English-Medium Instruction in Japanese Higher Education

Policy, Challenges and Outcomes

Annette Bradford, Howard Brown, Annette Bradford, Howard Brown

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783098965
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica per adulti

English-Medium Instruction in Japanese Higher Education provides a touchstone for higher education practitioners, researchers and policy makers. It enables readers to more clearly understand why policies concerning English-medium instruction (EMI) are in place in Japan, how EMI is being implemented, what challenges are being addressed and what the impacts of EMI may be. The volume situates EMI within Japan's current policy context and examines the experiences of its stakeholders. The chapters are written by scholars and practitioners who have direct involvement with EMI in Japanese higher education. They look at EMI from perspectives that include policy planning, program design, marketing and classroom practice.

Section 1

English-Medium Instruction in Context

1ROAD-MAPPING English-Medium Instruction in Japan

Annette Bradford and Howard Brown

Japan is in the midst of a rapid, though largely uncoordinated, growth in English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education institutions. In some respects, this parallels trends in Europe and elsewhere. However, Japan is also forging its own path toward the use of English as a tool for teaching academic content. The compulsory use of English seen in some parts of Asia is not present in the Japanese context and degree programs carried out entirely in English (English-taught programs, or ETPs) are much rarer than in Europe. There is a great deal of variation in the implementation of EMI in Japan and a lack of explicit information about how and why such programs and classes are being implemented by universities.

As the use of EMI has increased in countries where English has not traditionally been the common language of higher education, the number of research publications addressing issues surrounding it has grown. They examine such topics as policies governing EMI, the language demands that EMI places on its stakeholders, and pedagogical dilemmas relating to the relationship between teaching language and academic content (see for example, Dearden, 2014; Dimova et al., 2015; Doiz et al., 2013). This research has a wide range of foci stemming from a variety of disciplines, such as applied linguistics, international education, literacy, and management studies, and is situated in many different complex EMI settings.

In response to the fragmented perspectives offered by current EMI research, Dafouz and Smit (2014) developed a conceptual framework for describing, analyzing and comparing EMI within and across contexts. Their ROAD-MAPPING framework is based upon what Dafouz and Smit (2014) identify to be six ‘core dimensions that operate dynamically across higher education institutions’ that use English (or any other additional language) as a means of instruction (p. 2). These six dimensions are: Roles of English (RO), Academic Disciplines (AD), (language) Management (M), Agents (A), Practices and Processes (PP) and Internationalization and Glocalization (ING), which together form the acronym ROAD-MAPPING. The dimensions overlap and intersect with each other and are actualized differently in their various contexts. Together they ‘offer a blueprint for outlining’ EMI in its specific settings (Dafouz & Smit, 2014: 16).

In order to provide a solid foundation for the subsequent discussions in this volume, this chapter uses Dafouz and Smit’s (2014) ROAD-MAPPING framework to identify and describe the current state of EMI in Japan. It takes each of the ROAD-MAPPING dimensions in turn, drawing upon the growing literature on EMI in Japan. Much of the empirical analysis is based on data from recent studies carried out by the authors, a case study of three ETPs at elite universities conducted by Bradford (2015) and a survey of 95 universities with EMI programs conducted by Brown (2015).

Roles of English

English holds a central position in the internationalization of higher education in Japan. English language learning and, by extension, EMI are assumed to be important roads to internationalization. While the concept of internationalization might imply diversity and a certain amount of pluralism, a multilingual interpretation of internationalization and the concomitant concepts of plurilingualism and parallel language use are rarely mentioned in Japan. English is clearly the dominant force.

Increases in academic mobility mean that English plays the role of lingua franca in many countries, being the only shared language of a diverse student and faculty body (Dafouz & Smit, 2014). However, in Japan, this is not generally the case. The vast majority of international students study alongside domestic students in Japanese-medium programs. ETPs, for which international students are not required to have any Japanese language skills upon entry, are, particularly at the undergraduate level, still in their infancy and serve very few international students (Ota & Horiuchi, this volume). The majority of EMI courses currently occur in classrooms with Japanese students and Japanese instructors. English does, however, have a greater lingua franca role in short-term EMI programs especially designed for international students. In these programs, the diversity of international students is much greater than in full degree programs. The Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) (2015) reports that, in contrast to the overall international student population in Japan, which is 91.5% Asian, international students in short-term programs nationwide are 32.6% European and North American and only 61.9% Asian.

Dafouz and Smit (2014: 9) state that the multiple functions of English in higher education settings may form a ‘contested terrain.’ However, in Japan, aside from the small (but growing) number of universities and faculties that operate entirely in English, English does not have a wide variety of functions. While English is now increasingly a vehicle for communicating content, it nevertheless remains an academic language amongst teachers and students who share Japanese as their first language. As such, when instructors do not see the efficacy of teaching in a second language, it is often resisted, although its utility as the language of internationalization is not often contested (Mulvey, this volume).

Academic Disciplines

Each academic discipline has its own literacies and practices, and to achieve success in academia, it is important to acculturate to these disciplinary norms. Both teachers and students should be aware of the discourses, specialized language and curricular elements (such as forms of assessment) that govern their discipline. Dafouz and Smit (2014) point out that this poses two immediate challenges for EMI: a need to recognize these disciplinary differences and integrate them into classes; and a need to ensure that the use of English does not homogenize disciplines according to an Anglocentric model. In Japan, the development of discipline-specific knowledge and academic literacy in Japanese is considered a primary goal of higher education (Kuwamura, this volume); however, in EMI programs, it is an issue that is perhaps not getting the attention it deserves.

With the growth of EMI, the range of academic disciplines taught in English in Japan is diversifying. In a nationwide survey of 95 universities with EMI programs, Brown (2015) found that undergraduate EMI courses tend to focus on the humanities and social sciences, with more than 60% of responding universities offering EMI courses in these two areas. Universities that offer ETPs, on the other hand, have increasing numbers of English-medium undergraduate engineering and natural sciences courses (MEXT, 2012, 2015). Regardless of the discipline they study, EMI students in Japan may not be receiving guidance they need to help them acculturate. The development of academic literacies for EMI courses is often considered a language proficiency issue and is thus assumed to be in the domain of language classes. However, very few EMI programs have a direct connection with language courses or regular communication with language teachers (Brown, 2015), and so students are unlikely to receive focused disciplinary-literacy instruction.

Without that explicit instruction, it is questionable whether academic literacies develop in EMI programs in Japan as they are currently organized. Academic literacies are in many, if not most, cases culturally transmitted through socialization into academic communities of practice (Molle et al., 2015; Scribner, 1984). However, in some EMI programs at Japanese universities, instructors are not specialists in the subject they are teaching and do not feel comfortably embedded into the disciplinary community. They may unknowingly blend disciplinary practices (Bradford, 2015; Susser, this volume). In other programs, faculty members teach courses based on their individual research interests with little regard to how such courses fit together to form a coherent curriculum (Bradford, 2015; Takagi, 2015). In both cases, students may not have sufficient socialization into the norms of any one discipline to develop real academic literacies.

Language Management

Language management refers to language policy statements made by governments, institutions and other actors in an attempt to control the position and role of languages (Dafouz & Smit, 2014). In the case of EMI in Japan, such statements are most noticeable by their absence. Policy documents seen as key in the development of EMI often fail to specify English as the language in question. They refer to instruction in foreign languages, or in foreign languages such as English (H. Hashimoto, this volume). In all practical terms, these phrases are taken to mean English, but at the policy level the plurilingual façade of instruction in foreign languages is maintained.

Despite the dominance of English as the language of internationalization, lack of acknowledgment as an official medium of instruction in the higher education sector serves to highlight the foreignness of English and those who speak it. In policy documents, the government has thus far avoided using the term shidogengo, or instructional language, to talk about EMI. This term, equivalent to medium of instruction, is reserved for Japanese (K. Hashimoto, 2013). Instead, the Japanese term used in referring to EMI in Japan, eigo ni yoru jugyou, is best translated as lessons conducted in English, a term that focuses attention on language use at the level of classroom practice, rather than one that formalizes the status of English. As such, EMI is a pedagogical issue, a question of classroom practice at the individual course or program level, not something that implies Englishization – large-scale changes in the communicative structures of universities. English may be a classroom language but it is not a language of administration or policy-making.

Furthermore, most universities, even those adopting EMI and implementing ETPs, do not have formal institutional-level language policies. Although a growing number of HEIs promote themselves as international institutions, few make reference to language or multilingualism in their publicly available internationalization strategy statements. With regards to policy for entry into EMI courses and programs, individual departments and sometimes individual instructors, often set their own language proficiency benchmarks. Even among the more formalized ETP degrees, there is not a consistent, shared understanding of appropriate language proficiency benchmarks for entry into the program. Of course, the degree programs have entry benchmarks, but they appear to be set on an ad hoc basis, rather than as a matter of policy. Consistent exit requirements or expectations for performance are also rare. There are also no established policies regarding faculty members’ language proficiency or language use (Bradford, 2015).

Agents

EMI is shaped by its agents. It is important to a...