This paper focuses on the years just before, during and just after the Kennedy presidency, with p... more This paper focuses on the years just before, during and just after the Kennedy presidency, with particular attention to events in three regions: (1) 1960-1966: Cold War Crucible and Crucial Era for Understanding the Late 20th Century Cuba and Latin America, (2) Vietnam, and (3) Indonesia and West Papua. One of the sources discussed below proposes that Kennedy probably was murdered because of the threat he posed to the plans of the security state, in particular its plans for Indonesia, a country that has received little attention in historical studies of Kennedy’s presidency. However, there is still insufficient evidence for the theory of Kennedy as peacemaker and lost savior. Kennedy remained committed to fighting communism even in the last months of his life, and his kinder, gentler plans for development in the Third World offered little appeal to socialist and nationalist movements throughout the world. Events in Southeast Asia and Latin America in subsequent years may not have been much different if Kennedy had lived on past 1963. https://seijo.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/5697/files/11-003-Dennis Riches.pdf
Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the person who made it lacke... more Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the person who made it lacked a knowledge of forming English passive structures, and he might offer a review lesson on this grammar point. This was my initial reaction to the error, but then it occurred to me that I hear this sort of error all the time from Japanese learners of English, even though they have learned the grammar of passive structures and they use it accurately in other instances. They often produce similar errors such as Tickets can buy at the station. It was only because my own knowledge of Japanese was increasing that I was able to see these errors in a new light. A Japanese speaker sees nothing wrong with The problem has not solved yet. One function of the passive is that it is a method for de-emphasizing the agent of a sentence and shifting focus to the patient, and the Japanese person is doing exactly this when he makes this error. ’ There are simpler ways to do this besides flipping the order ...
Discussions of education reform in Japan tend to focus on the challenges of globalization and int... more Discussions of education reform in Japan tend to focus on the challenges of globalization and internationalization, and these are connected to the question of what can be done to make Japanese people more proficient in English, the contemporary world’s lingua franca. It is seldom recognized that the chronic dissatisfaction with the results of English education may go hand in hand with Japan’s success in preserving its culture and language. There is ambivalence about raising the status of English because of the implied threat to the status of Japanese. Those countries in Asia that have “succeeded” in English education have done so by devaluing their native languages in education. Japan always chose to avoid this process of linguistic colonization, yet it now finds itself wanting to raise a generation of young Japanese people who can participate in a globalized culture, yet this would require a high level of functional bilingualism throughout society that is, at present, far from bein...
In recent years Japanese universities have been feeling increasing pressure to survive in the com... more In recent years Japanese universities have been feeling increasing pressure to survive in the competition for a decreasing number of students, and English programs have been an obvious target of reform because of their potential to appeal to applicants who want the language skills to communicate with the outside world. However, there are many ways in which this reform could be carried out badly by university administrations that don’t take a full account of the complexity of the issues surrounding English education in Japan (EEJ). A common framework for reforming English programs is a corporate one, taking inspiration from successful reforms at companies. This could be the wrong way to approach the problem because a corporation has several advantages over a university when it needs to restructure itself. One obstacle facing universities is that they are intensely democratic, and thus political, institutions. Reform cannot proceed as it does in a corporation, with the old guard demot...
Although it is a cliche to say that you don’t know where you are going if you don’t know where yo... more Although it is a cliche to say that you don’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been, this truth is often ignored by those with ambitions to be innovators because revealing historical precedents might cast doubt on the claim to originality. This tendency is especially true in English language teaching (ELT), a field in which rapid growth has created a heady impression of novelty, and this has been easily exploited by those who could first lay claim to ‘new’ discoveries. This paper illustrates how historical knowledge has been lacking in foreign language teaching, and argues for the benefits and possibilities of authentic innovation that would come with more attention focused in this area. The historical perspective sheds light on a time when language teaching was an integral part of other fields of knowledge, and thus this paper also argues for greater cross-disciplinary awareness and training in the sciences that have become increasingly relevant to language...
Japanese universities are making sincere efforts to improve the quality of higher education, but ... more Japanese universities are making sincere efforts to improve the quality of higher education, but the usual approach to this challenge may be flawed. Program evaluations focus heavily on the efforts of teachers and what happens in individual courses. Systemic problems and the stronger influences of the educational culture of Japan are usually overlooked, probably because this culture is taken for granted like the air we breathe. One of these systemic problems is the way students prepare to enter university and gain admission. This paper reviews the content of and practices surrounding English entrance examinations at Japanese universities. This review is done through the perspective of the field of language testing that has developed among British and North American scholars in applied linguistics. As opposed to a relativistic approach that sees entrance examinations as adaptations to their cultural context, this analysis raises serious concerns about the validity, reliability and et...
With this quote from Shakespeare, I will attempt to write something that honors the contribution ... more With this quote from Shakespeare, I will attempt to write something that honors the contribution to Seijo University made by Professor Masako Hirai. I hesitated to make use of lines that referred to wrinkles, but this essay is written for a retiring colleague, and all of us past a certain age know that wrinkles, and thoughts of how to age well, are an inevitable part of the picture. The quote is apt because I know it expresses the positive attitude that Professor Hirai lives by. I have known Professor Hirai since 1996 when I began work as a part-time instructor at Seijo University. Later, we both became members of the Faculty of Social Innovation when it opened in 2004. During those years, I knew she was a Shakespeare specialist and I was curious to ask her about her studies in this field, but the day-to-day business of work doesn’t leave much room for interesting conversation about the aspects of our work that we love most. I never had time until recently to have an in-depth talk w...
This paper describes a small-scale experiment in speech perception and shortterm memory, the resu... more This paper describes a small-scale experiment in speech perception and shortterm memory, the results of which suggest some shortcomings in the conventional pedagogy of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). The experiment used a common practice of speech perception research, that of measuring perception of ‘nonwords’ that are fabricated words that obey the phonology of a language, but are contrived to be words without meaning. Only one of the respondents was multilingual, and all of them had lived in English Canada since childhood and considered English as their native language. They were asked to listen to ten two-second utterances and repeat them as accurately as possible immediately after hearing them. Five of the utterances were in the African language, Hausa, which none of the volunteers had any familiarity with. The other five utterances were strings of nonword English. The experiment tested the hypothesis that the volunteers would be able to repeat the familiar Englis...
Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the personwho made it lacked... more Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the personwho made it lacked a knowledge of forming English passive structures, and hemight offer a review lesson on this grammar point.This was my initial reaction to the error, but then it occurred to me that I hearthis sort of error all the time from Japanese learners of English, even though theyhave learned the grammar of passive structures and they use it accurately in otherinstances. They often produce similar errors such as
This paper focuses on the years just before, during and just after the Kennedy presidency, with p... more This paper focuses on the years just before, during and just after the Kennedy presidency, with particular attention to events in three regions: (1) 1960-1966: Cold War Crucible and Crucial Era for Understanding the Late 20th Century Cuba and Latin America, (2) Vietnam, and (3) Indonesia and West Papua. One of the sources discussed below proposes that Kennedy probably was murdered because of the threat he posed to the plans of the security state, in particular its plans for Indonesia, a country that has received little attention in historical studies of Kennedy’s presidency. However, there is still insufficient evidence for the theory of Kennedy as peacemaker and lost savior. Kennedy remained committed to fighting communism even in the last months of his life, and his kinder, gentler plans for development in the Third World offered little appeal to socialist and nationalist movements throughout the world. Events in Southeast Asia and Latin America in subsequent years may not have been much different if Kennedy had lived on past 1963. https://seijo.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/5697/files/11-003-Dennis Riches.pdf
Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the person who made it lacke... more Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the person who made it lacked a knowledge of forming English passive structures, and he might offer a review lesson on this grammar point. This was my initial reaction to the error, but then it occurred to me that I hear this sort of error all the time from Japanese learners of English, even though they have learned the grammar of passive structures and they use it accurately in other instances. They often produce similar errors such as Tickets can buy at the station. It was only because my own knowledge of Japanese was increasing that I was able to see these errors in a new light. A Japanese speaker sees nothing wrong with The problem has not solved yet. One function of the passive is that it is a method for de-emphasizing the agent of a sentence and shifting focus to the patient, and the Japanese person is doing exactly this when he makes this error. ’ There are simpler ways to do this besides flipping the order ...
Discussions of education reform in Japan tend to focus on the challenges of globalization and int... more Discussions of education reform in Japan tend to focus on the challenges of globalization and internationalization, and these are connected to the question of what can be done to make Japanese people more proficient in English, the contemporary world’s lingua franca. It is seldom recognized that the chronic dissatisfaction with the results of English education may go hand in hand with Japan’s success in preserving its culture and language. There is ambivalence about raising the status of English because of the implied threat to the status of Japanese. Those countries in Asia that have “succeeded” in English education have done so by devaluing their native languages in education. Japan always chose to avoid this process of linguistic colonization, yet it now finds itself wanting to raise a generation of young Japanese people who can participate in a globalized culture, yet this would require a high level of functional bilingualism throughout society that is, at present, far from bein...
In recent years Japanese universities have been feeling increasing pressure to survive in the com... more In recent years Japanese universities have been feeling increasing pressure to survive in the competition for a decreasing number of students, and English programs have been an obvious target of reform because of their potential to appeal to applicants who want the language skills to communicate with the outside world. However, there are many ways in which this reform could be carried out badly by university administrations that don’t take a full account of the complexity of the issues surrounding English education in Japan (EEJ). A common framework for reforming English programs is a corporate one, taking inspiration from successful reforms at companies. This could be the wrong way to approach the problem because a corporation has several advantages over a university when it needs to restructure itself. One obstacle facing universities is that they are intensely democratic, and thus political, institutions. Reform cannot proceed as it does in a corporation, with the old guard demot...
Although it is a cliche to say that you don’t know where you are going if you don’t know where yo... more Although it is a cliche to say that you don’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been, this truth is often ignored by those with ambitions to be innovators because revealing historical precedents might cast doubt on the claim to originality. This tendency is especially true in English language teaching (ELT), a field in which rapid growth has created a heady impression of novelty, and this has been easily exploited by those who could first lay claim to ‘new’ discoveries. This paper illustrates how historical knowledge has been lacking in foreign language teaching, and argues for the benefits and possibilities of authentic innovation that would come with more attention focused in this area. The historical perspective sheds light on a time when language teaching was an integral part of other fields of knowledge, and thus this paper also argues for greater cross-disciplinary awareness and training in the sciences that have become increasingly relevant to language...
Japanese universities are making sincere efforts to improve the quality of higher education, but ... more Japanese universities are making sincere efforts to improve the quality of higher education, but the usual approach to this challenge may be flawed. Program evaluations focus heavily on the efforts of teachers and what happens in individual courses. Systemic problems and the stronger influences of the educational culture of Japan are usually overlooked, probably because this culture is taken for granted like the air we breathe. One of these systemic problems is the way students prepare to enter university and gain admission. This paper reviews the content of and practices surrounding English entrance examinations at Japanese universities. This review is done through the perspective of the field of language testing that has developed among British and North American scholars in applied linguistics. As opposed to a relativistic approach that sees entrance examinations as adaptations to their cultural context, this analysis raises serious concerns about the validity, reliability and et...
With this quote from Shakespeare, I will attempt to write something that honors the contribution ... more With this quote from Shakespeare, I will attempt to write something that honors the contribution to Seijo University made by Professor Masako Hirai. I hesitated to make use of lines that referred to wrinkles, but this essay is written for a retiring colleague, and all of us past a certain age know that wrinkles, and thoughts of how to age well, are an inevitable part of the picture. The quote is apt because I know it expresses the positive attitude that Professor Hirai lives by. I have known Professor Hirai since 1996 when I began work as a part-time instructor at Seijo University. Later, we both became members of the Faculty of Social Innovation when it opened in 2004. During those years, I knew she was a Shakespeare specialist and I was curious to ask her about her studies in this field, but the day-to-day business of work doesn’t leave much room for interesting conversation about the aspects of our work that we love most. I never had time until recently to have an in-depth talk w...
This paper describes a small-scale experiment in speech perception and shortterm memory, the resu... more This paper describes a small-scale experiment in speech perception and shortterm memory, the results of which suggest some shortcomings in the conventional pedagogy of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). The experiment used a common practice of speech perception research, that of measuring perception of ‘nonwords’ that are fabricated words that obey the phonology of a language, but are contrived to be words without meaning. Only one of the respondents was multilingual, and all of them had lived in English Canada since childhood and considered English as their native language. They were asked to listen to ten two-second utterances and repeat them as accurately as possible immediately after hearing them. Five of the utterances were in the African language, Hausa, which none of the volunteers had any familiarity with. The other five utterances were strings of nonword English. The experiment tested the hypothesis that the volunteers would be able to repeat the familiar Englis...
Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the personwho made it lacked... more Most English teachers would see the error in the title above and say the personwho made it lacked a knowledge of forming English passive structures, and hemight offer a review lesson on this grammar point.This was my initial reaction to the error, but then it occurred to me that I hearthis sort of error all the time from Japanese learners of English, even though theyhave learned the grammar of passive structures and they use it accurately in otherinstances. They often produce similar errors such as
Seijo University Journal of Innovation Studies, 2016
The contemporary understanding of the energy crisis has become focused on the need to reduce the ... more The contemporary understanding of the energy crisis has become focused on the need to reduce the effects of global warming. This singular focus has had some unfortunate effects on the public imagination as we seek innovative responses to energy problems. Much of the public discourse centers on the hope of finding new technologies and new sources of energy that will meet all energy needs so that fossil fuels can simply be replaced and everyone can carry on as before. This preoccupation has led to a neglect of older analyses of humanity’s relationship with energy sources, analyses which existed well before anyone was concerned about global warming. This article discusses this issue by reviewing the book The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude,1) by Canadian author Andrew Nikiforuk.
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