The Social Crux: Motivational Transformations of EFL Students in Japan

Abstract

There may be no better index of how ready a society and its institutions are for internationalisation than the degree of willingness and interest to learn a foreign language as held by its individual citizens. Many Japanese and non-Japanese people in the world are living in, leaving from, arriving to, and passing through Japan — physically and virtually — and they need English skills for educational, legal, medical, recreational, social, transactional, and vocational purposes. For example, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) reports that about 6,000 students from Japan were studying abroad in 2009 (MEXT, 2012), while the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) reports that almost 140,000 students from abroad were studying in Japan in 2011, a number that has increased almost three times in little more than ten years (JASSO, 2011). However, many learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Japan cannot attain a satisfactory level of communicative competence required nationally and internationally in a plethora of situations. Such is the widespread perception attested by social commentaries, educational countermeasures, investigatory studies, and government policies. Scholars focus on how this problem lies in the practices of the educational system (e.g. McVeigh, 2002) or the cultural ideology of English and learning it (e.g. Seargeant, 2009).