Foreign Language Education in Japan / Critical New Literacies: The Praxis of English Language Teaching and Learning (PELT) (PDF)

Language education is a highly contested arena
within any nation and one that arouses an array of sentiments and identity
conflicts. What languages, or what varieties of a language, are to be taught
and learned, and how? By whom, for whom, for what purposes and in what
contexts? Such questions concern not only policy makers but also teachers,
parents, students, as well as businesspeople, politicians, and other social
actors. For Japan, a nation state with ideologies of national identity strongly
tied to language, these issues have long been of particular concern. This
volume presents the cacophony of voices in the field of language education in
contemporary Japan, with its focus on English language education. It explores
the complex and intricate relationships between the "local" and the "global,"
and more specifically the links between the levels of policy, educational
institutions, classrooms, and the individual.

In the much-contested field of foreign language
teaching in Japan, this book takes the reader directly to the places that
really matter. With the help of expert guides in the fields of anthropology,
sociology and linguistics, we are invited to join a vital discussion about the
potentially revolutionary implications of the Japanese government's policy of
teaching Japanese citizens to not only passively engage with written English
texts but to actually use English as a means of global communication." - Robert
Aspinall, PhD (Oxford), Professor, Faculty of Economics, Department of Social
Systems, Shiga University, Japan

This insightful book about language education
involves different disciplines using ethnographic methods. Both 'native' and
'non-native' speakers of Japanese (or English) collaboratively examine two
different types of qualitative approaches in Japan - the positivistic and the
processual. This is a must-have book for researchers and educators of language
who are interested in not only Japan but also language education generally." -
Shinji Sato, PhD (Columbia), Director of the Japanese Language Program,
Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, USA.