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JAPANESE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH MAY STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO
BEFORE THEY REACH INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS
Patrick Blanche
Abstract
In this article, the writer wonders why, eighteen years after his first EFL teaching and
teacher-training assignment in Japan, the communicative competence of young Japanese English
learners still seems to be lagging far behind that of their European counterparts (and future
competitors). He goes on to explain how one of his own Japanese university students observed ten
Japanese EFL instructors teaching in eight different schools.
Most of the lessons observed were excessively teacher-centered. Over half of them were
poorly planned. The instructors' mediocre performance may well exemplify one of the reasons why
so many Japanese high school and university graduates remain unable or unwilling to converse with
native English speakers.
The writer claims that the overall performance of Japanese EFL teachers could and should
be greatly improved. The failing instructors whom his student observed are probably the subdued
victims of an education system whose officials have paid considerably more lip service to change
than they have struggled to implement needed, intelligent reforms over the past two decades.
[continued on page 2]
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JAPANESE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH MAY STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO
BEFORE THEY REACH INTERNATIONAL STANDARS
Patrick Blanche
Introduction
Eighteen years after my first stint as an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in Japan1, I would
argue that the “sense of change in Japanese classrooms over the past decade” may be a little less
“palpable” than Guest (2000) recently claimed. Japanese students of English are still not doing very
well. Whether they should or should not be expected to “have difficulty in carrying out
conversations with native speakers” after “six years of formal teaching” is, to some extent, beside
the point. Whether or not EFL is an “academic skill” which, like physics or chemistry, can hardly be
applied to real life situations until a learner’s professional life somehow demands it is a trivial
question in today’s international/economic environment. The fact that a large number of Belgian,
Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Swedish and Swiss senior high school students, as well as an
increasing number of young Hungarians and Poles, can converse with native English speakers2 is
much more to the point.
Why, then, is the British university where I have taught summer EFL courses for precisely
a decade still placing most of its Japanese summer school students in low-level EFL classes? Why
am I, in Japan, still forced to treat over 50 percent of my first-year university students (including
some English majors!) as the false beginners they are? Why are Japan’s students’ TOEIC and
TOEFL test scores currently among the lowest in Asia3? Why is the average English level of
applicants for places at Japanese universities (at least the private ones) falling instead of rising? And
why has the Japanese Ministry of Education Science and Technology just established a council “to
discuss reforming English-language education in schools”4?
Further, I keep wondering how much is really known about what goes on in the majority
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of Japanese EFL classrooms, those which are exclusively or mostly managed by Japanese
teachers/administrators, since (to my knowledge) regular performance appraisals, program reviews,
peer evaluations and in-service training are not exactly common practices among Japanese ELT
professionals, as was recently suggested by an article in The Daily Yomiuri newspaper5. Four years
ago, in an attempt to find out more about this, I advised one of my students (Murakami, 1998), who
had taken a keen interest in language teaching methodology, to base her “graduation thesis”6 on
about ten classroom observations in at least seven different schools. I was assuming the teachers
who would accept to be observed wouldn’t feel particularly threatened by her if her stated purpose
were simply “to collect data for a thesis”. There was a good chance that they would not greatly
modify their usual classroom behavior. Thus I thought she would be able to see things that would
have been hidden from my view if I had been the observer.
Ms. Murakami did a fine job but, as a Japanese undergraduate student, she could not
reasonably be expected to turn her research into a publishable paper: I have had to reorganize and
edit her writing, and to extrapolate some of her findings. Her de facto contribution to this article is
nevertheless very substantial -- and gratefully acknowledged. The following is a description of what
she did and saw, as well as a summary of her and/or my reactions, comments and suggestions for
improvement.
Observation method
I initially thought Ms. Murakami would be able to apply observation criteria derived from
a student-teacher interaction analysis framework I had developed earlier (Blanche, 1992); these
criteria are listed and explained in AppendixⅠbelow. However, only three of the teachers who later
accepted to be observed were to conduct a speaking and/or listening class. In addition, none of them
would allow my student to use a tape recorder, which meant that she would be unable to go over the
lessons afterwards. As a result, I advised her to use slightly different and simpler criteria. These are
listed in TableⅠ. A detailed explanation follows the table.
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Table I
Observation criteria eventually used
TeacherAttitude
Talking timeInteraction with students
Students Interaction with other studentsTime on task
Activities
Introductory (warm-up) activitiesCore activities: - quality
- variety- appropriateness
Closing (follow-up) activitiesUse of equipment Black/whiteboard, furniture (desks),
Audio/video, overhead projectorUse of classroom spaceUse of class time
Explanation of how the chosen observation criteria were to be applied
(Key: T = teacher; S = student; SS = students)
*T’s attitude: friendly/warm (enough or not); encouraging (enough or not); enhanced by body
language/use of hands (yes or no).
*T-SS interaction: positive or negative; not enough, or enough (at least 15% of the time with SS working
in small groups/pairs and their instructor moving around between groups; 15 % = “average”).
*T talk: too much (over 35% of the time; 35% = “average”) or not; relevant or not.
*S-S (S) interaction: enough small group/pair work (at least 50% of the time; 50% = “average”) or not.
*SS’ time on task: enough (well over half the time; 60% = “average”) or not.
*Warm-up (introductory) and follow-up (closing) activities: are there any? If so, is their length
appropriate? Are they good or bad (e.g. do they actually introduce or expand the theme of the lesson)?
*Core activities: quality (good or bad); variety (enough or not); appropriateness—do these activities
teach what they are supposed to teach, and do they fit in well with other activities?
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*Equipment use: black/whiteboard (enough/too much/relevant or not), furniture/desks (efficient/
appropriate or not); audio/video, overhead projector (if available, used when called for/enough/too much or not).
*Use of classroom space: is it efficient (are the students made to use as much individual/small group
space as they could/should) or not?
*Use of class time: efficient (good, even pace) or not.
As an undergraduate student, Ms. Murakami would not have been able to use a more
‘objective’ observation instrument by herself, considering that it takes small groups of graduate
students in Britain or the United States weeks of controlled practice with standard tools to get valid
results. Her results were certainly approximate in and of themselves, but the overall picture that
eventually emerged was, in my view, fairly clear –- albeit not so bright.
Results
Ms. Murakami observed ten classes in June, July and September 1998, as shown in Table
II. Her observations took place at eight different locations in the Fukuoka and Kumamoto areas of
Kyushu7.
[continued on page 6]
TableⅡ
Observation schedule
Dates Types of school Length of lessons Skills mostly taught1. June 29, 1998 Private University 90 minutes Reading
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2. July 7 Private University 90 Listening
3. July 10 High school 50 Reading
4. July 10 High school 50 Reading
5. July 13 High school 50 Reading
6. July 13 High school 50 Reading
7. July 14 State university 90 Listening
8. July 18 High school 50 Grammar
9. July 18 Language school 40 Listening and speaking (conversation)
10. September 26 State university 90 Writing
The results of these observations are summarized in Table Ⅲ, Table Ⅳ and Table Ⅴ below.
[continued on page 7]
Key for the following three tables:
+ = good (3.5 or above on a scale of 1 to 5)
Δ= so-so/average (from 2.5 to 3.4) - = not good (from 1 to 2.4)
Table Ⅲ
Behavior of teachers and students
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Observations(in chronological order)
T’sattitude
Ttalk
T-SS interaction
S-S(S) interaction
SS’time on task
No. 1 + Δ Δ + +2 + - Δ - Δ3 Δ Δ Δ - -4 - - - - -5 + Δ + - Δ6 + Δ + - +7 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ8 Δ Δ - - -9 + Δ + + +
10 - - - - -
Table Ⅳ
Classroom activities
Introductory(warm-up)activities
Core activities Closing(follow-up)activitiesQuality Variety Appropriateness
No. 1 Δ Δ Δ Δ -2 - - - - -3 + Δ Δ - -4 Δ - - - -5 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ6 Δ Δ Δ Δ Δ7 - Δ Δ - -8 Δ Δ - - -9 - Δ Δ Δ Δ10 - - - - Δ
Table Ⅴ
Use of classrooms and class time
Classroom equipment
Classroom space Class time
No. 1 - - Δ2 - Δ -3 - - Δ4 - - -5 - - +6 Δ - +7 - Δ -8 - - -
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9 Δ Δ +10 - - -
In Ms. Murakami’s thesis, all ten lessons were fully described and criticized. The
performance of each teacher was evaluated in great detail, but lack of space prevents me doing it
here. Thus I am limiting myself to the description and critique of just one lesson, followed by a brief
general discussion.
Sample appraisalA listening class at private university (observation No. 2)
Class size: 20 students; level: low intermediate (second-year students); duration: 90 minutes.
This lesson was chosen for a sample appraisal because it was of low quality, although
listening is an area where non-native English teachers can achieve as much as natives if they use
captions or scripts during their preparation time.
Structure of the lesson
a. Listening to/watching a videotape recording [55 minutes].
First, the learners watched a short, two-minute conversation three times in a row. Then
the instructor gave them a list of tasks they were to perform or questions they were to
answer about the conversation, along with detailed explanations. This work had to be
done in a text/workbook, but as one of the tasks was to fill in blanks while listening to
the conversation, the tape was played four more times: without interruptions the first
time, with pauses at the end of each sentence the second time, without interruptions the
third time and, again, with pauses at the end of each sentence the fourth time. During
the fourth listening, the learners repeated each sentence after the instructor. Finally, they
practiced the conversation in pairs, changing some words or phrases in the process.
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b. Interim activity [15 minutes].
The class listened to an English song. The instructor also asked a few students personal
questions, e.g.: if they had done anything interesting lately, or how they had been getting
along generally.
c. Listening to/watching a videotape recording [20 minutes].
The students watched a short, one-minute conversation three times. After that, the teacher
asked them questions, and they watched the scene again in order to verify their answers.
Evaluation
The students seemed to feel comfortable. The instructor looked directly at them and used
a lot of body language. He often smiled, which gave him a friendly appearance. He spoke loudly and
clearly. He kept walking around the classroom and gave everybody plenty of individual attention.
He praised the learners who came up with good answers; and to those who made mistakes, he just
said, “Good try!”
The instructor’s overall attitude was quite positive but this, unfortunately, was also the only good
thing about his teaching. There were serious deficiencies in eight other areas, as follows.
1. Lack of preparation.
He had clearly not spent enough time preparing for his lesson. He relied almost entirely
on a very small portion of the text/workbook that accompanied the video, without
leaving out, adding or changing anything. The activities proposed in a textbook should
often be adapted or complemented to meet the needs of a particular group of students. No
two classes are exactly the same.
2. Insufficient content.
The videotaped conversations the teacher used were both too short. Altogether, they
lasted three minutes. This surely was not enough material for a 90-minute class!
3. No previewing (introductory) activities.
A short reading and/or discussion should have primed the learners for what they were
about to watch/listen to.
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4. Inadequate follow-up activities.
For instance, what could the students actually learn while regurgitating the first video-
taped conversation, which they had already heard seven times?
5. Too much emphasis on detailed listening.
What a majority of Japanese students of English need, above all, is to develop listening
strategies that can help them grasp the general meaning of a discourse.
6. Impractical teaching.
In real life, students are unlikely ever to hear the same thing repeated more than twice
(seven times here). Consequently, they must learn how to get the gist of a conversation
or talk when they first hear it.
7. Not enough emphasis on skills other than listening.
Listening, like other language skills, should not be taught in isolation. Although there
was enough time to include relevant non-listening activities in this lesson, reading and
writing were limited to the use of a workbook. The speaking activities were either
unproductive (repetition of the first videotaped conversation) or out of place (interim
period).
8. Wrong reinforcement of the learners’ speech.
The instructor should have repeated each of the sentences in the first videotaped conver-
sation after, not before, the students – how else could he have corrected their pronun-
ciation? Moreover, the model to be first followed by the students, in each case, was the
recorded sentence.
Suggestions for improvement
Two longer film/video clips: a relatively long one (four to six minutes), and then a
relatively short one (two to four minutes). In terms of content, the second scene should
follow on, or be germane to, the first one.
Pre-listening activity: a short reading and/or a small group discussion on a topic related to
what is talked about in the recorded conversations. Some of the more difficult/unfamiliar
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words/expressions used in the video should be introduced during this reading/discussion
The students watch the first scene with the sound off and try to guess what is happening
and what (some of) the actors are saying.
The students listen to the conversation(s) with the picture off and try to understand the
general meaning of what the people are saying.
Test: true-false statements (“say if the following statements are true or false”).
Now the learners watch the scene with both the sound and the picture on. They try to
understand everything in more detail.
Test: multiple-choice questions.
Short discussion in small groups: the students try to guess what is going to happen next.
They watch the second scene with the sound off, decide whether their guesses were
correct or not, then make more guesses.
They watch the second scene again with the sound on: what happened after all?
Review: the learners watch the two scenes consecutively with the sound on and do a gap-
filling exercise, using (part of) the whole script.
Follow-up activity: the learners write scripts for similar (not identical) scenes. The
instructor assigns at least three different topics to different groups. Some of the groups
will act their scene out at the beginning of the next class.
Notice how many times the word “instructor” or “teacher” appeared above: once. This would
have been a student-centered lesson.
General discussion
Overall, the teachers’ performance was disappointing. Almost everyone looked good at
the beginning of their lesson, yet in most cases this first impression quickly melted away.
The teachers’ positive attitude is mainly what made them shine for a few minutes. By and
large, they were dynamic people and handled themselves well in their classroom as far as body
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language was concerned; they seemed to have established a good rapport with their students; they
apparently wanted to be, and probably were, liked by them. This could have made their teaching
very effective. It didn’t. Even if their outward friendliness never was a sure sign of insecurity, at
times I thought it was traceable to a surreptitious attention- seeking effort that soon became
counterproductive.
The center of the stage is where a language instructor belongs only some of the time. He
or she, of course, is the stage director; but the stage itself rightfully belongs to the students: they are
the true actors; and if they are also young adults, they should be treated as (intelligent) adults. On
this score, Ms. Murakami quoted Watanabe (1995), a Japanese author: “teachers have to plan classes
so that students can start taking the initiative”, and “a lesson should be a process in which the
students’ active participation is based on the teacher’s guidance and plays a key role”.
Unfortunately most of the teachers she observed talked too much (in some cases
endlessly) and were authoritarian beneath the surface. The learners were not highly motivated
because they lacked opportunities to experiment with English, to make and correct mistakes, and to
learn by doing things instead of absorbing information that few of them were willing or able to
retain. The college students among them weren’t developing the learning strategies they would need
after graduation: they weren’t shown how to become autonomous learners in order to keep on
learning in the future.
A paradox Ms. Murakami didn’t fail to notice is instructive: the more authoritarian the
teachers were, the more trouble they seemed to have in ‘controlling’ their lesson. They did not
budget their time properly or at all; they often got bogged down in superfluous grammatical or
lexical details; and when, because of this, an introductory or review activity crowded out core
activities, the focus of the lesson remained unclear.
Moreover, some of the core activities that were used during the same class had little in
common—there was no central theme. In several instances, the students ended up doing something
other than what they should have been doing (e.g. grammar instead of writing); or there were not
enough activities for a complete lesson, especially if the instructor was relying mostly on a tired old
textbook.
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Conclusion
From what I could see through my graduating student’s eyes, I concluded that seven of the
classes she observed were excessively teacher-centered. In addition, most of the instructors had not
sufficiently or adequately prepared their lesson. The suggestions I would make to these people if I
could gather them in the same room are summarized in Appendix II.
Nine out of ten instructors should have performed substantially better. Yet my sense is that
the education system which molded them and now regulates their work has not changed a great deal
over the past two decades and is just as, if not more, culpable.
Only three persons appeared to be well grounded in basic education. I doubt that the
others were entirely responsible for what looked like ignorance: most likely, they once were
respectful student teachers to whom an older, uncriticized master or mistress handed down
inefficient techniques. Thus some of the money which the Japanese Government lavishes every year
on thousands of young foreign ‘Assistant Language Teachers’ (who are often relatively, and
sometimes completely, inexperienced) might be better spent on the training or retraining of
homegrown ELT professionals.
A couple of semesters in America or Britain are not enough to underpin a lifetime of
English teaching for someone whose native language is not English. Japanese EFL instructors
should be virtually required to spend at least three months studying abroad every four or five years.
Crowded classrooms and burdensome, often irrelevant, administrative ‘duties’ should no longer be
the norm for ELT professionals in an advanced industrial nation. When are Japan’s Japanese
teachers of English and other languages, from junior high school all the way up to college, going to
be given the time, the space and the professional growth opportunities they need to do what they
should do – teach, improve, and teach?
Even where Japan’s specificity could legitimately be used as an excuse (the culture is
“unique”, “silence is golden”, students are “shy”), today’s merciless international competition
14
makes very little room for exceptions. Malaysia, for example, is having many of its local English
instructors retrained overseas8. Singapore, one of whose official languages already is English, also
wants to raise its spoken English standards9. In Japan, however, there seems to have been more
confabulating, hand-wringing and dilly-dallying nationwide than serious, concerted and effective
action when it comes to the teaching of foreign languages.
Japanese is not and will probably never be a world language, but Japan is a major modern
country. For cross-cultural, economic and geopolitical reasons, the country’s edu- cation system
should therefore turn out a much larger number of university and high school graduates who are
fluent or semi-fluent in a world language. As was mentioned earlier, the Japanese Ministry of
Education, Science and Technology has recently established a council to discuss reforming English-
language education in schools: what this advisory council should perhaps tell the Ministry is, “no
more excuses, please.”
[continued on page 15]
AppendixⅠObservation criteria initially selected
The teacher’s body language
Facial expression
Eye contact
Voice: loudness, clarity and warmth
Motions: walking, sitting/standing, gestures/use of hands
The teaching methods/mechanics
Pace: slow, average or fast; constant or varied
Activities: relevant or not; varied or not
Materials used: appropriate or not, varied or not
Equipment used
Percentage of teacher talk: in English; in Japanese; overall
15
Kind of teacher talk: error correction, giving directions, question asking, question
answering, praising, modeling
The learners’ response
Level of interest: are they interested or bored?
Physical activity: are they moving and interacting a lot?
Time on task: approximate percent of class time each student spends on task-based
activities
Percentage of talking time: in English? In Japanese? Overall?
Kind of talk: one-on-one (pair work), one to everyone (presentations), small group
(discussions); question asking (students-teacher, students-students); question answering
(students-teacher, students-students); repetitions (individual, choral)
[continued on page 16]
Appendix II
Some advice: for teachers like those who were observed
*At the beginning of each class, tell the students (in Japanese, if necessary) what they are
going to do and learn, and how they will be able to use this experience/knowledge. It will help you
focus your lesson.
*Give your students credit for their intelligence. Trust them.
Give them real classroom responsibilities. Give them some power. Make them feel that
they are (to become) responsible for their own learning. Do not spoon-feed them.
*If there is some teaching some learners can do (almost) as well as you, let them do it.
*Try not to make your students do in class what can be done at home.
*Speak English as much as possible, and pressure the learners into (reward them for)
doing the same.
*Do not use any textbook as a crutch. Textbooks alone can’t teach – including yours, if
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you have written one.
*Use a variety of materials. Try not to be ‘predictable’: good teachers often ‘surprise’
their students.
*Use warm-up (introductory) and closing activities for most of your lessons.
*Make sure that all the activities you use for a lesson are relevant, appropriate and part of
a coherent, integrated whole.
*Make sure that these activities deliver the results they are supposed to deliver. If an
activity does not seem to be working well, promptly replace it with another one.
*Check up on yourself every ten-fifteen minutes: “Am I following my plan? Are the
learners following me? Should I slow down, go faster or change anything?”
*Time is precious: use it efficiently.
*Do not always wait until everybody has finished an activity before moving on to the
next one: keep up the pace.
*Try not to spend more than twenty minutes on any activity.
*Do not spend more than a third of your (students’) class time talking – especially not in
Japanese.
*Have your students work in pairs or small groups as often as possible. Small group
work will increase their motivation as well as their talking time.
*Do not spend more than 30% of your class time sitting, unless you are sick, really tired,
or physically handicapped. Standing/walking around will make you and your students feel more
alert. It will also keep you in good physical shape.
*Make the learners use all four language skills during each lesson. All language skills
reinforce each other. If, for example, writing is what you are (primarily) teaching, teach it with the
support of some reading, listening and speaking. Also remember that reading is the most natural
input to writing, and listening is the most natural input to speaking.
*Prepare for each lesson – even a lesson you have already taught thirty times. “Prepare”
rhymes with “care”.
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Notes
1. At the Language Institute of Japan in Odawara and under the inspiring guidance of P. Lance
Knowles, the Institute’s then Director, to whom this article is gratefully dedicated.
2. A fact which the Council of Europe’s Directorate of Education, Culture and Sport in
Strasbourg, France (where the writer completed a research project [Blanche, 1989]), and the
Center for Information on Language Teaching and Research in London, England (under whose
Director's supervision the writer also worked), would both be able to confirm.
3. As reported in the May 31, 2002 issue of The Japan Times: “Japan consistently ranks among the
worst of the 21 Asian nations and regions that take the Test of English as a Foreign Language, a yardstick
widely used in entrance exams for foreign students at U.S. and Canadian universities”.
4. As reported in the January 11, 2002 issue of The Daily Yomiuri.
5. May 24, 2002 issue: “Unlike primary and middle schools, public high schools hardly ever open classes to
outsiders, even parents. Also, teachers have no opportunities to observe their colleagues’ classes. This means
that nobody, except the students, knows what goes on in the classroom. Some teachers have gone for decades
without being checked by other people”.
6. In Japan, a “graduation thesis” is merely the equivalent of a long, 20-to-25-page term paper
written by an undergraduate student, towards the end of his or her senior year, on a topic
related to his or her major field of study. However, Ms. Murakami’s report was 53 pages long
and more like a real thesis.
7. My student promised all the teachers she observed not to reveal their names or the name of
their school/university.
8. As reported in the May 19, 2001 issue of The Daily Yomiuri.
9. As reported in the May 8, 2001 issue of The Daily Yomiuri, and in the July 2, 2001 issue of the
International Herald Tribune.
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References
Blanche, P. and Merino B. 1989. Self-assessment of foreign language skills: implications for
teachers and researchers. Language Learning 39, 313-340.
_________. 1992. A proposed student-teacher interaction analysis framework for foreign language
program evaluators and teaching supervisors. University of Tsukuba’s Gaikokugo
Kyoiku Ronshu [Studies in Foreign Language Teaching] 14, 83-100.
Guest, M. 2000. What’s wrong with Japanese English teachers? The Language Teacher 24 (1), 30-
31.
International Herald Tribune (eds.). 2001. Singlish bad; English Good. International Herald
Tribune (Asian edition), July 2 issue, p. 4B.
Murakami, M. 1998. A quick look at EFL teaching in Japanese classrooms. Kumamoto Gakuen
University, Japan: unpublished graduation thesis.
The Daily Yomiuri (eds.). 2001. Singapore pushes for ‘improved’ spoken English. The Daily
Yomiuri (Tokyo), May 8 issue, p.20.
______________________. 2001. Malaysia to recruit English teachers. The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo),
May 19 issue, p.6.
______________________. 2002. Ministry to seek tips on English education. The Daily Yomiuri
(Tokyo), January 11 issue, p. 2.
______________________. 2002. Kudos for salaryman principals. The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo),
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The Japan Times (eds.). 2002. English teachers face retraining. The Japan Times (Tokyo), May
31 issue, p. 2.
Watanabe, K. 1995. Perspectives on action research in English Language Teaching. Tokyo:
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