Abstract
ELT policies in Japan have been extremely controversial and not entirely consistent in recent years. An advisory panel to the Prime Minister proposed to make English Japan’s official second language, which produced an enormous debate but not concrete steps to implement the proposal. Teachers at the secondary level continue to teach English in preparation for university entrance examinations, whereas in 2002 English was introduced in public elementary schools with a focus on communicative English. In this chapter, I analyze debates and concerns in each of these areas. Although there is a general call for a more effective, communicatively-oriented English education in Japan, some educators and policy makers argue that to allow more emphasis on English is to willingly subject Japan to English imperialism. On the other hand, the participants in these debates have limited their attention almost exclusively to the language majority population i.e. what the spread of English might mean for the Japanese. The question of how to reconcile the influence and power of English with the need to nurture other minority languages in Japan, crucial given Japan’s increasing linguistic and cultural diversity, is rarely addressed.
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Kanno, Y. (2007). ELT Policy Directions in Multilingual Japan. In: Cummins, J., Davison, C. (eds) International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 15. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-46301-8_6
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