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English as a Lingua Franca in Japan pp 183–210Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

From “English as a Native Language” to English as a Lingua Franca: Instructional Effects on Japanese University Students’ Attitudes Towards English

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Abstract

This chapter explores how Japanese university students (un)change their attitudes towards English and English communication through academic content courses which were designed to inform the perspective of English as a lingua franca (ELF) by conducting a qualitative analysis of the students’ voices. The present data are the students’ written documents collected at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the semester. The analysis revealed a positive impact of the ELF-informed instruction on the students’ attitudes towards English. Although many of the students evaluated their own English negatively at the outset of the semester, their attitudes were gradually transformed to more ELF-oriented through the instruction, they thereby gradually expressing equality among varieties of English, an increased sense of confidence in their English, and the importance of mutual intelligibility through accommodation. The analysis also revealed key factors in transforming their attitudes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although both WE-oriented and ELF-oriented pedagogy aims at incorporating a plurilithic view on English, the two types of sociolinguistic-based pedagogy have a slightly different pedagogical focus. While WE-oriented pedagogy tends to aim at providing a nation-based prescriptive model of a certain English variety appropriate for the local context (Kirkpatrick, 2011), ELF-oriented pedagogy does not have such an aim but focuses on transforming students and teachers’ view on English through awareness-raising (Cogo, 2015).

  2. 2.

    Both universities adopt a semester system, starting a new academic year in April.

  3. 3.

    For educational reasons, the number of mid-term paper differed between the semesters: one mid-term paper was given in the courses in 2017S, and two mid-term papers were given in the course in 2017A.

  4. 4.

    This activity was only employed in 2017S. In 2017A, the topic was partially touched upon in the lecture.

  5. 5.

    While the students read the material written in English as their homework, they explained the content of the assigned part to their classmates in Japanese in class.

  6. 6.

    Some of the students expressed negative feelings towards some of the varieties (e.g. heavily accented, not real English, difficult to understand, etc.). At this stage, however, no explicit explanation for possible factors causing such feelings was given. This was dealt with in Topic 7 instead.

  7. 7.

    In the 2017A course, the information on selected varieties of English, British English, and Indian English in particular, was given in the lecture.

  8. 8.

    Topic 7 was not explicitly dealt with in the 2017S course in Uni. A due to time limitations.

  9. 9.

    A key to a conversation analytic view is a next-turn proof procedure (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008). The students’ attention should be directed to the relationship between two consecutive turns because what speakers said in the sequentially next turns are displays of their understanding of what the “prior” turn was about (p. 13).

  10. 10.

    A let-it-pass strategy is a strategy which either allows an unknown or unclear word or utterance pass, its users assuming the unknown part will be clear or redundant as the talk progress, or disregards non-standard forms and language use in the speaker’s utterance, showing their understanding of the forms and using them as know-in-common resources (Firth, 1996).

  11. 11.

    To assure anonymity, students’ names were changed into the informant number by combining a semester code (2017S or 2017A), a university code (UniA or UniB), and an abbreviation of the word informant, INF, followed by the number of informants in each university (e.g. 2017S-UniA-INF10).

  12. 12.

    It should be noted here, however, that ELF-oriented pedagogy does not aim at providing a prescriptive model of a certain variety of English (see, e.g., Bowles & Cogo, 2015).

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) JP17K13508.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba-Shi, Chiba, Japan

    Mayu Konakahara

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  1. Mayu Konakahara
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Correspondence to Mayu Konakahara .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan

    Mayu Konakahara

  2. International College of Arts and Sciences, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

    Keiko Tsuchiya

Appendices

Appendix 1: Questions Inquiring Students’ Attitudes Towards English in the Introductory Questionnaire

  1. 1.

    It is frequently said that “English” is important in the globalised world. What “English” or “English communication ability” do you aim at?

  2. 2.

    How do you feel about your own English?

  3. 3.

    How do you feel about your classmates’ English?

  4. 4.

    How do you feel about lecturers’ English?

  5. 5.

    Please state your motivation for taking this course.

Appendix 2: A Sample Worksheet for the Fieldwork of Finding Evidence for/Against Native-Speakerism

Task: Find evidence for (and against) standard English ideology and native-speakerism in society.

  • You may take photos/video, collect documents, flyers and statistics, check websites, conduct a brief questionnaire/interview, and so on.

  • Summarize the findings on PPT slides.

  • Submit the file of your slides to the instructor and bring a hard copy of the slides (print 4–6 slides per paper) to class.

  • Don’t forget to bring your iPad/PC, too, because you will have an opportunity to share your findings with your groupmates in class.

Tips: To find evidence, you may want to check the following:

  • Many advertisements of language schools;

  • Websites of many language schools and universities—check their education policy and photos in particular;

  • The number and backgrounds of Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) offered by the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme (http://jetprogramme.org/en/);

  • Also check equivalent programmes in other countries;

  • The objectives of learning foreign language in the Course of Study;

  • Documents related to global education, global human resources, etc.

  • Many English language textbooks and books about learning English.

Appendix 3: A Sample Worksheet for the Case Study of ELF Communication

1.1 Strategy for Coping with Communication Problems

1. A Let-it-pass strategy

• Background to Excerpt 1

Participants:

– A1: a Japanese architect in a construction company in Japan. He was dispatched to the branch office in Singapore.

– S1: a Singapore subcontractor. For him, A1 is a potential client.

Situation: A business meeting in Singapore. A1 is talking with S1 in person over a design drawing of the factory building.

Excerpt 1: A business meeting in Singapore

(Adopted from Otsu, 2014, p. 117)

Q1. Why do you think S1 produced “sumps” in overlapping with A1’s utterance in line 7?

Q2. Although S1 originally used a plural form, “sumps”, in line 7, he changed it to a singular form in line 8 and kept using the same form in line 12. What do you think is his (interactional) motivation for doing this? Did the use of the plural form cause communication problems (i.e. non-/mis-understanding)?

2a. Strategy for signalling and resolving communication problems

• Background to Excerpt 2

Participants: Language teachers in London

– S1: German

– S2: Italian

– S3: Italian

Situation: They are talking about a show that S1 had gone to see the previous weekend.

Excerpt 2: Salzburg opera

(Adopted from Cogo & Dewey, 2012, p. 121 with modification)

Q1. Why do you think S1 said “mhm?” in line 7? Focus on the sequence of the conversation.

Q2. Why do you think S3 repeated the same utterance in lines 6 and 8?

2b. Strategy for preventing communication problems

• Background to Excerpt 3

Participants: Not specified but they are from various lingua-cultural backgrounds such as Cambodian, Italian, Korean, Lao, Nigerian, Malaysian, Spanish, and Sri Lankan.

Situation: In a Malaysian university setting: A asks D some questions for an article he is writing for the department newsletter.

Excerpt 3: Newsletter

(Adopted from Kaur, 2010, p. 199 with modification)

Q. Why do you think A restarted her/his talk in line 4? Also, what does the restarted utterance do in interactions?

Transcription conventions used in the excerpts

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Konakahara, M. (2020). From “English as a Native Language” to English as a Lingua Franca: Instructional Effects on Japanese University Students’ Attitudes Towards English. In: Konakahara, M., Tsuchiya, K. (eds) English as a Lingua Franca in Japan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33288-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33288-4_9

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33288-4

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