TY - JOUR
AU1 - Iida, Atsushi
AB - English as a foreign language (EFL) pedagogy is often criticized as dehumanized, non-creative, and asocial. One major criticism is that traditional L2 pedagogy has lost sight of ‘the flesh-and-blood individuals who are doing the learning’ (Kramsch 2006: 98). This criticism highlights the fact that individual students’ minds, social functions and behavior are left behind and separated from their language learning. However, many English teachers in the Asian EFL classroom still rely on such traditional methods as grammar translation or audiolingualism, which do not take these elements into account. Especially in Japan, English may be just one school subject for students, and they are expected to study the language very hard to pass entrance exams and earn better scores on such English proficiency tests as TOEFL, TOEIC or IELTS (Iida and Chamcharatsri 2020). In the context of these exams, success in language learning means acquiring as much linguistic knowledge as possible and presenting better performance on the tests, which will lead each student to what is supposed to be a brighter future. Yet, this socio-cultural phenomenon raises some key questions in higher education: what really matters in university education? what is the responsibility of English teachers? what content do they need to teach in the classroom? and how should they attempt to develop students’ communicative competence? These questions lead us to reflect on the nature of learning a new language. Bradley and Kennedy’s edited volume, Bringing forth a world: engaged pedagogy in the Japanese university discusses this issue by focusing on the teaching of English as Liberal Arts in Japanese tertiary education. Through a consideration of fundamental problems in education policy and curriculum reform in Japan, this book explores new insights into English language teaching—a transformative, engaged, and multidisciplinary pedagogy—as a response to the bleak prospects of the current educational context. The first five chapters mainly address language learning as social practice. After an introduction by the editors, Chapter 2 by Sato discusses the value of observing students’ EFL learning through the lens of Complex Dynamic Systems. Focusing on the notion of ‘potential learning moments’, she illustrates how both the teacher and students experienced these moments in university English communication courses, how peer interaction helped to change students’ attitudes towards learning English and how it helped to create a new environment in which they could actively participate in the speaking activity. In Chapter 3, Hood considers critical thinking as social practice, describes several ways to promote critical thinking in the classroom and illustrates a step-by-step critical thinking pedagogy. The chapter also emphasizes the significance of creating an environment in which students can think critically and express their opinions freely in the classroom. In Chapter 4, employing the concept of ‘community of practice’, Kennedy discusses what academic writing in the EFL context should be. While arguing for the significance of promoting the dynamics of engagement and critical thinking in the classroom, Kennedy proposes ‘peer ethnographic research’ consisting of five modules in academic writing pedagogy—query, survey, analysis, dialogue, and inscription—in order to promote the long-term transformation of individual learners. Chapter 5 investigates English conversation courses from an ecological perspective. Focusing on the reciprocal relationship between learning environments and language learners, Holland illustrates her step-by-step teaching practice, ‘conversation about conversation’. This chapter also describes how her approach helps students develop awareness of what good conversation should be. In Chapter 6, Bradley proposes a critical thinking model that consists of five components: language, linguistics, intercultural or cross-cultural understanding, critical thinking, and speculative philosophical problem. Bradley presents his teaching practice using Harold Pinter’s short sketch, Apart from That (2006/2011) and explores the role and meaning of silence in communication. The next three chapters explore the use of media as a form of language learning. In Chapter 7, Grajdian targets Western exchange students who study Japanese culture and discusses the dialectics of Japanese cultural imperialism. Employing the multi-media phenomenon of Ruroni Kenshin —originally published as a manga series— she addresses the masculine role models in the story and explains how different media—anime version, live-action movies and all-female live theatrical performances— represent the change of dynamics of gender relations in late modernity. Grajdian also describes how beneficial it is to use Ruroni Kenshin in order for non-Japanese students to appreciate late-modern Japanese society and culture. Chapter 8 explores the task of filmmaking and the development of EFL students’ multimodal literacy. In accordance with the notion of multimodal communication—that our messages are constructed and communicated through more than one mode of meaning—Hunt develops a theoretical framework for filmmaking by incorporating four principal components for teaching literacy in the twenty-first century: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. Through discussing two films made by EFL students, this chapter describes how filmmaking can develop their language skills and foster multimodal literacy. In Chapter 9, Hayashi explores the effect of teaching music on Japanese students’ learning in English communication courses. Incorporating self-determination theory into content-based instruction, she designed a 14-week course for music-major students, consisting of two main activities: the discussion of classical music in TED Talks and a project presentation. This chapter describes how this teaching approach facilitates active and collaborative learning and gets students more engaged in learning both the target language and content. The next two chapters explore the application of comparatively new language teaching approaches, feminist pedagogy and ecopedagogy, into EFL curricula. Chapter 10 by Yoshihara explores how the EFL classroom can be a site for both teachers and students to consider gender issues and social justice. Drawing on feminist pedagogy, Yoshihara discusses the key concepts of the pedagogy and some possible activities to develop students’ voices, empower them, and raise consciousness of social issues. Her teaching practice, a four-week unit focusing on domestic violence, illustrates changes in the students’ perceptions, new discoveries, and the development of intellectual curiosity regarding this socio-political issue. In Chapter 11, Dancsok argues for the urgent need to transform the EFL classroom into a site where students mobilize against climate change. By identifying the potential and challenges of ecopedagogy, he describes activities that can promote students’ critical thinking and develop their linguistic fluency. He also emphasizes the significance of integrating selected elements of ecopedagogy into English language teaching in order to make positive changes in the EFL classroom and foster ecoliterate learners. This book concludes with Thouny’s chapter on planetary education. This chapter discusses the need of implementing planetary education to overcome educational challenges of the current global university—the foundation of modernist subjectivity, which ends up hiding the reality separated from ideology and social forms. With the concept of ‘everyday life’ or ‘everyday space’ in planetary education, Thouny proposes a self-ethnographic fiction writing project to mobilize ‘the power of the false, the power of fiction, to fantasize ourselves and learn once again to care for the self, this time, a planetary self embedded in an extended space of everyday life’ (p. 201). Because this book focuses on one specific context—English education in the Japanese university context—one possible limitation may be seen as the challenge of applying the different approaches in this volume into other contexts. Education policy, English curricula, and classroom environments vary in each country, so language teachers may need to adjust it to fit into their own contexts. Yet, this adjustment is not a big challenge: with careful consideration of the goals and purposes of English education, teachers should be able to implement any approach in engaged pedagogy, observe students’ engagement, analyze how that works and modify it accordingly. A more serious limitation of this book is lack of empirical aspects. Some chapters report on the practicability of each approach, using students’ self-report data, but the effects on L2 learning, literacy development, and acquisition of new content and linguistic knowledge remain unexplored. Empirical approaches to engaged pedagogy would help to evaluate the effectiveness of each teaching practice more objectively. With knowledge gained through empirical research, we should be able to better understand the relationship between engaged pedagogy and meaningful EFL learning. Overall, this book is beneficial to language teachers in terms of providing theoretical frameworks and practical suggestions for several innovative approaches to the teaching of EFL or English as Liberal Arts in tertiary education. Each contributor demonstrates the significance of exploring his or her teaching and this viewpoint opens a new possibility for teaching English in the EFL classroom. This book also reminds language teachers of the nature of second or foreign language learning. In essence, learning a new language is ‘a significant, potentially life-changing moment’ (Hanauer 2012: 105). From this viewpoint, language learning in the EFL classroom should be a literacy practice through which students negotiate meaning, construct and develop their voices, and express and communicate them to others in the target language. This edited volume will allow teachers to explore how students’ language learning can be more meaningful and how engaged pedagogy can transform the traditional EFL classroom. Atsushi Iida He was awarded his PhD in English (Composition and TESOL) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include second language writing, poetry writing, literature in second language education, and writing for academic publication. He has published his work in various journals including Assessing Writing, Qualitative Inquiry, System, Scientific Study of Literature, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching and English Teaching Forum. References Hanauer ,  D. I . 2012 . ‘Meaningful literacy: Writing poetry in the language classroom.’ Language Teaching , 45 ( 1 ): 105 – 15 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Iida ,  A. , and B.   Chamcharatsri. 2020 . ‘Emotions in second language poet ry writing: A poetic inquiry into Japanese EFL students’ language learning experiences.’ Innovation in Language Leaning and Teaching , doi:10.1080/17501229.2020.1856114. Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Kramsch ,  C . 2006 . ‘Preview article: The multilingual subject.’ International Journal of Applied Linguistics , 16 ( 1 ): 97 – 110 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Pinter ,  H . 2011 . Plays Four . London : Faber and Faber . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Bringing Forth a World: Engaged Pedagogy in the Japanese University
JF - ELT Journal
DO - 10.1093/elt/ccab023
DA - 2021-06-05
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/bringing-forth-a-world-engaged-pedagogy-in-the-japanese-university-xWWhjbwtyW
SP - 1
EP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -