La acción de cambio en la catarsis movilizadora:

This research will focus on Japan, specifically at the university level, because the Japanese context presents a very interesting motivational dilemma (Ryan, 2009) or even what Berwick and Ross (1989) refer to as a ‘wasteland’ of motivation. In the Japanese university setting

there are two distinct types of learner: English majors and those for whom English is a compulsory subject or module, perhaps bearing little or no relevance to their chosen degree. In Japan, the need to speak English is held in very high esteem, often sold on trains and advertising boards as a key to success, a key to the world and an integral part of a new self- identity (Seargeant, 2009). Japanese society is very open to foreign cultures; many loan2

words have been incorporated into the lexicon from English and other European languages, and in fact there is a special writing system called katakana in which loan words are generally written. Examples range from words such as dance, silhouette, get, present, apartment, after-service and ice-cream from English, arbeit (part-time work) from German and avant- guerre (pre-war) from French (Kamiya, 1995). Despite the elevated status of English in particular, Japanese TOEFL scores are amongst the lowest in Asia (Yoshida, 2003) and there are complaints of a lack of coherence between government proficiency targets and syllabus design and implementation (Ikeda, Pinner, Mehisto, & Marsh, 2013). This seeming contradiction actually provides a reasonable lens from which to view English language learning in Japan, and makes any attempt to study motivation rather problematic and yet highly essential. Any attempt to examine motivation would do well to include Japanese

students’ attitudes to foreign or global culture, paying particular attention to the modern

context which includes rapidly globalising perspectives and advancing communicative technologies. Educational reforms, changing societal perspectives and heightened professional expectations regarding foreign languages make the Japanese context a fertile ground for motivational studies.

For a more emic perspective, I would like to share part of an essay written by a student in my English Linguistics Seminar class from spring 2016. Emi Uchida, the author of the following quote, is about to finish a teaching certificate course which is offered as a pathway

through Sophia’s English Literature Department where I work. As part of this, she took three

weeks of practical teaching experience by visiting a junior high-school and working as a trainee teacher. In her essay for my seminar, she made the following first-hand observations:

Almost all the lessons were taught mainly in Japanese and consisted of reading, listening, and pattern practice of speaking. First, teachers make students do some pattern greeting or easy question-and-answer as a whole class. Second, they check the meaning in Japanese and practice pronunciation of new words in textbook. Third, they do some listening and pattern practice of speaking in textbook. At last, they practice pronunciation and check translations of the texts in textbook. There are few opportunities to make sentences by themselves. […] The second-year students could make a short speech which is about five sentences. Its topic was about familiar topic such as memories of Golden Week. However, some students could not distinguish between verbs and adjectives like the first-year students. For example, they wrote ‘It was enjoy’

or ‘I was enjoy’. In addition, almost all students did not take their eyes off the manuscript which they wrote before presentation during their speech and read it aloud with flat accent and an expressionless face. These examples are only a part of the present situation in many schools, but they reflect the reality more faithfully because public schools are influenced more strongly by policies of the government.

The […] problem is the lack of motivation for communication. The reason students did

not speak emotionally in speech is because they did not have motivation to make themselves understood by other people and communicate with them.

(Emi Uchida, July 2016)

From Emi Uchida’s description, the learning of English seems very mechanical, as well as

appearing to be quite unsuccessful in either creating communicative students or even students who know how to speak English correctly, making the use of the target language

‘ritualistic’ rather than personal (Rampton, 1999, 2002). Such practices have been linked to student demotivation in Japan (Kikuchi, 2013, 2015), particularly because the students are

well aware of the ‘gap’ between the communicative practices advocated by the Ministry of

Education (MEXT) and the exam-focused grammar translation methods actually applied in most classes (Kikuchi & Browne, 2009). As stated in section 2.3.1, the emphasis on exams is widely recognised to be a major failing in terms of English education, and yet the situation persists indefinitely because many private universities in Japan rely on entrance exams for a large portion of their income. Multiple choice tests are the most economical to create and

administer, so they provide the highest revenue margins. However, there is no rule that teachers must prepare learners for entrance exams to the next tier of education. Although university is not compulsory, over 50 per cent of high-school graduates enrolled in higher education at either a university or junior college, and this figure increases to 70 per cent if colleges of technology and other vocational higher education institutions are included (MEXT, 2012). However, this still means that in every high school class being prepared for university entrance exams, at least 30 per cent of the students have no intention of taking such exams. This means that in a class of 40 students, 12 will have no reason for undertaking such instruction. A large group like this will certainly be able to exercise an effect on the motivational dynamics of the class, even if we assume that the other 28 students are all highly motivated to practise grammar and rote learning.

These problems contribute to the ‘hyperbole’ and ‘permanent sense of crisis’ that surrounds Japan’s L2 motivational literature (Ushioda, 2013a). In the introduction to his book, Kikuchi (2015) relates his own experience of learning English in Japan, blaming the teacher (Mr K) as the primary demotivator.

In their extensive review of the landscape of psychological factors relevant to language learning, Dörnyei and Ryan (2015) chose to omit several ‘other motivational themes’ from their revisited work because ‘the study of the particular topics in question had not produced sufficiently stimulating new results over the past decade [since 2005] relative to other, more

fruitful areas.’ (p. 99). One of these omissions was demotivation, because ‘the underlying

theoretical basis of the issue has hardly changed since Dörnyei’s (2001a, p. 100) first

summary’. Dörnyei and Ryan criticise the lack of emphasis on dynamics in this field,

essentially side-lining it from mainstream motivational research. Another omission from

Dörnyei and Ryan’s revised volume is teacher motivation, however this time they justify the omission not on a lack of theoretical development, but on the ‘indirect link of the concept to

student achievement’ (p. 101) and the necessity of teacher motivational research to make connections with student motivation and, ultimately, student performance. Clearly, this view is somewhat at odds with that of Exploratory Practice, which seeks only to gain a deeper understanding without placing undue pressure on teachers and learners to increase their performance (Allwright, 2003, 2005, 2006a; Allwright & Hanks, 2009). One study that does address the issue raised by Dörnyei and Ryan was conducted by Sampson (2016), who details

his own attempts to connect students’ identities with their English learning from a

attempt to establish a link between my students’ motivation and my own. In the following section I will examine the dynamic interplay between authenticity and motivation, especially focusing on how this can create a bridge between student and teacher motivation.