Keynote speech at the CAJLE 2018 Conference
Held on August 21-22, 2018, at Huron University College, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada.
Junko MAJIMA, Prof. Dr.
Osaka University
The following is the summary of my keynote speech at the CAJLE conference on August 21st, 2018. We had roughly one hundred participants at the conference.
The sheer number of people crossing borders in the world today has risen to such an extent that the word ‘globalization’ itself is beginning to sound banal. Japan is no exception to this border-crossing tendency. Currently, the number of registered foreigners exceeds 2.4 million (as of 2017, Ministry of Justice, Japan), the number of international students is at 270,000, and the government’s goal of “300,000 international students in Japan by 2020” is likely to be achieved shortly. Furthermore, while it is not widely known among the general public, there are already 270,000 “International Technical Interns” working in Japan as unskilled workers, and the Japanese government intends to increase this number due to the shortage of the workers in Japan in the rapidly aging society. Although Japan insists that it will not implement any official “immigration policy”, it is clear that Japanese society must grapple with the realities of coexisting with larger numbers of foreigners.
Meanwhile, it is important to remember that the key concepts of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR, 2001) published by the Council of Europe, include “plurilingualism and pluriculturalism”, as well as “life-long learning” and “autonomous learning and learners”. Another important point in the framework is the recognition of learners’ partial abilities, that they need not aim to reach the level of native speakers.
In Japan too, the CEFR has slowly but steadily come into wider acceptance. For example, NHK (Japan’s public broadcasting cooperation) makes reference to the CEFR on their radio and TV language programs, and the MEXT made an official reference to the CEFR in its report on English education (2018). Thus, the word ‘CEFR’ and its six levels are coming to be widely known in Japan.
In terms of trends in language education and learning, “translanguaging” (Garcia, O. et al. 2013) and “metrolingualism” (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015, Otsuji, 2016) seem to be particularly important and insightful concepts. In “translanguaging”, Garcia et al. view “language resources” from languages other than the target language as learners’ “language repertoire”, and encourage their use for language learning. Meanwhile, Pennycook & Otsuji’s “metrolingualism” explores language practice in places such as urban markets from an anthropological point of view, ultimately encouraging us to rethink our understandings of language. These works are both insightful and thought-provoking, with wide-ranging impact and implications in the field of language education.
Japanese language teachers are always busy, working actively with their learners in the classroom and doing the routine work of class preparation and management, and are thus easily inclined to be “short-sighted”; however, I would like to pose some questions concerning ‘evaluation’ and ‘assessment’: To what ends and by what means should we assess? Are we measuring learners’ knowledge? Or their memory? Are we aware of the purpose, the aims, and the ultimate goals of the assessment? Who ultimately benefits from the assessment?
Our assessments in the classroom cannot be separated from the changes in society locally and globally. Why, for example, do we give our students Kanji quizzes? Is it important to follow the ‘correct’ stroke order? Can we always distinguish the stroke order from the students’ answers? How strictly should we mark them? Is it truly for the benefit of the learners to do so? After all, what is the purpose of all of this?
In the last half the century or so, we have observed the changes in teaching perspectives. “Teacher-centered” teaching has shifted to “learner-centeredness”, affective and psychological factors have been given more attention in teaching methodology, and the focus has shifted from knowledge and accuracy to fluency, or ‘what they can do in the target language’, that is, to a more ‘action-oriented approach’ that encourages learners to become “autonomous”.
At this stage of globalization, it is important to consider how the needs of the present may have shifted from the days when learners were not so highly mobile. I discussed the “common frameworks” such as ACTFL-OPI, CEFR (2001), JF-Standards (Japan Foundation), National Standards (US), JLPT (2010) and CEFR-Companion Volume (2018), which have been developed as frameworks for assessment in (foreign) language teaching and learning. These provide important hints and ideas for thinking about what, how, and for whom we assess and/or evaluate in language education. It is important that Japanese language teaching consider not only the “micro” perspective of learners and class management, but also a “macro” perspective in Japanese language education which considers global changes and perspectives.