STORIES OF LEARNING AND TEACHING PRACTICESKayo Ozawa
Kyoritsu Women’s College
kozawa[at]kyoritsu-wu[dot]ac[dot]jp

Questioning Monolingualism and Native-Speakerism
through Students’ Action
What can I offer as an educator, when students can come in prepared with all the “right answers”
if I were to offer students access to the links to their textbook? How can students embrace theinformation that is in the textbook and make it their own? These questions have come to my mind
as I taught a class called Kokusai Eigo A at a women’s college. There were 25 women in this classof freshmen, and they belonged to L2 (Level 2), L1 being the highest and L3 being the lowest
level, after taking a Placement Test offered by the school upon entry. In the past few years, withthe spread of Chat GPT and online textbooks that promote flipped learning (Gerstein, 2013), and a
new type of visual learning instead of regular reading of texts, I have come to question my role as ateacher. For their textbook, I selected National Geographic Learning’s, World English 2 (Third Edition),and taught a unit on Endangered Languages. In the textbook, there is a passage that deals with
their Enduring Voices Project, mentioning how 7,099 languages were lost in the world when the
textbook was first created. Students also watched a video journal of Marie Wilcox, the last fluent
speaker of the Wukchumni language. The situation has worsened with COVID-19, as shown inarticles like Losing elders to Covid-19 endangers Indigenous languages.
The students were asked to do short presentations on the topic of languages. The majority of thewomen picked lost languages, such as the Hawaiian and Ainu languages in Japan. However, there
was also variety: the Yahghan language in Patagonia, the King’s English in the United Kingdom,
Ethiopian language, the Jeju language in Korea, and the Bo language of India. They also mentioned
endangered languages in the Japanese peninsula: the Amami language, the Hachijogo (Japan),and dead languages (languages that are obsolete in Japan). I was interested in why many students
chose Ainu and Hawaiian in particular, and what students wrote opened me to wide horizons intheir learning.
As part of their final exam for the semester, I had students write about why they chose particular
topics, and what they discovered through their research. They wrote about this as an essay in their
final exams. The prompts were given beforehand so that students could prepare over the winterbreak (December 2023~January 2024).
Drops: Language Learning Games makes me aware of how accessible language, even the dying
ones, has become to everyone through technology. To make this action research more formal,
further qualitative analysis of why they chose particular samples and quantitative analysis of the
distribution of languages is necessary. In their essays, there were simple answers such as “I like theanimation Golden Kamuy so I was interested in Ainu Culture.” Golden Kamuy is one of the bestselling and award-winning Japanese manga series. The story is basically about a veteran named
Saichi Sugimoto, of the early twentieth-century Russo-Japanese War, and the waning years of theTokugawa Bakufu era (Oliveros, 2018). The manga series is about the quest to find a huge fortuneof gold for the Ainu people, helped by a young Ainu girl named Asirpa. Specific focus is given to
the Ainu people, their language, and natural resources given by the Kamuy, a spirit that originated

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in the Ainu myth. This has shown me how manga truly is part of the younger Japanese culture, andhow it can be an impetus or window to learn new languages and to see beyond our limited worlds.
However, some essays were more sophisticated. Although I provide students with links to their
textbooks which give them the “right answers,” I have come to realize that as their teacher I canhelp them with critical thinking and analytical skills. They can reflect on why a particular language
is important to them. They can also see their use of English from a different perspective; they neednot shy away from mastering a foreign language because of the obstacle of “native-speakerism.”
These essays helped me to think of Prof. Ellen Head and Prof. Chie Tsurii’s fascinating review
of Patrick Heinrich’s seminal book, “The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology andJapanese Modernity” in The Learner Development Journal. Chapter 7 specifically focuses on “detailsof the linguistic and cultural losses in relation to Ryukyu and Ainu languages” (Head & Tsurii, 2021,
p. 127). They discuss how the idea of a monolingual identity through the Genbunitchi Undo connectswith the idea of “native-speakerism.” Students of minority cultures were sometimes punished forbeing different, and forced to assimilate since the Japanese governors could not communicate
with the local population (p. 130). The two authors further discuss how the belief in the monolingual
identity ties in with the ambivalence that the Japanese have in learning a foreign language in general.
In sum, through the action research, the students seem to have moved beyond the comprehensionof English passages in their textbooks to foster their awareness of other languages and cultures.
Furthermore, this action research will help them question monolingualism. I hope that such action
research will foster students’ awareness of other languages and cultures and that it will help themquestion monolingualism in Japan as well as native-speakerism, and take a positive attitude towardmastering English as a tool in the globalized world. One student mentioned how during the Meiji era,
the Ainu language was prohibited by the government since “there was no merit” other than to speak
Japanese to get jobs and to assimilate. Another student mentioned that the Jeju language needs tobe protected since the 8,000 people killed in the Jeju uprising in Korea would be forgotten. Finally,a student mentioned how endangered languages are important because “it has the memory and thewisdom of the people who have taken root there.” It is part of our world heritage, and like other bits ofmemory, if it is not recognized, it will be obliterated from history. I would like to end this article with an
insightful quote from Head and Tsurii that we need to keep thinking about as educators.
I see a connection between learner autonomy and a way of teaching that is orientatedtowards noticing and valuing diversity. On the other hand, a monolingual ideal will always
tend to promote control by a central authority. If there is only one right way, students must
listen to the teacher. Of course, you can get trapped in a paradox where students say“I want you to teach me the one right way.” So, I suppose the question is, how do we talkto students who have been raised with these assumptions that Japan is monolingual, andperhaps with accompanying insecurities about the possibility of learning English? (p. 131)

REFERENCES

About Enduring Languages (2020, October 7). National Geographic. Retrieved February 2, 2024
from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/about-enduring-voices
AnimaxAsia. (2020, April 8). Golden Kamuy - trailer [video]. YouTube Trailer. https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=6qPXz_ckN5s
Gerstein, J. (2013, April 3). A little more on the flipped classroom. User Generated Education.
https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/tag/flipped-classroom/
Head, E., & Tsurii, C. (2021). Book review and critical dialogue about The Making of Monolingual
Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity (Heinrich, 2012). In A. Barfield, O. Cousin,
Y. Imamura, & R. Kelly (Eds.), The Learner Development Journal 5, (125-135). https://ldjournal.
ld-sig.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/LDJ5-09.pdf

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Langlois, J. (2020, November 14). Losing elders to COVID-19 endangers indigenous languages.
National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/losing-elders-to-covid19-endangers-indigenous-languages
Oliveros, M. (2018, April 27). The true history behind Golden Kamuy. Anime News Network. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2018-04-27/the-true-history-behind-golden-kamuy/.130932

Shannon Saruwatashi
Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University
saruwatashi[at]g[dot]n-junshin[dot]ac[dot]jp
Ivan Lombardi
Learning Learning editorial teamivan[at]u-fukui[dot]ac[dot]jp

Mini-interview on Learner Development with
Shannon Saruwatashi
Ivan writes: Shannon joined the LD SIG recently and kindly volunteered for a mini-interview early
this year. This was my first time interviewing someone for Learning Learning; I was nervous and myfirst email to her took very long to craft as a result. Little did I know that I was in for a treat. Shannon
wrote back with precise and engaging answers to all of my questions and responses. Through thisprocess, which ran from late February to mid-March 2024, we discovered common research interestsand experiences that I am sure many readers of this newsletter will relate to. I hope you will have thesame pleasure learning about Shannon through this mini-interview as I had!
*****Ivan: Hi Shannon, my name is Ivan, and I am a member of the Learning Learning editorial team.
Thank you so much for your interest in doing a mini-interview for our publication! I am excited toinitiate a dialogue that will be shared with other members of the LD SIG through our newsletter. If
that is OK with you, I would like to use the nine talking points below to begin our conversation.
1. Where you work
2. What kind of learners you work with
3. Something interesting or puzzling about your learners
4. A small story of surprise or change for you about learner development
5. What interests you about learner development in your work
6. Some enduring questions or puzzles you have to do with learner development

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7. Who (past teachers, different learners, particular writers, …) or what (certain incidents orexperiences, particular classes, certain pieces of writing or discussions with others, …) havebeen particularly important for you in developing your (learner development) practices and/or
your understanding of learner development
8. Particular discourses or theories of learning that you are interested in, and how they help youin thinking about and developing your practice
9. A reflection (incomplete, even) that you’d like to share about something to do with learningand learner development
Shannon: Hi Ivan, thank you for reaching out to me. This sounds like an interesting project, and I’m
happy to participate. Following are my answers to your questions.
Ivan: Before we begin the interview, would you mind me asking you a bit about yourself?
Shannon: I’m originally from the States. I first came to Japan as an exchange student, and found it
hard to stay away after that. I did part-time eikaiwa work until I decided it was time to do my master’s
degree online in Applied Linguistics. At the same time I was studying for my master’s, I started teaching
part-time at Nagasaki Junshin Catholic University, a small private university in the hilly outskirts ofNagasaki City.
Ivan: Where do you work now, and what do you do there?
Shannon: I currently work full-time at the same institution, for the Department of Language, Culture,and Digital Studies with English Communication majors. Specifically, I teach a freshman communication
class, seminar classes (4-skills, Cambridge test preparation), academic writing, graduation seminar (so Ihave advisees for 2 years who gear up for writing their theses in English and also learn presentation
skills), Global Project (online group work with overseas students – more on this later), English Reading,
Teaching English to children, and Practical English Interpretation.
Ivan: What kind of learners do you work with?
Shannon: I work mostly with university students. At our institution, we use the CEFR levels to place
our students into high-beginner or low-intermediate classes. Our majors usually fall somewhere in
the A2-B1 CEFR range, with a few A1 learners and B2 learners. We only have 15-20 students in each
grade, most of whom are motivated to work in English or overseas; about half of our graduates goon to work in a career that will utilize English to some extent. Every year we also have a handful of
students who lack motivation, struggle, and graduate at an A2 level (which is not ideal).
Ivan: What is something interesting or puzzling about your learners?
Shannon: Something interesting or puzzling is that our learners run the gamut when it comes tomotivation. We are a smaller school and sometimes not our students’ first choice. This naturally seems
to be one reason why some study with us but lack the motivation. Then again, I do think with COVID
the newer generation’s general motivation and work ethic seem to have changed over the years.
These students often skip class, fail to turn in homework, resort to using Japanese in class instead ofEnglish, are not as active in discussion or feedback, and just generally don’t participate as much. In
a lot of my classes I tailor content to students’ interests in order to get them more active. Sometimes
it works really well, and sometimes even with my extra effort the less-motivated students still don’ttake to the learning process, which makes it frustrating when I’ve put so much time and effort into it.
Here are some examples of times it went both well and poorly. The first example is where naturally
motivated students really benefited from the tailored learning, and the second example is where theless-motivated students still didn’t benefit from it.
I once taught a first-year general communication class. One student asked me if I could prepare somespecial lessons focused on suprasegmental features such as stress and pronunciation patterns. I
created a 5-week prosody course in conjunction with the vocabulary and grammar we were using

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in the textbook. After that semester two of the students in my class transferred into the English
department, and one even went on to become a high school English teacher. Success!
I had a four-skills class of the lowest level learners. I created lessons based on their requests(reading and pronunciation practice, specifically focusing on blending sounds), and even got theminto online conversation practice with a friend of mine back home, yet they rarely did their homeworkand often skipped class.
Ivan: Is there a small story of surprise or change for you about learner development that you would
like to share with us?
Shannon: The story about the students who switched over into the English department is still mybest and happiest story. I like to think it was partly due to that five-week course, but those students,and especially the one who became an English teacher, were just incredible go-getters. In otherexamples, one of our strongest students to date became our first official B2 proficiency level student
this winter and will go on to be a high school English teacher this April. It makes my colleagues and I
so pleased. Two of my graduate seminar students last year both went on to graduate school, one inEnglish and one in child rights, but which requires a lot of English knowledge. I’m tremendously proudof them both.
As for learner development specifically, everything about this field is a surprise at this point as I’ve justjoined the LD SIG and have decided I need to focus more on this particular area. I should mention that I
have a class every semester called Global Project. This class is an online collaboration with professors
and their preservice teaching students at several universities around the world. My students take theclass just for the language practice and experience, as it’s one of the few classes where they areconnected to other people using English as the lingua franca. The Global Project course is where
I find myself focusing most of my energy. It’s an amazing, yet difficult, opportunity for our students.
It’s a rare chance for them to use English in real conversation to work toward a common goal withpeers, but the level is pretty high as the overseas students are often almost fluent.
Ivan: What interests you about learner development in your work?
Shannon: I recently joined the LD SIG because I’m curious about how I can better help my learners
learn, and as such want to learn more about how to help motivate my students and give theminteresting activities and tasks in which they’ll want to become more involved. I really want to foster
better learner autonomy and give them more power over their own learning, so that they motivatethemselves and start to feel that learning is just part of their natural daily routine. To achieve this, I
need to learn much more. Up to this point I have commonly used task-based learning activities andinternational telecollaboration in my classes, and have been trying to incorporate more digital tools aswell (Canva for everything from presentations to posters to lesson plans, Google Classroom, YouTube
and YouGlish for listening practice and specific examples of vocabulary in real-life, and Padlet.)Ivan: What are some enduring questions or puzzles you have to do with learner development?
Shannon: I guess a big puzzler for me is always motivation. Learner development relies heavily on
autonomy (or so it seems) and so the never-ending question is how to help my students find intrinsic
motivation and unlock that “spark,” and how to maintain that motivation. I would say that a third of mymajors in any given grade refuse to regularly do homework or study outside of class. I can’t blame
them as “homework” is usually not that fun. I guess in writing this I’ve realized one way to motivate
students would be to develop more interesting homework tasks that are more interactive and lessone-sided. Another problem is that they get little exposure to language outside of school and evenfewer chances to practice it.
Ivan: Who (past teachers, different learners, particular writers, …) or what (certain incidents or experiences,
particular classes, certain pieces of writing or discussions with others, …) have been particularly

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important for you in developing your (learner development) practices and/or your understanding oflearner development?
Shannon: Having just completed my master’s degree in 2020, I would say a lot of modern “methods”
inform my teaching style. I use ideas from active learning, blended learning, and flipped classroom,for example, together with task-based learning. A better understanding of learner motivation, andsubsequently autonomy, has also been at the top of my to-do list. The online international collaboration
I previously wrote about has also become an integral part of my research base, and in conjunction
with this teacher training in general has as well. In addition, my colleagues and I are very close andwork off each others’ ideas quite a bit. If something is working well in their class, I might borrow it
for one of my classes. I am also often inspired by my daughters’ parent-observation classes atelementary school. Sometimes some of their simple, fun activities can be adapted for use at university,
too. For example, I once watched my daughter and her classmates (in the first grade) prepare aself-introduction worksheet at the beginning of the school year. They then had to walk aroundwith their worksheet, introduce themselves with the material prepared, and get a sticker from aclassmate who listened to them. I now use this with my students at the beginning of each year incommunication classes!
Ivan: Are there any particular discourses or theories of learning that you are interested in, and how
do they help you think about and develop your practice?
Shannon: I started reading up on Mezirow’s transformative learning theory through the Global Projectclass. Other than that, I am new to the learner development field. I would gladly take suggestions
and advice!
Ivan: Is there a reflection (incomplete, even) that you’d like to share about something to do withlearning and learner development?
Shannon: Last year I did a course on Exploratory Action Research, which is action research plus areflection component. This means identifying a problem that needs to be addressed among thelearners, reflecting on why it’s happening, and then introducing a solution or making a change. Then,
this is repeated as long as necessary, perhaps even never-ending. I think I felt connected to thisconcept because it not only looks at learner development, but teacher development. I feel I can’t help
my students with their own development unless I’m working on my own at the same time. I hope that
this conversation helps me jumpstart some tasks for myself as well as my students so that we can all
grow in the process!
*****
Ivan: Thank you, Shannon, for providing such good, well-thought-out answers to each point. Having
this dialogue together was supremely enjoyable, and I look forward to meeting you at one of themany LD and JALT events in the near future!
Shannon: It was my pleasure. At first I wasn’t sure what would come out of this interview, but was
intrigued by the idea and am now so glad I participated. I can look back at this to reflect on myown goals and struggles as well as to inform my upcoming class preparations. This is such a fun,informative, and creative way to approach learner development. I look forward to meeting you andother members at future events, too.

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