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Textbook Pollution
A
disastrous Japanese ELT affliction
Yasuko Murata
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ELT
textbook pollution in Japan |
In the world of English language
teaching (ELT) in |
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English-teachers
at universities flooded with textbooks in autumn |
Around September and October, those who teach
English as part of general education at Japanese universities are constantly
assaulted by a barrage of new textbooks and textbook catalogues sent out by
hundreds of ELT textbook publishers, both Japanese and foreign.note 1
The season for advertisements for new textbooks and for sending
out samples of them, used in fact to be much later, but the tough competition
among publishers obviously has shifted the whole business to a much earlier
date. Thus, as they start the second semester at the end of September or
early October, most English-teachers at university level are obliged to
endure these assaults from the publishers, which annoy someone like myself to
such a degree that it eventually compels him or her to write an essay such as
this. The terrible thing about this situation is that there are no means by
which we can protect ourselves. These publishers are always clever enough
somehow to acquire lists of our names from somewhere; once our names are in
their hands, we are doomed to be powerless victims of their persistent
attacks. |
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Japan
a huge ELT market |
This phenomenon, in fact, has been getting worse
in |
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poor
quality of ELT textbooks published in |
As regards the ELT textbooks published nowadays in
this country, I have, first and foremost, to point out the deterioration in
terms of their quality. Every year each company publishes at least four or
five new titles and most of them are so called "general teaching
materials" (Sogo Kyozai in Japanese), which consist of from ten to a
dozen chapters, each containing a short passage and exercises to go with it.
What appalls me most is the superficial treatment of the subject dealt with
in each piece. The subject could be anything: environmental problems, global
warming, women's issues, race problems and other types of discrimination,
cross-cultural themes, etc. They are all issues much talked about throughout
the world and indeed very interesting and appropriate as teaching materials,
since they enable English-teachers at university level not only to teach the
language itself, but also to raise students' consciousness in these matters,
which in consequence prepares the students, in terms of developing their
critical faculties or analytical abilities, for the more specialized studies
following their general education. The writers of these essays note 3,
however, either find it necessary to make them easy so as to
meet the low standard of Japanese university students or are being forced to
do so by the publishers to make their books popular and sell well. Making the
content and the language of these essays superficial and easy in order to
meet the general demand, however, in essence implies a lack of high
motivation and aspiration in both teachers and publishers. |
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superficial
content and elementary language |
At any rate, the superficial and simplistic
content and the elementary language is such that reading just one essay is
enough to make me feel frustrated and put the book down, never to open it
again, let alone use it in my classes. Dealing with current issues, such as
those mentioned above, unavoidably involves some controversial points where
even scientists and scholars have widely diverging opinions. One of the
interesting aspects of dealing with these topics in ELT is found precisely
here: through reading and discussing these materials, which show how complex
these issues are and how contradictory experts' opinions can be, students can
be trained, with the appropriate guidance of a teacher, in creative thinking,
or at least in developing critical minds. In other words, teachers in such
circumstances are given golden opportunities to explain how, in the final
event, each of us has to think for ourselves on these matters rather than
just believing what experts say because, after all, there are often no
established answers to problems human beings encounter in their lives.
Teachers who bring these subjects into ELT and yet just use the ready-made
textbooks that deal so superficially with these important issues are in fact
merely following fashion. There seems to be no genuine motivation on their
side; if that is the case, how could one expect the students to be interested
in them and learn something from them? |
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the
move from literary material to cultural themes and the communicative approach
– lack of a sound literary model |
Until twenty or so years ago, just to give the
reader a rough idea of the shift in the focus of subject matter dealt with in
ELT materials, the main source was British and American literature, which was
partly because most English-teachers at university level were those who did
their further studies at graduate school in British and American literature
with the exception of a small number from the linguistic or ELT fields. The
situation, however, has drastically changed with the general decline in
popularity of literature, and of the humanities in general. On top of this,
there came the overwhelming tide of the so-called communicative approach in
ELT: the majority of, if not all, native speaker English teachers have a TESL
or EFL diploma, or an MA, in this trendy area, and claim that they are
professionals armed with new teaching methods and curriculum plans. With this
new wave, ELT materials started to focus on inter-cultural or international
understanding, and the situation we now find ourselves in, as described above,
is its continuation. Though ELT materials based on literature, I must admit,
have their drawbacks, they have at least a remarkable advantage: most of
those previous ELT textbooks were compiled from so-called classical works
whose style and language were (and some still are) considered good. One can,
of course, argue about the criterion for judging a style, and language is
after all an extremely subjective matter, and also varies from generation to
generation, and even from one social group to another. In this age of
pluralism, therefore, one is tempted to say that there is no longer any one
exemplary style, written or spoken, which English teachers can use as a
yardstick. In spite of this, most English teachers try to teach their
students 'good' English, whatever that adjective means. This type of anarchy
destroys the whole idea of education; if there is anything teachers can do,
apart from teaching basic grammar, sentence structures and phrases, it is to
show 'good' examples of English by using appropriate materials; to show, in
other words, the standard English, from which, if they wish, students can
depart considerably later on. |
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shallow
analyses and over simple language that discourages serious study |
Coming back to the original line of discussion,
whatever the topics ELT textbooks deal with, the outcome is, in broad
generalization, shallow analyses of the issues in atrociously simple language
which, from the very start, even discourage students from working hard at the
language. Such is the situation we are in right now, which we certainly ought
to regard as critical, though, sadly enough, this present current is sweeping
throughout |
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factors
in Japanese society |
How on earth have we come to this? This is a
crucial question and in order to answer it one probably has to touch upon
numerous factors including a fundamental analysis of Japanese society in the
past thirty years or so, especially the system that sustained the country's
economic growth. This is certainly beyond my capacity and neither is it my
main intention in this essay; nevertheless, I would here like to point out a
few obvious factors and then later touch upon, to my limited ability, bigger
issues concerning Japanese society. The present ELT situation in |
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profitability
of ELT books for publishers and academics |
Leafing through ELT magazines published in |
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the
cosy relationship between writers and publishers – the low quality of their
products |
How does this cunning cosy relationship between
ELT writers and textbook publishers work? The writers, both Japanese and
native English-speakers, are producing trashy textbooks one after another,
thus with luck making money, but if not, at least being able to add their
books to their list of academic publications. I always wonder, however, how
it is possible to regard such books as academic or educational achievements;
the quality of these textbooks is so low, in terms of content, style and
grammar, that it is scarcely possible to regard them even as ELT textbooks
for university level. And yet they pass unashamedly as academic or
educational research achievements. |
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the
easy vicious circle offering no challenge to students |
Thus there is an obvious vicious circle already
firmly established. It works like this: writers get used to producing
elementary and low-quality textbooks; they get easier and easier for them to
write; publishers encourage their authors to write more of them; they
sometimes even ask the authors to write teachers' manuals to go with the
students' books; students like these light, easy textbooks simply because
they are easy to read, consequently requiring less or no work to do at home
and normally nicely bound, containing a lot of colourful pictures; moreover,
students like them because these textbooks, with their shallow content, don't
demand much of their imagination or powers of thought; teachers, in their
turn, like using these textbooks because students like them; teachers don't
have to be creative in their teaching since the elementary content written in
elementary language does not require much preparation; and thus everybody is
happy precisely because they don't have to use their brains. |
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the
delusion of sham language-learning |
This may sound incredible and exaggerated, but it
is exactly what is happening in |
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wrapping
English in fancy paper |
To be sure, no English-teacher wants to scare
students by saying this, but on the other hand, distorting reality and
showing only the enjoyable side of learning English is misleading. When one
looks at the present state of ELT in Japan, one gets an impression that the
majority of teachers and textbook publishers are trying to sell this commodity,
the English language, by wrapping it up in nice colourful paper, which is
nothing but a cheap, childish trick to draw attention and perhaps to raise
motivation, if any, to learn English. The commodity thus offered to the
students is, in fact, such cheap stuff that they can learn hardly anything
but extremely superficial cultural differences between |
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euphoria
induced by over-affluent Japanese society |
This shallow, casual attitude towards English
language learning on the part of both teachers and students in a way reflects
the present situation in Japanese society. Over the past thirty or forty
years |
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strong
economy, insidious damage to education |
This euphoria might have been the dream the
hard-working Japanese aimed at. As is always the case in history, however,
when the goal is finally reached, the initial high motivation or spiritual
enthusiasm vanishes and something totally unanticipated appears instead.
While we have been busy making our economy strong, irreparable damage has
been done, in a creeping way, to our educational system and its content. |
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the
traditional Japanese work ethic and the Japanese university pleasure lands |
During the period of economic growth, Japanese
companies conducted their business according to their own working methods,
imposing a work ethic on their employees which clearly reflected traditional
Japanese values, such as 'harmony' rather than individualistic attitudes, and
'absolute devotion' to the company they worked for as if the company were an
extended family. Japanese enterprises which relied on such fundamental
ethics, therefore, demanded workers whom companies could educate as if they
were tabula rasa, rather than workers who had already acquired the knowledge,
skills and mental attitudes necessary for the work, because the efficiency
Japanese firms were once praised for was derived, in the first place, from
the work ethic rather than practical skills and knowledge. That is why the
less the new graduates recruited to the work force were educated, or shaped,
at universities, the more welcome they were to the companies who employed
them. Such was the law of supply and demand of the work force in Japan, which
gradually produced a peculiar social phenomenon during the period of high
economic growth: most Japanese universities, the number of which incidentally
is far too high in a country of this size, became, as it were, pleasure lands
where most students spent four years, not studying seriously, but taking it
easy before starting their careers as 'economic warriors' or 'economic
animals'. |
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'moratorium
man' |
A famous Japanese psychologist who analysed this
peculiar phenomenon used the term 'moratorium man' note 4,
meaning that university students spent a uniquely carefree four
years having a good time and somehow graduating at the end with a minimum of
study, careless of the fact that their parents were paying the notoriously
high tuition fees. What is striking here is the fact that Japanese society
and its educational system which spoilt university students in this way
actually did so deliberately, only to make them work very hard after
graduation. As a matter of fact, when they graduated and began working, they
hardly did anything else but work, sacrificing nearly everything else for the
sake of that work. One can almost say that the four years' 'moratorium' was a
kind of reward prepaid before they headed for the economic battleground. |
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un-serious
nature of university education during the Japanese economic growth period –
devastating results |
Under such circumstances ruled by the law of
supply and demand of the work force mentioned above, it goes without saying,
that neither students nor teachers were serious about the quality of the
education they received or gave at university level, though the truth was, of
course, neither admitted nor even talked about openly. This is, to be sure,
only a rough sketch of what happened to the educational system in |
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exploitation
of students by selling them expensive trashy ELT textbooks |
The ELT authors and publishing houses who enjoy
such a cosy relationship, and the teachers who encourage them, are now, as
already mentioned, exploiting students by feeding them their expensive,
trashy textbooks. This relationship apparently works only because students
don't care and even prefer this sugary stuff to proper solid material for
learning English. If the authors are not to be trusted because of their
connections with entrepreneurs, the students ought to start a revolution and
demand better teaching; but evidently things do not work that way. Mine is,
no doubt, a totally quixotic idea. |
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educational
pollution in |
At the height of its economic growth, |
Notes
Note 1. I would here like to remind the reader that in
this essay I am primarily going to discuss ELT at the university level in
Note 2. The AET (Assistant English Teacher), or more
recently ALT (Assistant Language Teacher), project which was launched by the
Ministry of Education in 1987 started by employing 800 native speaker
English-teachers (the number is now nearly five times that of the initial
year), who were assigned to each prefecture to assist Japanese teachers of
English at middle and high schools. The project was designed to give
opportunities to secondary school pupils and teachers to have direct contact
with native speakers of English and thereby, the Ministry of Education hoped,
to enhance the quality of English-teaching in
Note
3. The number of textbooks written by native
speaker teachers of English who have been teaching in
Note 4. The term 'moratorium', originally a legal term
meaning 'ceasing an activity for an agreed period of time' was, in fact,
initially introduced as a psychological term by E. H. Erikson, a
socio-psychologist. Erikson defined youth as a period when, though fully mature
physically, intellectually and sexually, one is exempted from full
responsibilities and obligations as an adult, or a member of society, owing to
the fact that one is still in the process of acquiring knowledge and skills
required for a future career. Okonogi, citing Erikson, analysed the peculiar
phenomenon observed in
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