A Struggle with (In)authenticity
In writing this book, I had to ask myself the question of whether there were already more than enough books and articles on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) to warrant writing another one, even if it were to focus on EMI in a manifestly monolingual situation like that of Japanās. āIs it really worth the time and effort to write a book on EMI and EAP that would focus on Japanese higher education?ā was the question that came to mind.
An easy but rather too general an answer is that EMI is still a relatively recent (but not uncontroversial) development in Japan (see Chap. 8) that warrants grounded scrutiny by interested observers. Whereas Japanese had virtually all along been the only medium of instruction in Japanese education (see Heinrich, 2012; Nagatomo, 2012), Japanese universities have of late taken to having various offerings of their academic programs taught in English. As a nation with little historical background reminiscent of English as a medium of classroom instruction (see Nagatomo, 2012) and one which has adopted closed-door policies to things considered āforeignā at various points in its history, the emergence of EMI comes as more than a matter of academic curiosity, attracting complex or nuanced rather than straightforward questions. What do Japanese policy makers and administrators have in mind with the introduction of content courses in English? What benefits are there for those institutions which are now opting to convey disciplinary content in English? What are their reasons for wanting to teach in English and not in Japanese at such a time as this? How is EMI to be grounded, understood or appropriated in these institutions? Without doubt, there is an entire weldmesh of ideological implications and complications loaded onto such an uncharacteristic undertaking as EMI, given the pains Japan has taken in its past (and still subtly continues to take in the present) to carefully protect its cultural and linguistic borders (Heinrich, 2012).
More importantly for me in writing this book, however, have been the real life experiences I took in as an EAP teacher in a start-up liberal arts faculty of a private university located in the vicinity of the Kanto area. Indeed, many of the observations I offer in this book have been guided by my experience of actual instances of institutional and policy-related incongruities which are not normally or immediately visible to the public eye, prompting me to argue that implementing EMI in institutions similar to this one where I worked, is an extremely difficult, if not unsustainable, undertaking. Alongside calling the bluff (and the palpable paternalistic incompetence and egoism) of the university administrators I came across in the course of my duties as EAP teacher and coordinator, I set out in this book to examine the way EMI was used as a facile and superficial means to advertise the institution in a bid to differentiate it from those which were teaching in Japanese. I also intend to trace the sure but gradual demise of the EMI initiative, which ultimately became the victim of administrator incompetence and a gradual erosion of institutional credibility. In so doing, I have been constantly reminded that what was encountered and experienced bore the distinct symptoms of āmanipulation, sloganizing, ādepositingā, regimentation, and prescriptionā, which critical educator Paulo Freire would quickly identify as ācomponents of the praxis of dominationā (Freire, 2000, p. 126). I have also been made conscious of the fact that ā[i] n order to dominate, the dominator has no choice but to deny true praxis to the people, deny them the right to say their own word and think their own thoughts (Freire, 2000, p. 126).ā The significance of this acute piece of observation from Freire (2000) will begin to emerge soon after the beginning of the next chapter. For the institution where I worked, the co-optation and interpolation of a foreign language like English into academic instruction proved to be rather too traumatizing for an institutional culture that was, all said and done, resistant both to innovation and change. Such resistance to change manifested initially (and time and again) in the denial of teacher praxis, which soon enough escalated into serious difficulties for EMI itself.
Some Idea of the Challenges Faced
To be fair, delivery of academic courses in English, and accordingly EMI and EAP, constitute an uncharted venture into the unknown for a typical Japanese university (see Chap. 8). In Japan, the Japanese language has long held incumbency as the medium of institutionalized didacticism. Teaching and learning from kindergarten and the entire way to university take place only in Japanese. Most Japanese students come out of high school English lessons speaking nary a word of English (see Aspinall, 2011). Proficiency in English is liable to be looked upon suspiciously (or outrageously) as being something un-Japanese or even unpatriotic (Aspinall, 2011; Befu, 1984; McVeigh, 2002, 2006). Neither has Japan ever had a history of being ruled or subjugated by Western English-speaking powers, thereby marking the absence of any inherited tradition of an imposed colonial language foisted down on a subaltern populace, not only as a didactic medium (Heinrich, 2012; Yamagami & Tollefson, 2011). Such a lack of a past (or present) connection to English, notwithstanding one of subjugation or oppression like of the colonial or imperialistic kind, makes the adoption of EMI all the more intriguing (see Chap. 7 for an account of recent history pertaining to this matter). Put together, there are significant cultural and political factors that present the Japanese hinterland as one which has scarcely any meaningful connection with English. Paradoxically, languages like Portuguese or those of the Asia-Pacific have been observed to be gaining relevance in many local neighborhoods (Kubota & McKay, 2009).
In different ways, Japan and the English language might be said to occupy different (polarized) spaces, not just in terms of Japanese studentsā reputed weakness in English (Aspinall, 2011; Nagatomo, 2012), but more so in terms of seemingly irreconcilable ideological and epistemological dilemmas tied to nationalism and the workings of a conservative cultural politics palpably averse to things foreign. In Japan, things unfamiliar or foreign have been said to be viewed inherently with suspicion. Japan, and indeed the Japanese people, have been said to have harbored a checkered relationship with matters extraneous or unfamiliar to their inner psyche, not least the English language (Aspinall, 2011; Befu, 1984; Hall, 1997; Lie, 2001; McVeigh, 2002, 2006). Such a checkered relationship is, to be sure, (not) quite apart from the fact that it was the language of the enemy (Oda, 2007) in the unhappily turbulent days of the last world war. To this day, policies and practices in the country continue to reflect the fact that the language is existentially and ontologically foreign to the Japanese people (Seargeant, 2009), very much irrelevant to exigencies of daily livingālet alone the polemics of university study and academic inquiry. Indeed, the Japanese people have been spoken of, almost dismissively, as having no realistic need for English:
The sententiousness and conclusiveness of such a view is to be counterpointed with the current and perhaps perplexing move among higher education institutions to have their academic courses taught in English (Yamagami & Tollefson, 2011). Such a phenomenal development of affairs is taking place not only in universities ensconced in the busy urban centers of Kanto and Kansai but also in those that are nestled in the far-flung reaches of Kyushu and the Tohoku, which have begun to advertise themselves as offering academic courses in English (Chap. 7). For a country that has taken utmost care to manicure its cultural and linguistic spaces including the mobilization of strongly nationalistic rhetoric in its resistance to English and other things foreign (Aspinall, 2011; Befu, 2001; Hashimoto, 2007; Heinrich, 2012; McVeigh, 2002; Yamagami & Tollefson, 2011), the current efforts by Japanese higher education institutions to conduct academic courses in English should attract the attention of interested observers, even as Japan as a nation may be regarded as possessing rather little of the requisite historical and cultural credentials for its institutions of higher education to embark on such an uncharacteristic undertaking.The Japanese can deal with almost anything in Japanese and the majority of people do not feel the need to learn English. Do they have opportunities to use what they have learned? No. English is never used among the Japanese, while a language must be used if it is to be effectively learned. Do they learn English for long enough and intensively enough to internalize the basics of the language? Again, no. (Yano, 2011, p. 133)
Lofty Undertaking
Despite the magnitude of such a change (which, as will be seen, remains largely not well understood by administrators and decision makers), Japanese university websites have seen a proliferation of polished rhetoric making claims and promises that academic courses in English will open up a brave new world of excellent employment opportunities for students thus trained (Yamagami & Tollefson, 2011). Such lofty claims about an education in English occur alongside a particularly high profile initiative by the Japanese government to attract overseas students through a concerted effort to have its choice universities conduct courses in English.
To wit, the Japanese government embarked in 2008 on a new initiative to attract 300,000 overseas students into Japan by the year 2020. This project is known as the Internationalization Hub Consolidation Project or Global 30 in short. Thirteen well-known universities were chosen to accept overseas students under the auspices of Global 30. Bending over backward in its bid to attract students from abroad, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), which manages the Global 30 website, has gallantly announced to potential applicants that proficiency in Japanese, the principal and hitherto sole medium of education in the country, will not be required for admission. Instead, streamlined paper and interview-based admission procedures will make admission all the more easy as applications will be processed expeditiously from overseas locations (Global 30, 2012). Such gallant concessionary measures are a reminder of Yamagam...