ABSTRACT

This article focuses upon the Japanese government’s decision in 2009 to direct an ‘English-only’ strategy for English language education in senior high schools from 2013. In the Course of Study 2009, and more recently again in the Course of Study 2018, the Japanese government implicitly blames the local grammar-translation method of teaching, known as yakudoku, for the failure of teachers to foster their students’ English proficiency, and suggests that it should be replaced ‘in principle’ by English-only classes. This article examines how the policy originated and was then formulated in the Course of Study 2009, and how local teachers received it. In order to investigate stakeholders’ perspectives regarding the use of yakudoku and its replacement by an instrumentalist strategy, a three-month discourse-oriented ethnographic field study was conducted in Japan. The data were then scrutinised using a critical discourse analysis methodological framework [Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press; (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge]. This article makes the argument that the term yakudoku has been manipulated by the Japanese government for the purposes of marginalising the use of Japanese in the classroom and of instituting its preference for a western-centric model of learning for the teaching of English in schools.

摘要

本文着眼于日本政府在2009年做出的决定，即从2013年开始指导高中英语教育的“仅英语”策略。在2009学习课程中，最近又在2018学习课程中，日语政府暗中指责当地的语法翻译教学法yakudoku，原因是教师未能提高学生的英语水平，并建议应将其“原则上”改为仅使用英语的课程。本文研究了该政策的产生方式，然后在《2009学习课程》中制定了该政策，以及当地教师如何接受该政策。为了调查利益相关者对使用yakudoku及其工具主义策略的替代，在日本进行了为期三个月的以话语为导向的民族志实地研究。然后使用批判性话语分析方法框架对数据进行审查[Fairclough，N.（1992）。话语与社会变革。剑桥：政治出版社；（2003）。分析话语：社会研究的文本分析。伦敦：Routledge]。本文提出这样的论点，即“ yakudoku”一词是由日本政府操纵的，目的是使日语在课堂上的使用处于边缘地位，并使其偏向于以西方为中心的学习模式来在学校进行英语教学。