tone—that second language
acquisition should be viewed as a dynamic
activity involving the learner’s participationin the process.”

Reasons for the Signiﬁcance ofLearner Errors
In his 1967 paper, the reasoning for investigating learner errors was laid out by
Corder. He speciﬁed three ways in which errors are important, for teachers, researchers,
and perhaps most importantly for learners
themselves.
First, errors provide evidence of how far
learners have progressed in their efforts tomaster L2 and additionally what remains
for them to learn. For the teacher who takes
the time to analyze them closely, errors caninform the procedures of instruction.
Second, for the researcher, examining
learner errors can provide evidence of theprocess involved in how language is acquired, and also what strategies the learnerengages in the process of language discovery.
Third, Corder contended that learner errors are most signiﬁcant for the learners
themselves as they are a means to test their
hypothesis about the L2. He describes errors as being indispensable for the learner,
asserting that they are something the learneruses in order to learn. In effect, language
learning proceeds by a process of hypothesis
testing, or trial and error (Howatt, 1997). For
the learner, therefore, an awareness of missteps is vital for progress and interlanguage
development.

Research Digest

The Error/Mistake Distinction
As well as distinguishing between input
and intake, Corder introduced the error/
mistake distinction into modern debate. According to the 1967 paper, while an error iscaused by the learner’s lack of knowledge ofthe correct rules, mistakes are a reﬂection ofproblems in language processing. He makes
use of Chomsky’s performance/competence
distinction and associates mistakes with
failures in performance, while errors refer tofailures in competence (James 1998). In his
later writings, Corder (1981) makes the pointthat the diagnosis and treatment of errors is
one of the fundamental skills of a teacher.

A Systematic View of Errors
Corder viewed errors as evidence of abuilt-in language learning system, which
was of a dynamic, changing nature, but healso put forth the idea that errors are themselves systematic. During a particular stageof development, learners consistently use
the same grammatical form, even though it
is often different from the form used by anative speaker. This shows that errors are, toa large extent, both systematic and predictable (Ellis 1997). For example, an analysis
of a student’s L2 may reveal that errors inconstructing the past tense form are prominent and that these errors follow regularpatterns rather than being haphazard. This
non-randomness of learner errors, according
to Corder, could serve as a window to thelearner’s second language progress and also

Conclusion
In the years since publication, Corder’s
1967 paper has proved highly original andinﬂuential. The pioneering insights laid out
therein permeate SLA literature and research,
as well as theories and practices of language
26

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

References

Benson, C. (2002). Key concepts in ELT:transfer/cross-linguistic inﬂuence. ELT
Journal 56, 68-70.
Brown, H.D. (1994). Principles of language
learning and teaching. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Regents.
Cook, V. (1993). Linguistics and Second
Language Acquisition. London: Macmillan
Press Ltd.
Corder, S.P. (1967). The signiﬁcance oflearners’ errors. International Review ofApplied Linguistics, 4, 19-27.
Corder, S.P. (1981). Error analysis andinterlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

27

Research Digest

Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language
acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Ellis, R. (1997). Second language acquisition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hadad, M. (1998). The merits of exploringerror analysis in foreign language teaching
and learning. RECL Journal, 29(1), 55-65.
Howatt, A.P.R. (1997). A history of language
teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
James, C. (1998). Errors in language learningand use. London: Addison WesleyLongman.
Larson-Freeman, D., & Long, M. (1991).
Introduction to second language
acquisition. New York: Longman.
Lennon, P. (1991). Error: some problems of
deﬁnition, identiﬁcation, and distinction.
Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 180-195.
Lightbrown, P. M. (2000). Anniversary article:
classroom SLA research and second
language teaching. Applied Linguistics,
21(4), 431-462.
Lightbrown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2003). How
languages are learned. Revised Edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richards, J. C. (1974). Error analysis:
Perspectives on second language
acquisition. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage.
International Review of Applied Linguistics,
10, 209-231.
Selinker, L. (1992). Rediscoveringinterlanguage. London: Longman GroupUK.
Sorace, A. (2000). Second language
acquisition. In The Guide to Good Practicefor Learning and Teaching in Language,
Linguistics and Area Studies. Ciel Project
2000. Retrieved June 4, 2006, fromhttp://www.lang.ltsn.ac.uk/resources/
goodpractice.aspx?resourceid=1393

learning and teaching, four decades later.
“The signiﬁcance of learners’ errors” focused
attention on learner errors from a language
processing and language acquisition perspective, and laid out the key idea that the learnermakes a signiﬁcant cognitive contribution tohis or her learning (Lennon, 1991). To appreciate just how groundbreaking Corder’sinsights were, they must be viewed against
the perceptions of L2 learning widespread at
the time of the 1967 publication. He delineated: the inﬂuence of the L1 on the L2, theinput and intake distinction, the built-in syllabus and transactional competence, the error
and mistake distinction, the systematizationof errors, and the signiﬁcance of errors.
For its existence and direction, the ﬁeld
of SLA owes much to Professor Corder andhis pioneering, 1967 paper. Due in large partto the lasting effects of this article, Selinker(1992) reported that Corder is accurately
called by his French colleagues “le pere fondateur,” or “the founding father” of SLA.

Winter 2005: Volume 13, Issue 1

On CUE

Opinion & Perspective
The Blind Leading …
Tom Anderson

Opinion & Perspective

Tokai University/Aoyama Gakuin University
Mr. Suzuki has a special software programat home that changes the Braille writing to
Roman letters. At the beginning of the Friday
class he told me his word count and I plotted
it on his graph.
In the Friday class, students took ﬁfteen
to twenty minutes to write a letter in English
to me, which I collected, read, and to which
I wrote a response. Again Mr. Suzuki wrote
his letter in Braille and gave me the English
version at the beginning of the next class.
While the class was doing their free writing. I
would read and write a response to his letter,
which one of his group members would readto him at the end of class.
Students in my writing class do various
group activities. For example, I have them
do a blackboard game based on the children’s
game shiritori, in which student teams write
words on the blackboard that begin with theletter that ends the previous word. Mr. Suzuki
was paired up with a classmate in his group,
and when it was his turn, he would tell his
word to his partner, who would then write iton the blackboard.
Students in my writing classes work ingroups to write paragraphs. Mr. Suzuki wasable to take an active role in this by telling
sentences to the sighted group members, who
would then write them down. He also had no
difﬁculty in taking his turn as group leader.
The other students were a great help to him,
not only during class but also in helping him

In this issue`s OP column Tom Anderson
relates his experience and view of having ablind student in his writing class.

Last autumn I taught a basic level writingclass to non-English majors at a large private
university in the Kanto region. When I went
into the classroom to teach the ﬁrst class, I
saw a young man with a folded up white cane
and a Braille typewriter. My ﬁrst reaction
was “How in the world can I teach writing
to a visually challenged student?”
After exchanging ideas with the scheduling coordinator by e-mail, we met withthe student—who I shall refer to with thepseudonym of Mr. Suzuki—and discussed
the situation and possible ways to deal with
it. Mr. Suzuki made it clear that he reallywanted to stay in the regular class, so I consented to this with the understanding that if
things didn’t work out well, we could makealternative arrangements. As it turned out, it
was the right decision. He was a very diligent
student whose efforts appeared to impress
the other students.
The writing class met twice a week for
twelve weeks. In the Tuesday class, students
did a ten-minute free writing exercise. They
wrote down the title and ﬁrst sentence that I
gave and then wrote as much as they could.
Mr. Suzuki also did this on his Braille typewriter. The other students did a word countand recorded it on a graph which I kept.
28

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE(Note: I would like to thank Phil McCasland for encouraging me to write thisarticle).

Wanted!
Early Issues of On CUE
The editors of On CUE seek early issues of this journal,
from 1.1 through volume 7. Editorship has changed
hands so many times over the years that some issues
have been lost. We are particularly interested in ﬁnding
a copy of the very ﬁrst issue, as it is needed so we canregister an ISSN. Please contact Mike Hood if you
have a copy <mikehood85@yahoo.com>.
29

Opinion & Perspective

something which I believe is the result of an
overreaction to the new privacy law. This isclearly unfortunate because it doesn’t givethe teachers any time to make special arrangements for the students, and, as a result,
we end up having to deal with this on top of
the normal hectic schedule at the beginningof the semester. Hopefully, administrations
will change their view on this matter in the
future. However, I would like to end thisarticle by emphasising my belief that having
Mr. Suzuki in class was a privilege for myself
and my other students.

to ﬁnd his way past the obstacles of desks
and chairs.
Students have to do a ﬁnal exam in thiscourse and naturally I didn’t have him do
this. Instead I gave him a topic and he wrote
a Braille paragraph which he transcribed andwhich I collected in the next class period.
Overall, I think that my students and I
were very impressed by the enthusiasm andeffort of Mr. Suzuki , who I believe turned
out to be a very good example for the otherstudents. From having this experience I
would totally agree with the administration’s
desire to integrate students with special
needs into regular classes whenever possible.
However, the main problem is that there isa reluctance to inform teachers beforehand,Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Why Are Universities Abandoning
English Teaching for TOEIC
Training?
Opinion & Perspective

James McCrostie

in Japanese universities. Many universities
have moved beyond simply offering TOEIC
classes and have completely oriented theirEnglish programmes towards raising students’ TOEIC scores. Nearly 400 Japanese
universities force all their students to sit
the TOEIC test (“Pursuing a better TOEIC
score,” 2005). Lots of universities force
instructors to incorporate TOEIC scores
into students’ course grades or even accept TOEIC scores above a certain level ascourse credits. I argue that by doing so, theseschools abandon efforts to improve theirstudents’ ability to actually use English.
Such misguided English programme“reform” ignores the fact that the TOEIC
cannot assess English speaking or writing
ability. The only thing that the TOEIC does
well is test the ability to answer multiple
choice exam questions. Educational Testing
Service (ETS), the company that developed
the TOEIC, contends that the test indirectly
measures speaking and writing skills. However, this claim is based on quantitative gossip rather than quality research.
ETS’ 1982 study, used to make the sweeping pronouncement that TOEIC indirectly
measures communicative ability, proves tobe less than rigorous (Hirai, 2002; Woodford,
1982). For example, writing skills received
only a cursory examination. Subjects merely
had to produce a twenty-ﬁve to forty word
business “letter” in twenty minutes. To thisFor inexplicable reasons, the popularity of the Test of English for International
Communication (TOEIC) continues to risein Japan. Meanwhile, outside of Asia, theTOEIC remains little known. In 2003, people took the test 3.4 million times in sixty
different countries. However, three millionof these test-takers lived in Japan or Korea(“Pursuing a better TOEIC score,” 2005).
Furthermore, a large number of the test-takers were repeat customers; in fact, about
one-third of Japanese examinees have taken
the test three or more times (“Pursuing a better TOEIC score,” 2005). In the rest of theworld, however, it would seem that people
prefer improving their English ability to raising their TOEIC score.
TOEIC’s popularity in Japan stems mainly
from its use by Japanese companies, which
use TOEIC scores to decide which employees get posted overseas, receive promotions
or raises, and even which applicants get
hired. As a result, the number of Japanese
university students taking the TOEIC rises
and the negative impact on learning to use
English communicatively increases. The test
is currently having a particularly pernicious
affect on university-level English educationin Japan.
The notion that improving student TOEIC
scores should be the main goal of postsecondary English education is currently
sweeping through a lot of undefended minds
30

Fall 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

environment” (TOEIC Examinee Handbook,
2002, p. 5). Needless to say, Japanese university students are neither working nor in aninternational environment. To make mattersworse, the TOEIC doesn’t even test business
English well. Rather, the test sprinkles a dashof superﬁcial business subject matter overcomplex grammar questions and deliberately
misleading listening passages.
While purportedly based on a needs analysis of international business, the TOEIC appears to have been written by professional
test writers, possessing little knowledge ofthe business world. Even a study publishedbased on data supplied by ETS questioned
the relevance of the test. The study found that
only about 40% of TOEIC questions actuallydealt with authentic activities connected tobusiness (Douglas, 1992).
Despite the TOEIC’s many defects itremains puzzlingly popular with Japanesecompanies and workers. Perhaps Japanesesalary men cannot be expected to know muchabout English language proﬁciency testing,but Japanese university professors should
certainly know better. Regrettably, more
and more misguided universities prefer toabandon English teaching for TOEIC training. Clearly, mindlessly following the recent
fad of business demand for TOEIC scoresremains easier for universities than the alternative—reducing class sizes and designing
English courses to produce graduates who
can actually use the language for purposeful communication. Japanese university
professors should also take an active role incommunicating to the public the TOEIC’slitany of faults and putting pressure on ETS
to improve the test.
North American university professors realized long ago that the TOEIC’s sister test,
the Test of English as a Foreign Language(TOEFL), a test of academic English, failed
31

Opinion & Perspective

day, no objective research has shown that the
TOEIC measures a person’s ability to speakor write in English.
Probably as a result of the TOEIC’s lackof popularity outside of Japan, the numberof independent studies that have examined
the test remains small. However, they arenearly unanimous in taking a critical stancetowards the TOEIC (Chapman, 2003; Childs,
1995; Cunningham, 2002; Hirai, 2002).
For example, one independent analysis byMichihiro Hirai, the Director of the Hitachi
Institute of Foreign Languages, dismisses thetest as “practically meaningless as a measureof writing skill” and concludes it “cannot be
employed as a reliable measure of writing
skills in business contexts” (Hirai, 2002,
p. 7). The same study found the TOEIC an
unreliable predictor of spoken English ability
at the intermediate (450-650) score range, thesame range that most Japanese companies
require (Hirai, 2002, p. 5).
The TOEIC proves particularly unsuited
for universities because it was never designed to measure improvement. In statisticaljargon, the TOEIC’s large standard error ofmeasurement makes the test an unreliable
gauge of learner progress. To be conﬁdent
of showing even the slightest true improvement, a test-taker needs to increase theirscore by at least sixty-five points (Cunningham, 2002, p. 20). Practically, what thismeans is that the test cannot be used to see
if a learner’s English ability has improvedin the short term.
A poor choice of subject matter further
detracts from TOEIC’s overall quality andsuitability for universities. While the test’s
name combines the buzzwords “international” and “communication” it remains atest of business English. According to ETS,
the TOEIC “measures the everyday English
skills of people working in an international

Opinion & Perspective

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

References

to test what it claimed. There was little correlation between a student’s TOEFL score andtheir ability to function in an English speaking university. As a result of complaints andpressure, ETS introduced dramatic changes
to the TOEFL.
In contrast, the TOEIC remains unchanged
since its introduction twenty-seven years ago.
Recently announced changes remain largely
superﬁcial. For the listening questions, thecurrent American voices will occasionally be
replaced with more exotic Canadian, British,
and Australian speakers. Speaking and writing questions will supposedly be introduced
at the end of 2006, but details are few andfar between. Given the TOEIC’s problems,
they are unlikely to improve the test signiﬁcantly. Regardless of any cosmetic changes
to the test, university English programmes
have no business pandering to the TOEIC
and to those who blindly place their faith in
TOEIC scores.
The supposed need to focus on entrance
exams has largely sabotaged both junior andsenior high school English teaching in Japan.
Universities represent the last chance for students to learn how to actually use the English
language. Unfortunately, universities are
placing more and more emphasis on TOEIC
scores, and once again putting the emphasison esoteric knowledge and test-taking ability
with no practical purpose.
Universities must resist the negative
washback effect resulting from Japanesebusinesses’ enthralment with TOEIC scores.
Higher education should place more prestige
and importance on producing graduates who
can communicate using the English language. Such an emphasis would undoubtedly
have a positive washback effect on Japanesebusiness.

Chapman, M. (2003). TOEIC: Tried but
undertested. Shiken: JALT Testing and
Evaluation SIG Newsletter, 7(3), 2-5.
Childs, M. (1995). Good and bad usesof TOEIC by Japanese companies. In
J.D. Brown and S.O. Yamashita (Eds.),
Language Testing in Japan (pp. 66-75).
Tokyo, Japan: JALT.
Cunningham, C. (2002). The TOEIC test andcommunicative competence: Do test score
gains correlate with increased competence?
Unpublished MA thesis: University ofBirmingham.
Douglas, D. (1992). Test of English forinternational communication. In J. Kramer
and J. Conoley (Eds.), The eleventh mental
measurements yearbook (pp. 950-951).
Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute of Mental
Measurements.
Hirai, M. (2002). Correlations between
active skill and passive skill test scores.
Shiken: JALT Testing and Evaluation SIG
Newsletter, 6 (3), 2-8.
Pursuing a better TOEIC score (2005).
Retrieved April 1, 2005, from ELT News
Website: http://www.eltnews.com/news/archives/2005_02.shtml
TOEIC examinee handbook. (2002). Princeton,
NJ: Educational Testing Services.
Woodford, P. E. (1982). An introduction to
TOEIC: The initial validity study. TOEIC
Research Summaries. Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Services.

32

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEWhy is the TOEIC So Popular?
Robert Brock
Waseda University

views) to assess the English skills of eachannual cohort of graduate new recruits. It wasalso used to select staff for international workand MBA sponsorship. Prior experience withthe test and the test-taking skills it requires
were helpful to the recruits, and some staff
became TOEIC addicts, setting themselves
target scores and taking the test year afteryear. This test-driven motivation helped themto maintain their English skills.
One interesting thing that I found out
while working at this Japanese company wasthat although the TOEIC is produced by the
Chauncey Group (a proﬁt-making subsidiaryof Education Testing Services, ETS), theidea for its creation came from Japan. The
founders of the test’s distributor in Japan(the Institute for International BusinessCommunication, IIBC) and related companies developed the idea for the TOEIC andgarnered support for a business English testfrom companies and the Ministry of Education. They then approached ETS to commission its design. The multiple choice TOEIC
resembles other tests Japanese students havetaken and is surely much less stressful thana computer-adaptive test like the TOEFL ora face-to-face assessment interview with anative speaker.
While the TOEIC can be taken at ofﬁcial
test centers, it is easy to administer at theuniversities’ convenience, as IIBC will senda package of test materials to universities or
33

Opinion & Perspective

While I understand James McCrostie’s
frustration with the prevalence of TOEIC
courses at universities, I would suggest thatthe increasing use of TOEIC in universities isfar from “inexplicable.” University students
are required to study English, at least in
their ﬁrst year, although many have neither
interest nor conﬁdence in their ability. Also,
they do not expect to enjoy English classes
or expect improvement. Therefore, universities try to create goals for students in order toprovide motivation and to re-focus English
study away from success in entrance examinations and toward a more practical futuregoal. The TOEIC represents a valid employment qualiﬁcation within Japan and Korea;
a high score is of immediate use in their job
hunt. Recall any subject you disliked andfelt incompetent at in high school. If you
had to study it again, would you rather notreceive a certiﬁed score showing some levelof achievement?
Furthermore, for university administratorsand students the TOEIC provides a good
example of face validity (Bachman, 1990,
pp. 285-289). That is, the TOEIC looks likea serious test of English because it resembles
what students did in high school, and this in
itself probably has a positive motivational
effect on the students.
I have worked as a language trainer ina large Japanese company which used theTOEIC (in addition to assessment inter-

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Opinion & Perspective

On CUE

References

other institutions; and though test-takers do
not receive the ofﬁcial score certiﬁcate fromprivately administered tests, most institutions
accept the uncertiﬁed score reports.
Finally, I would like to say that I do accept
that there are limitations of the TOEIC test.
As McCrostie says, the TOEIC only covers
listening, grammar and reading comprehension. Other issues include the inappropriate uses of the test by companies (Childs,
1995), and the question of to what extent the
TOEIC serves as an indirect test of writing
and speaking (Chapman, 2005). However,despite these misgivings there are, as I havepointed out in response to James McCrostie’s
article, clear and logical reasons why the test
remains popular in Japan.

Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental
considerations in language testing. Oxford:
OUP.
Chapman, M. (2005). TOEIC: Claim andcounter-claim. The Language Teacher,29(12), 11-15.
Childs, M. (1995). Good and bad uses of
TOEIC by Japanese companies. In J.
Brown & S. Yamashita (Eds.), Language
testing in Japan (pp. 66-75). Tokyo, Japan:
JALT.

Active Learner Involvement in a
TOEIC Class

Sarah Brock
Bunkyo Gakuin University

understanding of the purpose and design ofdistracters, and can feel gratiﬁcation whenpeople get their question wrong.
The short dialog section of the TOEIC
requires the ability to grasp the main pointsof a situation or context quickly. I use theEnglish Through Drama approach (Nomura,
1985; Via, 1976) which encourages anyone
producing a dialog to imagine the situationand speak appropriately with context inmind. I assigned different dialogs to pairs ofstudents and required them to come up with acomplete situation, using 5Ws 1H (deﬁning
a situation by stating when, where, to whom,

I believe TOEIC teaching can be done in
way that is communicative, involves active
learner participation, and makes use of therationale for teaching TOEIC in Japan as
Robert Brock has outlined above. Here I
offer a few examples.
I teach students how the test is constructed.
I involve students in this process by having
them make their own test problems, beginning with the picture statements section. I
collect and arrange the students’ test problems into a test paper. In three lessons or less,students familiarize themselves with one of
the TOEIC format testing procedures, gain
34

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

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why, what, and how a dialog takes place),and perform the dialog in a way which showsawareness of context. From this activity thestudents learn to set a conversation into context and begin to grasp details of the real-lifesituations on which the dialogs are based.
To give my low-level students the stamina
to listen to the longer sections, and to makethe TOEIC practice enjoyable I have students
transcribe songs. I assign songs with a highlevel of natural, variant English to help students become sharper at detecting difﬁcultsound-alike distracters in the TOEIC.
The fun part of English is communication.
Test takers tend to forget that the problems
represent not just a linguistic but also a communication challenge. Richard Via, quoted
by the U.S. State Department’s Ofﬁce ofEnglish Language Programs (2006), statesthat “a play is all communication...communication between actor and actor and between
the actor and the audience as they view theplay.” By returning TOEIC English to its

communicative base, I help students to raise
their TOEIC scores and have 30 classes thatare interesting and worthwhile.

References*

If you would like to comment on any of theviews expressed in this column, please write
to the Opinions and Perspectives Editor:
fordkeith@hotmail.com

CUE’s Featured Speaker Workshop at
the National Conference
Sara Cotterall
Talking to Learners: Are We on the Same Page?
Sunday, 5 November: 12:00-14:00; 4,000 yen.
See Pre-Conference Supplement or the July TLT for more details.

35

Opinion & Perspective

Nomura, Y. (1985). Pinch and ouch: English
through drama. Tokyo: Lingual House
Shuppansha.
Via, R. A. (1976). English in three acts.
Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Education
and Cultural Affairs. Online book review ofPlays for reading. Retrieved June 24, 2006,
from http://exchanges.state.gov/education/
engteaching/pubs/LSRW/0662TOC_nof.
htm

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Using Outside-of-Class Language
Opportunities

From the Chalkface

Jason Williams
Notre Dame Seishin University
Summary

Time Required

Students use an “Outside of Class Encounters” chart (see Appendix) to monitor theextent to which they are taking advantage
of opportunities to use and practice Englishthat exist in their immediate environment aswell as creating and discovering new ones.
Students also use the chart to evaluate theeffectiveness of the opportunities. In addition, students have a chance to share withclassmates their experiences in using theopportunities.

Initial introduction: 30 minutes. Sharingand Evaluation: 10 minutes.

Procedure
1. Raising Awareness (10~15 minutes)
Hold a class discussion on outside ofclass practice opportunities. I begin by telling students that I can speak Japanese but
have never had a formal Japanese lesson—I
study and practice on my own using whatever “free” materials or opportunities I canﬁnd in the city I live in. Have the students
brainstorm prospects to encounter and practice English outside of class and list themon the whiteboard. Next, ask the students
which prospects they have actually taken
advantage of. Students usually create a listof about eight opportunities, but only one or
two of them actually claim to have used anyof them. Encourage these students to talkabout experiences they have had, positive or
negative, with the items in the brainstorm.
It is essential at this point to emphasize theimportance and beneﬁts of students making
use of outside of class opportunities to practice and develop their English.

Rationale
Oxford (1990) notes that classroom timealone is not sufﬁcient in providing students
with enough practice opportunities to reacha moderate to high proﬁciency—students
must be able to ﬁnd or create their own opportunities. Although many students may
claim otherwise, opportunities to encounterand use English outside the classroom are notas scarce as they may think. Unfortunately,
many students do not take advantage of theseopportunities. The purpose of this activity
is to help students become more aware ofoutside of class opportunities and use themto practice and develop their English skills.

Students
This activity is designed for university
students, but it can also be used with highschool students.
36Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

3. Set a Goal
The goal gives the students a tangible
measure of their progress and provides
motivation. For the initial chart, I usually
have all students set a goal of 30. On eachsubsequent chart, students are free to set theirown goals but should attempt to set a higher
yet attainable goal each time.

Reﬂections

4. Sharing and Evaluation of Practice
Opportunities (10 minutes)
I usually provide ten minutes of class timeon the days students turn in their charts forthem to share their experiences with speciﬁc
opportunities. I have them talk in groups
about opportunities they used, whether they
thought it was beneﬁcial to them and to what
extent. If any students discovered or createda new practice opportunity, I have them shareit with the class.

After using this activity the ﬁrst time, I
had several positive reactions from students.
They were delighted to learn that opportunities to use English existed in their immediate
environment and that many of them were
free. Students were also excited to apply
what they have been studying at schoolin the real world. During the sharing andevaluation sessions, they presented several
original ideas they had for using English,
such as web-pages, chat groups, English
diaries, translating signs at their part-timejobs and volunteer opportunities. Finally, I
noticed increased conﬁdence and motivation
among my students. Not only were they using English in the real world and succeeding,they were actively trying to ﬁnd more ways
to do it.
I began using this activity with third-year
university English majors who have one 90minute class per week. These students had
lessons three times a week in their ﬁrst year,
twice a week in their second year and were
upset about a decrease in the amount of class

5. Assessment of Activity
I inform the students at the beginning thatthe main purpose of this activity is for themto improve their English skills by using andencountering the language outside of regularclass time. Participation in and completionof this activity is considered part of regularclass work. Keeping in mind that the main
focus is awareness raising and usage and notvolume of use, I factor it in to their ﬁnal grade
as on a simple “do/didn’t do” basis, much
like many teachers do for class participation.
37

From the Chalkface

I have found this to be the simplest way andhave rarely had students fail to complete orturn in a chart. In the past, I have found thatgiving this activity a numeric score or making it a percentage of their ﬁnal grade causes
students to set unrealistic goals, or be dishonest about the types of opportunities they usedand number of times they used them.
This activity does take regular monitoring. I make it a point to remind the students
once a week to ﬁll out their charts and occasionally ask students what opportunities
they are using. When there are doubts as
to the authenticity of the students’ claims, I
have found it useful to ask students speciﬁcquestions about the activities in doubt or ask
for proof.

2. Teach the Activity (10 minutes)
Explain the instructions of the activity to
the students and deﬁne its purpose as a learning strategy. Teach students the procedurefor ﬁlling out the chart and tell them how
frequently charts should be turned in. I usually require students to turn in charts every
two weeks.

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

From the Chalkface

time they had to use English. They wanted
more opportunities to use English and I
wanted to expose them to situations where
they could use what they were learning.
I have since expanded the activity to allof my English major classes as well as somenon-major and high school classes. I use thisactivity the whole academic year and in someAppendix

YES/NOb. Speaking English
with others outsideof class

YES/NOc. Watching English
movies, television,
etc.

YES/NO

d. Listening to English
radio, music, etc.

YES/NOe. Reading English
books, magazines,
etc.

YES/NOf. Self-study otherthan class work or
homework

YES/NO

g. Visiting English
environments

YES/NOh. English e-mail, Internet, chat, etc.

YES/NO

TotalsOxford, R. (1990). Language learning
strategies: What every teacher should
know. Boston: Newbury House.

Goal: _______________First time to use Used this week?
this opportunity? Yes = 1 No = 2

a. Eikaiwa lessons

i. Your original ideas:____________________________________________________________________

References

Outside of Class Encounters
Date: _____~_____

Practice
Opportunity

cases require it as part of summer vacation
homework.

How many
times?

Is it effective?
1-10

YES/NOA (“YES”):

B:

C:

D:

My score for this chart (BxC): _____
Did you reach your goal? Y/N
My next goal is: ____________
Adapted from “Opportunity Knocks!” (Oxford, 1990, p. 180-181)

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

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Using Collages to Raise Students’
Awareness of Global Issues
David A. Prucha
Takushoku University
current themes and issues that are occurringin the outside world. I am always impressedwith the alacrity and genuine interest my
students exhibit while undertaking the tasks
involved.

One of the most critical issues facing ourplanet today is that of the extensive damage
done to the environment as a result of pollution. Rivers, lakes and oceans have becomecontaminated, forests are razed, and thequality of our air continues to decrease. A
massive global increase in human waste overthe past few decades renders many waste
disposal systems ineffective. The teachingof such critical issues “[is] so pressing that[it demands] a response from the entire
educational community” (Stempleski, 1993).
Troll (1996) further states language teachers
should “provide knowledge about how to
act now and in the future to stop the deadly
pattern of environmental exploitation anddestruction in our world” (p.16).
The following lesson plan is designed toraise student awareness of critical global
issues by getting them to create large visual
posters with an environmental theme. Thislesson should also include grammar points,
new vocabulary, an interactive poster-making task, and a subsequent presentation of aposter session followed by a wider discussion on student-chosen theses. This lesson
can also be easily expanded into a “multiperiod project” lesson (Tomei, Glick &Holst, 1999), with more time spent on eachcomponent. Content-based learning, “particularly the use of socially oriented themes”(Jacobs, 1995), often connects students with

Aims of the Lesson
1. Allow students an opportunity tocreatively explore ways to bring about anincreased awareness of environmental or
global issues by creating visual representation of their ideas.
2. Improve students’ use of lesson-related
vocabulary, especially through the use of aparticular L2 grammar structure. In this lesson plan, I have chosen to use the construction of advisability sentences.
3. Generate student production of ideas
and opinions by having students commenton and ﬁeld questions about the meaning of
their collages.
4. Promote skills associated with collaborative learning, including teamwork, sharingof ideas, students helping each other to learn,
and raising the level of critical thinking.

Intended Level
I originally used this lesson plan to ﬁt intoa curriculum for sociology majors at a public
university in Japan. I focused on intermediate
to upper intermediate levels, but because of
the ﬂexibility of this activity, I have observed
39

From the Chalkface

Introduction

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Separable Verbs: to use up, to throw
away
Nouns and Noun Phrases: the rain forests, the environment, the natural resources,
the atmosphere, the pollution, the carbon
dioxide, the garbage/trash/litter
Adjectives: rare, endangered
As all of these words have dictionary
meanings, elicit the meaning from students
before asking them to look the words up in
their dictionaries. I have also given piecesof paper with the words written in English
or Japanese, and asked the students to ask
other groups the meaning.

From the Chalkface

an enthusiastic response among a variety oflevels, from lower level, ﬁrst-year students
with basic English levels, to higher levels of
the upper intermediate range. Making a few
adjustments in the syntactical structures of
the grammatical and lexical portions is very
simple, and offers teachers the leeway tomake this a fun and creative lesson.

Lesson Length & Class SizeAs presented this lesson is intended for one
90 minute class. Because of the collaborative
nature of this lesson, students should workin groups of four to ﬁve. Therefore, the idealclass size is between 15 and 30 students. It
is possible with larger groups, but requires
careful time management.

2. Grammar & Vocabulary (10 minutes)
Students work together to practice using
the new vocabulary.
Here, I have a prepared handout (see Appendix) which asks the students to connect
clauses to make advisability statements.
3. Choosing Themes (10 minutes)
In this part, I have the students create a
sub-theme related to the main theme. I ask
them to write it down on a piece of paper
together with a short statement modeled on
the advisability sentences. The statements
should support their themes. For example:
Theme: Recycle Old Newspapers!
Supporting Statement Using Advisability Model: We should recycle our newspapers
so that we can reduce our garbage.

Preparation and Materials
Prepare a handout with vocabulary related
to the main theme, and include a few exercises for practicing a grammar point, suchas the advisability statements I have used.
Bring the following materials to the class:glue, scissors, poster paper/board, thumbtacks/tape/board magnets (for hanging ﬁnished posters), color markers/pens/crayons,and plenty of old newspapers, brochures,magazines, and any other printed material.
Pictures are very useful, so the more color in
the student posters, the more attractive yourstudents’ collages will appear.

Procedure

4. Production (40 minutes)
Students support their themes and statements by cutting out pictures and text related to their topic of interest, and gluing
them onto poster board to make a collage. I
encourage students to use the words in thenewspapers, or cut out individual letters, inorder to come up with some new support
words and create further meaning for their

1. Vocabulary Building (10 minutes)
After organizing the students into groupsof four or ﬁve, give the students a list of useful words. For example:
Verbs: to conserve, to protect, to pollute,
to litter, to recycle, to reduce, to increase, todecrease, to damage
40Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEa group poster with pictures of green trees
or a drawing of a green globe would be appropriate. Another way of checking student
learning is by asking them why they chosecertain pictures and text. They can also be
asked to reproduce advisability statements,
which would show how well they are able toretain the grammar points. A simple dialogue
for this might be as follows:
Teacher: Can I throw this garbage on the
ﬂoor?
Student: No, you can’t.
Teacher: Why not?
Student: You should not litter because it
pollutes the environment.
One of the aims of teaching cooperative
learning is to get students to apply what
they have learned to wider contexts in thereal world. With this in mind, I have foundthat using a simple take-home checklist asa follow-up assignment that keeps students
focused on environmental concerns can usually provide a few insights into how much ofan effect the poster-making activity had on
raising student awareness of environmental
issues. Some examples of items that I haveused in the checklist are:This week, I will try to remember to do
the following:
1．Turn off unnecessary lights.
2．Recycle plastic bags at the grocery
store.
3.Watch a TV documentary on an environmental issue.
4. Use only reusable chopsticks insteadof throwaway ones.
5. Separate garbage for recycling.

Assessment
Because this lesson plan is based on someof the principles of cooperative learning,
students are actively engaged in the learning
process itself, assessing student learning isfairly straightforward. Some of the ‘mileposts’ that teachers can look for to checkif learning is in fact taking place, include
observing how well the posters match thethemes created by the students. If, for example, the theme is Let’s Keep the Earth Green!,

Variations
Because of its ﬂexible nature, this lesson
can be used as a project to compliment another lesson that deals with global issues, or
41

From the Chalkface

particular themes. This is a good opportunity
to walk around the classroom, observing
student productions and giving comments orsuggestions. I especially encourage creativity during this portion of the lesson, because
the more abstract and artistic these collages
become, the more questions they will elicit
during the discussion part in the next section. I can also usually ﬁnd out how muchstudents are learning based on how closely
their choice of pictures and text relate totheir themes and supporting statements. I
make it a point to ask students to explain themeaning of their choice of support pictures
and text. This gives them the opportunity
to show me how well they understand their
themes. I also remind students of how muchtime they have left, which helps with time
management.
5. Discussion (20 minutes)
In the ﬁnal part of the lesson, students hangtheir collages on the blackboard or bulletinboard, and spend a few minutes enjoying thecreative productions of their peers. I thenopen the ﬂoor up to discussion by asking
each group to prepare several questions foreach collage. I ﬁnd this part is easier if thecreators of the collage stand next to it andface the other students in order to answer
questions about their theme and how thecollage supports that theme.

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

From the Chalkface

On CUE

it can be a complete cooperative language
learning lesson that brings together andfocuses on the major elements and skillsof language learning: listening, speaking,reading and writing. Having used this planfor several years now, I am still revising itin order to tailor it to different levels of students, and in order to continue to ﬁnd new
and creative ways to implement this plan in
my classroom.
1. Set a good example. Ask the students
to bring old and recyclable materials fromtheir homes, thereby getting them directly
involved in a recycling effort.
2. Use recycled paper for all handouts, andlet the students know this fact.
3. Elicit background knowledge by doing a short brain-storming warm-up at the
beginning of class “to invigorate the class”(Riley, 2001). Also, Richards’ “word-mapping” (1990) is useful for getting students’schema activated. For example, ask students
to make a list of environmental problems
around the globe, and what kind of daily
habits their families or communities are doing to address them. True/False quizzes arealso very helpful.
4. For a deeper topic discussion, narrow
themes to speciﬁc areas of environmental
concerns. For example, have all groups
concentrate on speciﬁc themes related to one
topic, such as endangered animals, recycling

efforts, water/air pollution, natural resource
conservation, etc…
5. Share your students’ environmental
awareness posters with students from otherclasses by asking for permission to hangthe ﬁnished posters in the hallway, or atleast be allowed to leave them hanging in
the classroom for a week. The posters thenmake excellent visual review of vocabulary
for the following week.

References

Jacobs, G. (1995). Language use or language
usage? Global Issues in Language
Education, 18(17).
Richards, J.C.(1990). The language teaching
matrix. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Riley, B. P. (2001). Active brainstorming. The
Internet TESL Journal,.7(4). Retrieved July,
2003, from http://iteslj.org/games/9938.
html
Stempleski, S. (1993). Linking the classroom
to the world: The environment and EFL.
English Teaching Forum, 31(4), 2.
Tomei, J., Glick, C., & Holst, M. (1999).
Project work in the Japanese university
classroom. The Language Teacher, 23(3),5-8.
Troll, H. (1996). The environment andlanguage education. Global Issues in
Language Education, 25(16), 16-17.

AppendixPlease draw a line to connect these sentences.
1. We should protect the rain forests

because it damages our atmosphere.

2. We should not litterso that we can reduce the amount of our garbage.

3. We should conserve energy

because many rare plants and animals live there.

4. We should recycle

because our planet has limited natural resources.

5. We had better decrease carbon dioxide

because it pollutes our environment.

42Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEMy Candy
Andrew Woollock
Kyoto Saga University of Arts
Setsunan University
majors studying on a four-skills track, where
it can be introduced as part of a speciﬁc writing class. The complexity of the task can beeasily altered to suit the students’ level.

Drawing upon the principles of stimulusbased teaching as outlined by Woodward(2001), this lesson utilizes a common object as a stimulus for producing a wealth ofdescriptive language. Though speciﬁcallydevised for a writing unit, it could easily be
adapted for use in an English communication course.
The basic aim of this lesson is to encourage
students to engage their immediate physicalenvironment and record that interaction inwriting. By choosing a familiar object andgiving students very speciﬁc tasks and appropriate guidance, it is hoped that students
will a) discover that even the most mundane
objects can be interesting if considered
carefully, and b) learn that there is always
something to say—topics surround us all
the time if we are willing to look for them.
Furthermore, this lesson can help writing
students overcome writer’s block by showing
them that by following a simple, logical procedure, they can achieve worthwhile results
while focusing maximum attention on thetask at hand. All of this from a simple lesson
built around a small piece of candy!

Time Required
Preparation Time: Minimal—you’ll
need only stop and buy enough candy for
all students.
Activity Time: Varying—depending on
student level and the depth to which you
expect students to go with the activity.

Materials
Writing materials and one piece of candy
for each student, plus a second, different
piece of candy if you plan to assign homework. When you buy the candies, look for
opaque packaging to encourage the student
to imagine the contents. Also, a variety of
ﬂavors, shapes, and textures is desirable; you
don’t want 32 students describing exactly thesame thing. Hard candies are preferable, as
they will last longer and give students moretime for reﬂection.

Rationale
Not only does this activity provide a fun
way to teach descriptive, rich language, but
perhaps more importantly it stimulates anoften abundant latent knowledge possessedby the Japanese student learner. Furthermore, this activity aims to introduce the idea

Students
Learner English Level: Elementary andabove.
Target Learner: This lesson works wellwith college students, especially English
43

From the Chalkface

SummaryWinter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

of time-lines and progression in a way all
students can relate to and use. Although myoriginal intention was to produce a lesson
for a writing class, teachers may adapt theconcept for application to other contexts.

Write the words before, during and after inconsecutive sections:| before | during | after |Step 2Clarify the concept of progression as needed. Depending on the level, you might give
students initial examples and then elicit more
to illustrate the principle of time progression.
For example, just above the category “during,” you might draw a simple picture of abuilding and label it “college.” Then either
elicit ideas from the class or call on students
individually to say what they did before (i.e.,
ate breakfast, rode the train, etc.) and what
they will do while they are here (i.e., study,
eat lunch, etc.) and ﬁnally what they are going to do after school. At this initial stage, thegoal is simply to ensure they understand theidea of progression in three distinct phases,
not the conjugation of verbs.

From the Chalkface

Progression
This activity is designed to get students
to describe their candy at three progressive
stages of experience. The following overview may be useful.
Before: Describe not only the package’s
physical aspects (i.e., color, material, shape,size, weight, sound, smell, etc.) but also
conceptualize the possible smell, or the taste
and texture in the mouth and the emotions orimages that would correlate accordingly.
During: Describe how the candy feels in
the mouth, both physically and in respect of
the taste. In regards to both be exact. Is it;smooth? rough? heavy? light? big? small?
Does it move easily around in the mouth?
What does it taste like? Is it; sweet? sour?
fruity? Does it last a long time or does it
dissolve quickly? Does it remind you ofanything?
After: What is felt both physically andemotionally after having eaten the candy?
What kind of lingering taste (if any) is left inthe mouth? How is the feeling now comparedwith before the task?
Don’t forget to focus on all of the ﬁve
senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

Step 3Once students have grasped the conceptof progression, connect it to the task they
are about to perform. Explain that they areabout to be given a piece of candy and thatthey have to describe how they “experience”
it in three progressive stages.
Step 4
Clarify the type of language students are
expected to produce. On the board write:
appearance, taste and feeling. Make threecolumns. Elicit more vocabulary to correspond to the three target columns and put
them on the board. Alternatively, you can justgo straight to Step 5. If you skip ahead, you
might want to return to this point later (before
Step 8) to ensure students have a signiﬁcantbody of vocabulary to draw upon.

Procedure
Step 1
Draw a horizontal line across the blackboard, then draw four short vertical lines so
as to make three sections:|______|______|______|

44

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEgraphs to explain their progressive perceptions. Alternatively, you could assign thisfor homework or continue the work in thefollowing class meeting.

Step 5Show the students one candy (unopened)
and get them to call out words they would
associate with the candy’s appearance. You
should get an array of words connectedto the packet’s shape, color, size, weight,
and texture. You may need to begin with afew examples to get them started. Proceed
through the other two categories. Note that
this vocabulary corresponds mainly to thebefore part of the activity.

Variations

Step 6
Open the packet and show them the candy,
again gather vocabulary and put it on theboard in the appropriate section. You mightpass the candy around to elicit descriptionsof touch and smell. Remember to clarify
any new vocabulary for the lower-level
students.
Step 7
Have students take out three sheets ofpaper, on which they should write: before,
during and after.
Step 8This is the main part of the lesson. Give
one candy to each student. Individually,
have them go through the stages, writing
only words and short notes to describe theirperceptions of the candy before, during, andafter eating it. Tell students that they need
not write full sentences, as this is only abrainstorming activity. Encourage them tobe creative! Monitor students as they workand keep them on task; answer questions anddeal with problems as necessary.

Extensions
Have the students either:i) Read and correct another student’s
work; ask follow-up questions, etc. (Peercorrection model)ii) Have the students read their work out
loud and present it to the others in small
groups; ask follow-up questions, etc. (Presentation model)

Homework
This activity works very well as a homework assignment for a writing class. I have
had success by ﬁrst doing a watered-down

Step 9If time allows, have students transformtheir notes and vocabulary into three para45

From the Chalkface

This plan represents one route (of which
there are many) to the goal. You might use anentirely different object (e.g., buttons, ﬁlms,
cities, etc.) and have the students begin to
produce language before actually engaging
directly with the source of the lesson. Have
students begin to conceptualize more thanthey are typically encouraged to. Have them
then record their conjectures following thesame processes outlined above. For example
give them the title of a ﬁlm or a painting.
Ask them to conceptualize what the subject
might be about, once they have recordedthat show them the picture or ﬁlm and havethem record their thoughts. Once that is done
have them compare and make post-task observations. This is simply a short example,
the variants of which are endless and all ofwhich surely serve to furnish the learner withthe much-needed skills of conceptualizationand conjecture.

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

From the Chalkface

On CUE

version in class (because of time constraints)
and then giving them another (different)
candy to write about for homework. When I
have done this, I have consistently found thehomework is of a much higher standard—not
simply because it is their second time around,but also because in a more isolated environment they have an opportunity to focus morethoroughly on the task at hand.
If you plan to assign this idea as part of ajournal, you might consider continuing thetheme of before, during and after with otherwriting topics (see Variations above). I havefound that once students grasp the concept
and realize they can easily produce threetimes more writing than before, they reallyseem to take to the idea.

invited to see this as a platform on which to
add their own ideas, modifying it to suit theirown classes, objectives, and teaching styles.
I personally like to teach in a way that challenges and engages students, giving themthe opportunity to apply their English skillsin the widest possible manner. To that end
I have found this lesson works well. Everytime that I have used this I have been interested to see how students approach the task,
amazed by what this very simple idea canbring out of the students. In going througha speciﬁc process the student is empoweredwith the means to tap a mass of dormant
vocabulary. This lesson does require careful explaining at the beginning, but once thestudents know they are getting a treat, and a
break perhaps from a dull routine, you willﬁnd their attention is sustained.

Reﬂections
Since I ﬁrst devised and implemented thislesson some 5 years ago, I have had nothing
but success with it. Naturally I have honed
my delivery and made improvements to theprocedure. Teachers adopting this lesson are

References
Woodward, T. (2001). Planning lessons
and courses: Designing sequences of workfor the language classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

46

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Cyberpipline
Video Project Resources
Steven Snyder

Stagetools
http://www.stagetools.com
An alternative to large integrated NonLinear Editing (NLE) packages is simple
stand alone tools for speciﬁc video treatment.
Stagetools has programs that work bothways: as stand alone task-speciﬁc tools andas plug-ins for NLEs. MovingPicture is thecore program by Stagetools—this program
allows you to digitally pan and zoom still
photographs, also know as the “Ken Burns
Effect.” MovingPicture is simple and easy touse, but very powerful. There is a timeline forsetting key frames and audio, but it is transparent to use. Zooming and panning are con-Desktop Video at About.com
http://desktopvideo.about.com
Generally, I am not a great fan of About.
com, but the information on desktop video
really deserves mentioning here. The website has a lot of procedural information
about editing tools and video techniques,47

Cyberpipeline

trolled by moving a superimposed window
over the photograph. In fact, I do not start mystudents out on an editing program, instead I
have them play with MovingPicture and theyquickly learn many editing skills as well as
conceptual skills needed to use NLEs. Most
NLEs and power user effects suites are simply too complicated for many teachers andtheir students, but with MovingPicture they
can achieve impressive effects within a shorttime. Stagetools products are available forboth PC and Mac users and the plug-ins willﬁt with a large number of advanced NLEs.
Another program from Stagetools is MovingParts, which allows you to make highlights
and other effects over video; however, thistool is strictly a plug-in for video editing
programs. The last program from Stagetools
is MovingChart, which makes a movie out ofcharts or data. For video projects by students
or teachers, MovingPicture is the program
to get, but also think seriously about adding
the rotation option as it is well worth theprice. MovingPicture exports to .avi, .movand .swf formats.

A lot of us use video in our classes or havevideo related activities. Recently, I tried
doing a video project with some seminar
students that worked out pretty well. Video
projects for students are wonderful for a
handful of students and something that has
been around for a long time. Creating yourown video content for classes is much more
ambitious, but with the tools available today
it is indeed possible. The ﬁrst problem I had
was ﬁnding programs that would work withmy university students. Then, I had to ﬁnd
resources that would actually work on myolder equipment and that did not cost a fortune. Here are a few of the websites I foundthat you may ﬁnd useful.

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

Non-Lineal Editing Systems (NLEs)

Cyberpipeline

plus reviews on software, DVD burners
and camcorders. The site begins with “Top10 Articles to Help You Get Started with
Desktop Video Editing,” and they really aregood articles that can move you from raw
beginning to functional in a very short time.
Also, this site has tons of links to equipment
and other tools.

If you are a Mac user then you have thegreat, user-friendly iMovie <http://www.
apple.com/ilife/imovie/>. If you are a poweruser then you probably already know about
Final Cut Pro <http://www.apple.com/ﬁnalcutstudio/ﬁnalcutpro/>, a tremendously
powerful program. On the PC-side, things aremuch more complicated. The high end programs, such as Adobe Premiere Pro <http://
www.adobe.com/uk/products/premiere/>and effects programs such as Adobe After
Effects <http://www.adobe.com/products/
aftereffects/>, are not just expensive, theyrequire very powerful computers with special
setups. Ulead products <http://www.ulead.
com/store/store.htm> are a less expensive
and less difﬁcult to learn option.
For inspiration, or simply for the fun of it,
atom ﬁlms < http://www.atomﬁlms.com/> isa site dedicated to short ﬁlms. Pretty mixed
bag, but interesting. Do yourself a favorand check out the movie Spin. You can access it through atom ﬁlms or you can go to
the producer’s site at Double Edge Films<http://www.doubleedgeﬁlms.com>. There
are a number of movies with the name Spin,but this one is… well, see for yourself.

Forbidden Technologies
http://www.forbidden.co.uk/products/
This company has, at last count, six products that deliver Java-based video on-line.
Java video has several advantages: detectionof connection speed, bypassing ﬁrewalls, andvery fast download time. For online courses,
the fast download time is very attractive. The
basic product is FORweb, which produces
video content for webpages. The other products are logical extensions of FORweb forvarious needs. FORlive, makes live video on
websites, FORmail makes video via email,
FORpresentation creates slideshow/movies
for web-based presentations, FORscene is an
online DV editing system, and FORmobile
is a mobile standard video tool and hosting
service.

48

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE2006 Pan SIG Conference
Authentic Communication: Process
and Purpose
Overview

register, which relies heavily on profanityand “English with mother” register, which
is very formal and proper. He spoke on theimportance of teaching connected speech,
giving eleven reasons. Brown concluded bytreating the conference attendees to a sneakpeek at his upcoming textbooks.
Eddy White of Tokyo Woman’s Christian
University reported on the ﬁndings of a pilot
study conducted in 2005 in his well-attended
presentation “Using self-assessment to promote active student engagement.” By way
of introduction, he listed the advantages anddisadvantages of self-assessment. In a pilot
study, he gave the students a self-assessment
checklist with six categories: attendance &participation, being attentive and completing tasks, speaking English, active listening, speaking Japanese, and overall effort
and attitude. Then three times during thesemester students evaluated themselves ona four-point scale ranging from “seldom true
for me (passive)” to “almost always true forme (very active). At the end of the semester,an additional survey was conducted about
self-assessment. Preliminary results indicatethat overall the students found self-assessment both important and useful.
Jane Nakagawa from Aichi Universityof Education conducted a workshop entitled“Active learning in the classroom.” To startoff, participants described their learning situ-

The 5 annual JALT Pan-SIG Conference
was held at Tokai University in Shizuoka, Japan, from May 13-14. This year’s conference
was sponsored by four of JALT ‘s Special
Interest Groups (Bilingualism, Pragmatics,
Testing and Evaluation and Teacher Education), along with the Shizuoka Chapter. With
three plenary speeches and a large numberof presentations, poster sessions, workshops,
colloquia, and commercial exhibits, there
was something of interest for everyone.
th

Day 1
Dr. James Dean Brown’s informativeand entertaining plenary speech, “Whyzit
importan’ ta teach reduced forms?” kicked
off the conference. He spoke about the features of connected speech, including weakforms, reduction, linking, contraction, assimilation, elision and intrusion. He also
talked about the stigma of “lazy” English.
Many teachers demand their students touse “proper” English. However, connectedspeech is neither “lazy” nor “sloppy”. It iseven present in very formal speech. Brown
included personal anecdotes, describing thecollection process of connected speech forms
during his research. He also explained his
ability to use two very different language
registers appropriately: “army English”
49

Conference Review

Adam Murray
Tokyo Denki University

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

Conference Review

On CUE

ations. All had something in common: large
university classes with students of various
levels of ability and motivation. Nakagawa
brieﬂy introduced the Myers Briggs Type
Indicator (MBTI) and Multiple Intelligences(MI) models. In an attempt to sustain active
participation, she uses a variety of activities.
To illustrate this, workshop participants were
given handouts from Nakagawa’s textbook“Learn to use English, use English to learn.”
She encouraged workshop participants todiscuss ways to use, modify, and adapt these
activities for their particular classes. Nakagawa also gave some practical tips such as
the one I personally found useful concerningclassroom attendance and group administration. At the start of the semester, the students
write small name cards to be placed on theirdesks. Nakagawa does not use a seating plan,but before the beginning of each class, she“randomly” places the name cards on thedesks—making the seat assignments for theday. After class begins, taking attendance issimple—the name cards at the empty desks
are collected and the respective students aremarked absent. These cards can also be used
for making small groups. This is a very usefuland simple tip to implement.

survey of 973 ﬁrst-year university students,
which consisted of 61 questions about bilingualism, multilingualism, and emotionaland gender associations among languages.
Maher presented many ﬁndings including
the fact that most of the students wished thatthey had started to learn a foreign language
at a younger age. The majority thought that
ethnicity was the most important feature oflanguage. And surprisingly they preferred
British English to American English, butwould prefer their children to learn American
English! The data analysis of all 61 questions
has not been completed yet, but we can expect them to be published in the future.
“Publishing as a Mode of Teacher Education” was the title of the Teacher Education
Colloquium. It consisted of four short talks
followed by a lively discussion. James Venema of Nagoya Women’s University gavesome practical tips about publishing such as
becoming a reader before becoming a writer;ﬁnding topics to write about; writing appropriately (i.e. a paper for a master’s programvs. an article for a journal): selecting suitablevenues for your articles; joining or forminga support group; and keeping copies of everything. Paul Tanner of Nagoya City University described the numerous beneﬁts ofresearch: reading ESL publications to learn
new points of view and acquire knowledge;
learning about teaching and research; applying research to solve problems. He shared
how writing articles has personally beneﬁted
him by helping him to develop and clarify
his ideas. Moreover, by applying the ideas hehas learned from research he has new themes
for action research in his own classroom.
This action research helps improve classroom activities, while providing a forum for
publishing research. His speciﬁc examples
included: the problem of students relying on
the teacher to improve writing, and whether

Day 2
Day 2 opened with Dr. John C. Maher’splenary speech, “Knowing about Language,
Knowing about Bilingualism: A ‘Language
Awareness Project’ in Japan.” Maher’s informative speech covered a number of topics.
First, he mentioned some popular language
myths such as French is a romantic language
and women speak too much. He then spokeof the languages of Japan from a historicalperspective and two contrasting models
describing the construction of the Japanese
language. He also discussed Japanese Pidgins and Creoles. Finally, he described a50Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUEthe hidden assumptions in a textbook. Assumptions, that when examined, lead toa greater understanding of the role of the
textbook, effective use of the textbook andeven a greater understanding of language
learning itself.

(and how much) a teacher should do error
correction on student essays. His reading of
the research, interviews and surveys with his
students helped to clarify student responsibilities and preferences, and to determine theextent of a teacher’s responsibilities.
Mark Rebuck of Nagoya City University
in his short talk “Publishing as a Spur to
Action” highlighted several ways teachers
can beneﬁt from publishing papers. First,
publishing can motivate teachers to put theirideas into practice. Second, he introduced
the “pinball effect” of research writing: theway in which one paper brings forth an ideathat often leads to another. Third, writing is
a process by which a teacher’s own ideas are
codiﬁed. Writing is thus a way for a teacher
to see his or her mind on paper, an important
process for developing a personal teaching
philosophy. Finally, being alert to potential
publishing opportunities keeps a teacher’s
mind open to new ideas.
Brian Cullen of Nagoya Institute ofTechnology described the inﬂuence of textbooks in his talk, Textbooks and Teacher
Education. Cullen, an experienced textbook
writer, shared his experiences with textbook
committees, textbook users and textbook
publishers. He also talked about textbooks
from two perspectives – the writer’s and theuser’s. His very practical handout provided
65 questions that should be addressed whenwriting a textbook. These same questions
also allow the textbook user to think about

Reﬂections

51

Conference Review

As a ﬁrst-time attendee, what attracted
me to the PAN-SIG conference? Like many
people, initially it was the plenary speakers.
Although the conference is only ﬁve years
old, I was surprised that there were threeplenary speakers. I was also attracted by thepractical nature of the conference, as the highnumber of workshops can attest. Finally, I
was attracted by the low price.
After attending some great presentations
and workshops, I found this conference to bevery beneﬁcial. One of the highlights for me(and I am sure many others) was the banquet
at the Tokai University Marine Museum.
The 1,000-yen banquet was an extensive,
all-you-can-eat-and-drink buffet including
sushi and okonomiyaki, made before our veryeyes. In the middle of the large room where
we dined, there was an impressive ﬁsh tankﬁlled with sharks, manta rays and schoolsof barracudas and trevallies. We were also
treated to soothing piano music and lively
traditional Celtic music. Final verdict? Seeyou at Pan-SIG 2007 at Tohoku Bunka
Gakuen University, in Sendai next year!

Winter 2006: Volume 14, Issue 2

On CUE

JALT 2006 CUE SIG Workshop Summary‘Talking to Learners: Are We on the Same Page?’
Sara Cotterall, Akita International University
The way we talk to learners conveys important messages about the nature of language
learning, roles in the learning process and the purpose of classroom instruction. But how
accurately does our classroom talk reﬂect our teaching philosophy? Previous research has
found that teacher talk dominates in many language classrooms (e.g. Musumeci, 1996),
that teacher talk can inhibit student involvement (Walsh, 2002), that teachers may speak
to their learners in an unnatural way (Barker, 2006), and that there is often a mismatch
between learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of the goal of language tasks (Block, 1996).
Such concerns warrant attention. This workshop will explore the messages inherent inteacher talk by inviting participants to examine and discuss transcripts of classroom-based
interactions between teachers and learners. Participants will also be invited to reﬂect on
their practice and suggest guidelines for monitoring teacher talk.
References
Barker, D. 2006. ‘Observing language classes in Japanese universities.’ The Language Teacher
30(3), 11-18.
Block, D. 1996. ‘A window on the classroom: classroom events viewed from different angles.’In K.M. Bailey and D. Nunan (Eds.), Voices from the language classroom: Qualitative
research in second language education (pp.. 168-194). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Musumeci, D. 1996. ‘Teacher-learner negotiation in content-based instruction: Communication atcross-purposes?’ Applied Linguistics 17(3), 286-325.
Walsh, S. 2002. ‘Construction or obstruction: Teacher talk and learner involvement in the EFL
classroom.’ Language Teaching Research 6(1), 3-23.

Call for Transcripts
Walsh (2002, p. 20) claims:
Only by working with their own data are teachers likely to be able to modify theirclassroom verbal behaviour.”
Therefore, in order to help make the workshop activities personally relevant, you areencouraged to record (audio or video) and transcribe 10-15 minutes of your own classroom
interaction with your learners. Be sure to explain why you are recording and ask permission
to do so. Please send the transcript to Sara Cotterall <saracotterall@aiu.ac.jp> before October1st. This will enable Sara to make copies of the transcripts, so that we can examine and discussinteractions from a range of classroom contexts.
52