Linguistics resesrch in English and Japanese area

This study extracted and analyzed the linguistic speech patterns that characterize Japanese anime or game characters. Conventional morphological analyzers, such as MeCab, segment words with high performance, but they are unable to segment broken expressions or utterance endings that are not listed in the dictionary, which often appears in lines of anime or game characters. To overcome this challenge, we propose segmenting lines of Japanese anime or game characters using subword units that were proposed mainly for deep learning, and extracting frequently occurring strings to obtain expressions that characterize their utterances. We analyzed the subword units weighted by TF/IDF according to gender, age, and each anime character and show that they are linguistic speech patterns that are specific for each feature. Additionally, a classification experiment shows that the model with subword units outperformed that with the conventional method.

1. Introduction 2. The Future of English in Asia Andy Kirkpatrick 3. The World's Other Languages How Native-Speaker Linguistic Traditions Can Make a Difference to Minority Languages Nicholas Ostler 4. 'We Must Make a People': Cultural Translation in World Englishes David Huddart 5. The Most Misunderstood Title in the World? Recontextualizing Roy Harris' inaugural lecture 'The worst English in the world?' Adrian Pable 6. Beyond 'Variety' and 'Community': A Conceptual Challenge for the Study of English in Asia Andrew Sewell 7. Constructing Categories in a Multilingual Hong Kong School Kara Fleming 8. Participating in English in Social Media: The Case of Chinese Users of the Photo-sharing Site Flickr Carmen Lee 9. English Futures: the Function of Literature Bill Ashcroft 10. The Medium is the Massage: Writing, Reading and the Work of Singaporean Literature in the Age of Social Media Eddie Tay 11. Literature Minus the Local: Assessing the Viability of a Taught Postgraduate Program in Literary Studies in Contemporary Hong Kong Stuart Christie 12. 'In Need of a Foreign Trademark': English Literature in Mainland China Graham Matthews 13. In Dialogue: Contesting the Politics of Globalization in Hong Kong Literature in English Michael Tsang 14. Trilingual Education in Inner Mongolia-Signposts for the future of English in Asia? Bob Adamson and Yi Yayuan 15. Reppraising Anglophone Literature for Japanese Students in a Globalized Society: Developing a Resilient Life Akiyoshi Suzuki 16. Reconfiguring English Literary Studies in the Japanese Academy Myles Chilton 17. English Literature Education in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Japan: Student reception, utility, and its place in a moral education Michael O'Sullivan 18. Tieng Anh: Learning English: From Inertia to Hegemony and Deliverance Susan D'Aloia

The role of English has been increasing throughout the past few centuries all over the world but one country that has felt its particular effect is Japan. With the amount of English loanwords increasing year on year, this dissertation looks at the reasons for this increase. By using both academic sources and the use of a survey, it gives evidence that it is due to the US occupation in 1945 but also business and trade as well as media. While many would state that the US occupation is the largest factor in loanwords being used in Japan, this dissertation also makes the case that it in recent years it is more due to media focused at the younger generation and also businesses where English is taking a more central position leading to younger males finding it of more importance. The survey itself consists of 8 questions that range from why loanwords and English is important to what type of loanwords a Japanese person uses. Texts from both Leo J. Loveday and James Stanlaw are highly recommended reading after this dissertation as they give even more details on some of the topics covered and are complimentary to this dissertation.

A language is considered as a sexist language if it conveys attitudes that stereotype a person according to gender rather than judging on individual merits. Feminists believe that English language is a sexist language because it involves negative attitudes towards women and maintains social inequalities between men and women. There are many English metaphors used to describe women in disagreeable manner, but this is rarely a case with men. Animal, food and villainous imageries are highly used to refer to women, such as: bitch, chick,-sugar, honey, tomato,-witch and so on. Animal imageries compare women with helpless creatures, food imageries with items used for sustenance and pleasure, and villainous imageries with evil creatures. More or less, in every society, women are believed to be weak and subordinate to men who are considered to be masculine. Even by linguistic items, men are presented as the head of societies. English morphology generally takes the male form as the base form, and adds suffix to construct the female form, for example: lion-lioness, tiger-tigress, actor-actress, etc. Suffix 'ess' carries connotations of lack of seriousness. By using the words 'he' and 'man' as generic forms, women are kept invisible and undermined. My first language is Bengali, so it was a question as to whether my language is also a sexist one. Sexism is also a usual feature of Bengali language, and even a careless observation on daily language can help identify the presence of sexism in Bengali. Women are sometimes referred by the following villainous imageries: Rakkhoshi (রাক্ষসী) = female monster; daini (ডাইনী) = witch. Even in terms of morphology, male form appears to be the base form in Bengali language, such as: chakor-chakrani (চাকর-চাকরানী) = servant-maidservant, shingho-shinghi (সসিংহ-সসিংহী) = lion-lioness, etc. Even names of Bengali children follow sexism; a male child is never named Nodi (নদী) = river and a female child is never named Shagor (সাগর) = sea. Even by means of names, men are presented as a strong figure and women as the subordinate figures who possess lesser strength comparing to their opposite gender. From the above discussion, it is obvious that both Bengali and English are sexist languages; delve into your language to discover sexism in your language.

Colorful PDF slideshow of a presentation at the Japan Association for Language Teaching Kobe Chapter. There is much to read in the slideshow on all aspects of bilingualism in Japan, and the presentation contrasts a developmental bilingual perspective with the usual native speaker-oriented and monolingual second language acquisition paradigm.

Semantics is rather difficult to define. Linguists and philosophers alike have for decades been trying to define its intricacies, characteristics and properties. Within the realm of language, semantics is a street called meaning, which lies in the suburbs that is linguistics. Semantics with regards to this essay helps us to find meaning out of what is inputted into our brains from spoken language sources. Many linguists have tried to bottle these sources up and put labels on them, some have succeeded and
some have not. Geoffrey Leech (1969) is one such linguist who has come up with seven different kinds of meaning. However, it would be helpful if there was one plain definition for collocative meaning. Though, after reviewing a multitude amount of essays and after reading dozens of books on the topic, making one informed decision on what collocative meaning is tricky. This essay will delve into collocative meaning by looking into its origins, definitions, role in semantics and role within the EFL environment. The author wishes to find out if it is, or is not, a kind of meaning, or perhaps, that it might be something else altogether.

Background: This study investigated the consequential validity of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Academic exam, specifically focusing on washback upon learners' test preparation strategies and score gain, and the mediating factors influencing washback when learners in an EFL context are not enrolled in test preparation courses.
Methods: Two IELTS Tests were administered to 190 undergraduates at a Japanese university over a 1-year period. A survey instrument was used to collect data about test preparation strategies for both tests. Test scores were compared to assess score gain. Interviews were conducted with 19 participants to investigate the factors mediating washback.
Results: Test results revealed a significant increase in speaking ability, with more significant increases in speaking and listening for participants who reported preparing more intensely for the test. Survey results showed that students focused significantly more on speaking and writing, and significantly less on reading, when preparing for the second test, and those who prepared most intensely also focused significantly more on listening. A qualitative analysis of the interview data revealed a complex array of factors related to learner perceptions and their access to resources, which are highly dependent on learners' sociocultural and educational context, and which shape washback to the learner.
Conclusions: The IELTS Test created positive washback on learners' language ability and test preparation strategies, specifically regarding productive skills, which learners in the study context had neglected in their previous language study. However, a range of mediating factors must be addressed in order to ensure positive washback in EFL contexts and in the absence of instruction.

This study examines the intersections of place and second language learning. Learner identity has been found to be an important construct in second language learning. In recent years, place and space have become central topics in the study of sociolinguistics and identity. One area of place and language that has not been studied in depth, however, is whether place plays a role in second language learning.  This study begins to fill this gap by examining the second language learning experiences of thirteen Japanese study abroad students who were enrolled in an eight-week, content-based language course. The content of the course focused on the history and culture of the city in which the course was offered, Memphis, Tennessee. This study demonstrates that the students formed place attachments to the city, that these attachments led to identity shifts, and that the students’ identity shifts affected their language behavior, identities, and future trajectories.
Thirteen Japanese university students between the ages of 18 and 19 took part in the study. Data collection included interviews with students taking the class in 2016 and course alumni from 2012 – 2015, their social media posts, class blog posts, classwork, and their photographs of Memphis served as the sources of data for this multi-modal study. The participant-provided photographs were also used as an interview elicitation tool.
Findings from this study contribute to an understanding of the complexities of place, identity, and language learning. Whereas prior work has pointed to the social capital that can be gained through investment in a second language, this study suggests that investment in place can also lead to gains in social capital. The study also shows that when language learners engage with the history and culture of a place such as Memphis, where racial violence has played such a significant role, that place factors into their future trajectories. Specifically, the participants constructed good language learner and global citizen identities. These findings reveal the power of a place-based curriculum that offers language learners the experience of a fuller spectrum of place and thereby facilitates the difficult work involved in constructing and orienting identity.

Draft coursebook about English as it occurs in Japan (including Japanese English). Key points are a developing a Continuum model (from Disparate English to English used as Japanese), mixing, separation of 'Contact with' and 'Use of' English, writing and written English, learning English and attitudes to English. Tasks included.

Japanese secondary school students (N=524) were surveyed to assess the correlational relationship between present English learning motivation and past learning narratives. An additional aim of the study was to determine whether past narratives should be operationalized into research questionnaires that utilize Zoltan Dornyei’s (2005) future oriented L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS). The results revealed a positive correlational relationship (r=.66) between past learning narratives and the motivational criterion measure, but the recommendation that past learning narrative question items should be incorporated into the present formulation of the L2MSS could not be corroborated with the data.

Loanwords in Japanese that share form and meaning with English words are referred to as Japanese-English cognates (e.g., ラジオ /radӡio/ “radio”) and are of fundamental concern for researchers concerned with vocabulary learning and instruction. This concern is reflected in the growing body of research into Japanese-English cognates in applied lin- guistics, which has addressed a wide range of questions in different con- texts and with various methodologies. However, the research relevant to applied linguists appears not only in various domestic and international learning- and teaching-focused publications, but also in the feeder dis- ciplines of linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. Conse- quently, identifying published research on Japanese-English cognates presents a considerable challenge for the applied linguist, which may in turn hinder progression in the field. Therefore, this article reports a com- prehensive yet non-exhaustive literature search, which yielded a corpus of 130 research publications, for which a full reference list is provided. Furthermore, an overview and synthesis of the research is given, illus- trating how cognates are typically treated in the feeder disciplines and in studies focusing on language learning and/or teaching, and assessment. Based on this synthesis, the following key areas for future research are identified: learners’ identification and use of cognates in English, their knowledge of loanwords in Japanese, their attitudes and beliefs towards cognates, researchers’ categorisation of cognates, whether classroom teaching approaches to cognates impact learning outcomes, and the extent of the cognate advantage in a range of assessment formats.

Research has demonstrated that cognates are processed and acquired more readily than noncognates regardless of whether the languages share a common script or etymological background (e.g., Japanese and English). Very little research, however, has focused on the prevalence and frequency of cognates in orthographically distinct languages. Using Japanese word frequency data, the present study demonstrates that between 49% and 22% of the most common 10000 words in English are cognate in Japanese, depending on the frequency threshold used. The analysis is extended to the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), which is shown to be between 59% and 30% cognate. Finally, a lexical familiarity study revealed that Japanese cognate frequency was a reliable indicator of whether the word was known to the majority of Japanese speakers. Based on the findings and drawing upon research in psycholinguistics, a number of recommendations are put forward for future studies in applied linguistics.

The way Kanji are used in Japanese violates etymology almost all the time when it comes to non-Sinovietnamese words. This has to change. Here I show how it can be done, on the relatively small sample that Japanese loan words in English represent. It took me about 3 days to do the research neccessary for etymographizing all these words. For any critique, please send me a message. Thanks.

These are materials for a teachers PD workshop in June 2014. They have two components: i. Grammar Dication (called Dictagloss sometimes) is introduced as a way for teachers to present text-based content to language students; & ii. English Japan presented from an unorthodox perspective engaging concepts such as a continuum model of English in Japan, amorphization of English, historicity of 'contact with' and 'use of' English, English in writing systems across various media, learning (as opposed to teaching of) English and attitudes to English in Japan.
The starting premise is that Japan is simply a geographically defined zone in which language cultures exist including different Englishes. The unorthodox angles presented hopefully stimulate teachers and others to consider alternative view points either critically or speculatively, and even to reconsider their own situations as both professional English educators and also as users of English in Japan.
Points naturally have relevance to the parallel situations with English outside of Japan.

Many difficulties in acquiring English pronunciation by Japanese learners derive from the practice of teaching the written language before the spoken language. Differences between spoken and written form include those of function, context, grammar, and vocabulary. One of the aspects of spoken English which is not apparent in written English is the linking of word final phonemes with the initial vowel in the following word. This study is an analysis of whether instruction can lead to an increase in the fequency of linking. A student in an Oral English class made six responses to specified topics at approximately weekly intervals. A further recording of her speech was made in a final examination. The student showed an initial improvement in the frequency of linking in the second recording, but a gradual progressive decrease in the frequency of linking over the course of the second to sixth recordings. However the student showed a clear increase of the frequency of linking in the examination. Hence her use of linking showed improvement in monitored speech but not in unmonitored speech.

The neoliberal era is often surmised as the extension of the free market,
increasing privatisation, and the commodification of everything. A large
body of work has shed much light on the way in which during the
neoliberal period, a discursive shift has taken place whereby language is
increasingly seen in instrumental terms of profit rather than in ethno/
national pride. Though such work engages with language as a
commodity within discourse, the view that language and languages
themselves are literally commodities remains problematic. It is argued in
this article that in the case of private commercial language schools
known as eikaiwa in Japan, what is produced and consequently on sale,
is not language itself, but rather the lesson. What this article offers, is an
example of how commodity fetishism plays out in relation to language
education, and how the commodity comes to be divorced from its
production and its producers, in the recontextualization of the lesson in
advertising. In contrast to previous work on eikaiwa advertising which
focusses on depictions of exotic and eroticised white native Englishspeaking
Others, the analysis here finds that representations of teachers,
is largely absent. The article argues that this erasure of labour (teachers), and the foregrounding of the student in advertising, illustrate a form of commodity fetishism particular to the neoliberal period, where the student as neoliberal homo-oeconomicus – producer of her own desire -comes to the fore.

Miki Tsukamoto and Naoko Tsujioka wrote this paper in March, 2013 in Osaka, Japan. They published the paper in the official journal of The Bulletin of Shitennoji University (Vol 55, March, 2013, starting from page 309). Tsukamoto is currently Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and has over 16 years of working experience in humanitarian affairs. The main idea of the paper is that English Language in Japan schools should not be taught in mother tongue – Japanese, but rather in English. Authors started to write this paper when they heard that The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT) investigated and analyzed school curriculums for all high schools in 2009. MEXT then in 2009 presented their results and announced the so-called New Course Study where they claimed, among other things, that English Language must be taught in English language only. Of course this statute provoked many different reactions from common people, students and also professional teachers.

This article describes a recent education reform initiative concerning English education in Japan, specifically the proposed introduction of four-skills tests as part of the university entrance admissions process. The first aim is to summarize, in English, some of the key issues and events concerning the reform. To this end, background information and a timeline of key events since 2016 is provided. The second aim is to contrast proposals made by two academic organizations, the Japan Language Testing Association (JLTA) and the Science Council of Japan: Language and Literature Committee (SCJ). It is shown that, while agreeing on a number of specific issues related to the reform, these two organizations take starkly different positions in terms of their general orientation, which, it is argued, reflects the background of the organizational members and their views on foreign language education in Japan. These contrasting positions are discussed with reference to the metaphor, to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Finally, it is argued that a number of criticisms levelled at the proposed use of private four-skills tests illustrate a reluctance to engage with issues related to the currently used university entrance exams; in other words, these criticisms are made while ignoring the elephant in the room.

The findings of previous language attitude studies have demonstrated consistently that public evaluations of speech forms reflect stereotypes of and attitudes towards the perceived group(s) of speakers of the language or variety under consideration. Folk perceptions of speech varieties are particularly impactful in educational contexts (Ryan and Giles, 1982). However, despite the volume of studies measuring attitudes towards variation in L1 varieties of the English language, it is only relatively recently that researchers began to investigate folklinguistic perceptions of specific forms of English spoken in Asia, including within higher education contexts. This is surprising given the considerable diversity within and between spoken forms of Asian Englishes, the growing numbers of students from Asian countries studying in English at overseas universities as well as the increasing importance of the English language throughout the Asian continent.

This talk details the results of a series of large-scale studies, investigating attitudes towards forms of UK, US, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Indian English speech, amongst large cohorts of university students in the UK (McKenzie, 2015a, 2015b) Japan (McKenzie and Gilmore, 2017) and Thailand (McKenzie, Kitikanan and Boriboon, 2016). Fine-grained multivariate analysis of the data collected demonstrated that whilst differences exist between the UK, Thai and Japanese university students’ speech evaluations, there was a general tendency amongst all three student cohorts to rank speakers of both standard and non-standard UK and US English varieties significantly higher in terms of competence than the three Asian English speech forms. In contrast, the analysis generally indicted significantly more favourable ratings for the university students’ ‘local’ forms of English in terms of warmth. The findings of these studies are discussed in relation to university internationalisation agendas, and for English language policy more broadly, in UK and Asian contexts. A number of suggestions for the future methodological investigation of language attitudes are also offered.

References

McKenzie, R.M. (2015a) UK university students’ folk perceptions of spoken variation in English: The
role of explicit and implicit attitudes. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 236: 31-53.

McKenzie, R.M. (2015b) The sociolinguistics of variety identification and categorisation: Free
classification of varieties of spoken English amongst non-linguist listeners. Language Awareness 24(2): 150-168.

McKenzie, R.M., P. Kitikanan and P. Boriboon (2016) The competence and warmth of Thai students’ attitudes towards varieties of English: the effect of gender and perceptions of L1 diversity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37(6): 536-550.

McKenzie, R.M. and A. Gilmore (2017) “The people who are out of ‘right’ English”: Japanese university students’ social evaluations of English language diversity and the internationalisation of Japanese higher education. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 27(1):152-175.

Ryan, E.R. and H. Giles (1982) (eds.) Attitudes towards Language Variation. London: Edward Arnold.

Action research concerns action, and transforming people's practices (as well as their understandings of their practices and the conditions under which they practise). Sometimes we may feel that action research works best when it contributes to our understandings. In this paper, by contrast, I want to explore the 'happening-ness' of action and practice, as they are lived and changed by action research. I want to explore the place of action research in shaping and making history by changing what is done. The central argument of this paper is that, while action research certainly does contribute to theory, it also, and perhaps more importantly, contributes to history. Introduction In this paper, 1 I will start with ancient history, but I will come back to a problem of today. If action research concerns transforming people's practices, their understand-ings of their practices and the conditions under which they practise, is it always achieving that goal? When we think of ourselves as researchers, perhaps we think that action research is at its best when it contributes to our understandings. Indeed, we often think that is what research is for – to help us understand. By contrast, I want to explore the 'happening-ness' of action and practice, as they are lived and changed by action research. I want to explore the place of action research in shaping and making history by changing what is done. In short, if we want to make a better world through action research, our action research needs to change histories.

The integration between English language learning and character values is a paramount aspect to improve student"s achievements include cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Yet, the implementation of this integration has insufficient results. Therefore, this research aimed to develop English learning materials integrated with character values. The research design was research and development (R&D) developed by Borg and Gall and modified by Sugiyono with 4-D (define, design, develop, and disseminate) model. The research was conducted at grade VII of State Junior High School 4 Pekanbaru. The data were collected through questionnaire, interviews, and observation. The module was validated by experts and practitioners. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively by concerning 3 aspects: content (English learning materials and character values), media design, and practicality. Based on research findings, the module was practical (79%) and very valid in terms of media design (86%) and content (95%). Hence, this module can be used as an assisting tool for students not only to understand and practice the language, but also develop their attitudes in communication.

The problem of this research was the students' reading comprehension between male and female student in analytical exposition text such as some of students took a lot of time to catch the idea from the analytical exposition text, and some of students get difficulty to analyze the generic structure and language feature.

Citing continuing poor performance on diagnostic texts, MEXT has recently advocated for an increased emphasis on academic English, particularly writing instruction (to include critical thinking). However, little sustained attention has been given to the specifics of what is being taught now, how, and why. In this presentation, I present recent national survey results and observations made during six years of teaching both Japanese and English academic writing to Japanese students at two Japanese universities. The national survey results support my own observations, suggesting that—and in direct contrast to prevailing beliefs about the curriculum—many Japanese students struggle to write logically and persuasively in English for the same reason they struggle in Japanese: because nobody yet has taught them how. Accordingly, in order to improve academic English skills, critical reading and writing skills in the L1 need development also—where possible, in conjunction with similar emphases in the L2 classes, and ideally including collaboration among all the teachers providing this instruction.
近年、文部科学省は診断調査（TOEFL、PISAなど）における継続的な成績不振を受け、国際的に質の高い英語力を目指すためのアカデミック・イングリッシュ、特に批判的思考力を含んだ学術的ライティングの指導の強化を求めている。しかし、日本の大学・高校におけるライティング指導の現状について、何が、どのように、なぜ教えられているのかといったような詳細に対しては、何ら評価・分析が行われていないのが実情である。本発表では、６年間にわたり二つの大学で日本人学生を対象とした英語・日本語でのアカデミック・ライティング指導の経験をもとに、最近発表された調査結果を検討し、日本におけるアカデミック・ライティング指導の現状および今後の課題について研究を行った。「読み・書きの指導が非常に重視されている」とよく言われる日本の国語・英語教育だが、英語に限らず母語においても、その方法を学生に指導してこなかったせいで、作文力が未だに乏しい状態であることが分かった。英語のアカデミック・ライティングの力を向上させるには、母語においても批判的な読解力、ライティング力を磨くことが必要であり、国語と英語の教員が協力し合って、こういった力を育てる必要性を論じる。

1. Introduction 2. The Future of English in Asia Andy Kirkpatrick 3. The World's Other Languages How Native-Speaker Linguistic Traditions Can Make a Difference to Minority Languages Nicholas Ostler 4. 'We Must Make a People': Cultural Translation in World Englishes David Huddart 5. The Most Misunderstood Title in the World? Recontextualizing Roy Harris' inaugural lecture 'The worst English in the world?' Adrian Pable 6. Beyond 'Variety' and 'Community': A Conceptual Challenge for the Study of English in Asia Andrew Sewell 7. Constructing Categories in a Multilingual Hong Kong School Kara Fleming 8. Participating in English in Social Media: The Case of Chinese Users of the Photo-sharing Site Flickr Carmen Lee 9. English Futures: the Function of Literature Bill Ashcroft 10. The Medium is the Massage: Writing, Reading and the Work of Singaporean Literature in the Age of Social Media Eddie Tay 11. Literature Minus the Local: Assessing the Viability of a Taught Postgraduate Program in Literary Studies in Contemporary Hong Kong Stuart Christie 12. 'In Need of a Foreign Trademark': English Literature in Mainland China Graham Matthews 13. In Dialogue: Contesting the Politics of Globalization in Hong Kong Literature in English Michael Tsang 14. Trilingual Education in Inner Mongolia-Signposts for the future of English in Asia? Bob Adamson and Yi Yayuan 15. Reppraising Anglophone Literature for Japanese Students in a Globalized Society: Developing a Resilient Life Akiyoshi Suzuki 16. Reconfiguring English Literary Studies in the Japanese Academy Myles Chilton 17. English Literature Education in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Japan: Student reception, utility, and its place in a moral education Michael O'Sullivan 18. Tieng Anh: Learning English: From Inertia to Hegemony and Deliverance Susan D'Aloia

This project addressed the role of foreign language (FL) classes in a successful first-year student experience at one Japanese university. I assessed six dimensions of this experience: Match between high school FL classes and university FL classes, role of first-year FL course grades for academic progress, role of first-year FL classes in later studies, students’ attitudes toward the classes, promotion of language learning, and the success of these classes in fostering international peer interactions. Employing a mixed methods approach with one year of on-site fieldwork, I observed 78 FL classes, interviewed 40 students, five university and nine high school FL teachers, and analyzed teaching materials, homework, and student grades from 58 FL classes. Results indicated that, although these classes did not detract from students’ overall academic goals mainly due to the classes’ modest aims and lack of connections to later academic work, they largely failed to promote robust language learning, positive affect, and international peer interaction. This study especially indicates the need for improved connections between high school English and college-level EMI courses. Also, students with previous costly English learning opportunities fared better in English classes which suggests the importance of greater attention to equity in language education.

This large-scale quantitative study, employing both implicit and explicit attitude measures, investigated 127 Japanese university students' perceptions of UK, US, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Indian English speech. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that implicit evaluations of Japanese, UK and US English speech were significantly more positive when compared to the other Asian forms of English under consideration, on both status and social attractiveness dimensions. When questioned explicitly, informants were generally unfavourable towards 'International English'. The findings are discussed in relation to the relationship between explicit and implicit language attitudes as well as levels of acceptance amongst Japanese students of particular groups of English speakers and, in turn, speculates upon the potential success of the internationalisation agenda within Japanese Higher Education more broadly.

In the 1920s and 30s in Japan, world-renowned linguist and language educator, Harold Palmer, was introducing then innovative technological approaches to English education in Japan. Parallels with the success he had and also public attitudes to his work then can be found in the present (ie. early and mid-1990s) situation in Japan. This paper takes stock of the present and finds that rather than change in language education coming from the top, innovation and initiatives for change seem to occur more readily from outside of the public education system.

In May 2009, when the Japanese LDP government was in a weakened position, Kuwata Keisuke, lead singer of popular rock band Southern All Stars, performed a parody of the Beatles’ Abbey Road on his weekly television show. Backed by a band performing an uncanny cover of the album, he rewrote the lyrics into commentary on corruption in Japanese politics, fiscal problems, the death penalty, and other political issues.

This performance was highly unusual: Japanese recording artists rarely engage in politics. The recording and broadcast industries disallow lyrics on controversial topics, and management discourages artists from engaging in politics. Kuwata staged his rebellious gesture as a “mishearing” of a well-known album.

Kuwata transformed Abbey Road into political parody through linguistic sleight of hand. Kuwata chose Japanese lyrics with similar vowels and consonants (as demonstrated by their proximities on the International Phonetic Alphabet) to make them sound like the original English lyrics. By presenting his acrid commentary as a parody of this much-loved album and thus framing it as humorous entertainment, Kuwata was able to publicly criticize Japanese politicians.