THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN JAPAN

Richards and Rogers (2001) describe Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as causing a major paradigm shift within language teaching in the twentieth century and that such ramifications continue to exert an influence on the contemporary English language classroom. Whether regarded as revolutionary or evolutionary, it can surely be argued that CLT’s influence is far reaching and influential. Most classes,books andideologies claim to be communicative in some way. Nevertheless success in adopting a method created by English native speakers is less clear when attempting to utilize the approach in a country such as Japan where the culture of learning differs from the methods the approach advocates. In an analysis of how CLT has been adopted in Japanese secondary schools a host of socio-cultural and educational factors, such as the cultural appropriateness of the approach, the prevalence of grammar based University entrance exams and teacher perceptions are given for the apparent difficulties that prevent the successful implementation of the approach. The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has strived to improve the communicative ability of secondary school students through various educational reform measures and teacher training which according to the teachers it is aimed at has caused confusion in how the approach can be, if at all, implemented within their teaching context. Mandating such educational reforms from the top isn’t always the easiest or most effective approach and judging from the analysis here a more grassroots bottom up approach may be more beneficial starting from how the teachers and students respond to it and how it can be adapted to fit the Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environment.