Abstract
Learner autonomy is a highly-targeted objective in today’s educational process. The reality of the Romanian education system is, however, rather different, as many university students are highly dependent on the input coming from the teacher. This is even more obvious in the case of Asian languages, since here the students often face learning content and strategies that they did not encounter when learning European languages. The relation of dependence on the teacher is generally stronger than in the case of other languages. The teachers themselves have been mainly exposed to rather traditional ways of teaching and learning, being influenced by the Asian strict hierarchical system, and thus less open to accepting the challenges of a student-centered approach.
In the present paper we tackle the issue of the development of learner autonomy reflected in a series of Japanese classes held at “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University in Bucharest. After examining several theories regarding the concept, we present some concrete examples of activities carried out during Japanese practical courses. Our findings reveal the influence of learner autonomy on the learning process and the importance of the teacher role during said process. Furthermore, we also address the importance of the particular cultural context in which the learning process takes place, since all the actants involved in this process are culturally-loaded individuals.
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Notes
- 1.
Amae was theorized by the Japanese psychoanalyst Takeo Doi in his 1971 book, “The Anatomy of Dependence” (Doi, 1971). The English translation of the term is rather problematic, since there is no such concept in Western societies, but it was usually understood as “indulgent dependence” rooted in the mother-child bond or “dependence on authority figures”. The main characteristic of amae is being in harmony with others to the point of being able to depend on them as a child could depend on his parents. The difference between dependence and amae lies in the notion of control: while with dependence one releases one’s control on the situation, with amae one tries to gain control over the situation.
- 2.
The dichotomy uchi (lit. ‘inside’) / soto (lit. ‘outside’) is one of the typological principles of the Japanese culture and language, designating the in-group and the outer-group of people to which the speaker belongs. The uchi circle usually comprises the family, the colleagues working at the same company and the group of close friends, while the soto circle includes everybody else. The complexity of this distinction arises from the fact that the border between them is flexible, changing according to the context.
- 3.
JF stands for The Japan Foundation.
- 4.
The distinction high-context (HC) vs. low-context (LC) cultures was introduced by the American anthropologist Edward Hall in his 1976 book Beyond culture (Hall, 1976). Japan is given as a typical example of a high-context culture, while at the opposite end we find the German-speaking countries. In HC cultures, authority and the social power are centralized, as opposed to LC cultures, where responsibility goes down to the individual. Hierarchy is thus accepted as natural and inevitable and is not subject to change or to negotiate, as it is often the case in LC cultures. The concept of “power distance”, introduced and developed by the Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede (Hofstede, 2001), is often used to explain the structure and the role of hierarchy. Power distance is used to demonstrate the extent to which subordinates or ordinary citizens submit to authority. The characteristics of cultures with high power distance include many hierarchical levels, autocratic leadership, and the expectation of inequality and power differences, and are affiliated with HC cultures, such as Japan. In contrast, low power distance cultures are characterized by flat organization structures, consultative or participative management style, and the expectation of egalitarianism, especially evident in LC cultures such as the Scandinavian countries (Würtz, 2005). Learning is another dimension where the differences between HC and LC cultures become visible. Thus, in LC cultures learning is the result of following explicit directions and explanations, while in HC cultures learning is often done by observing others and imitating what they do. The reality to be learned and taught is fragmented in LC cultures and synthetic in HC cultures, where accuracy is valued over speed.
- 5.
Foreigners whose mother tongue is not Japanese are often judged by applying the same criteria as one would use for children inside the Japanese society. An example comes from NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting organization, which has a news website entitled “News Web Easy”, dedicated to “primary and secondary school children and foreigners living in Japan” (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/about.html; translation ours).
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Ciubăncan, M. (2018). Fostering Learner Autonomy in Japanese Language Classes. In: Grosu-Rădulescu, LM. (eds) Foreign Language Teaching in Romanian Higher Education. Multilingual Education, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93329-0_12
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