Yesterday I spent the morning at the 60th national conference for the All-Japan English Teachers Association (全英連) in Yokohama. Here is the website for the conference (in Japanese). There is no English because the association consists–entirely it seems– of Japanese teachers of English. I attended because as part of my job I  am involved in some training for elementary, and junior and senior high teachers of English. Since it had been about 18 years since I stood in front of my own junior and senior high classes, I felt (and still feel) that I need to know more about the current state of English teaching in Japan at those levels. Recently I have been  seizing any opportunity I get to talk with teachers, visit their classes, or look at the materials they are using. My attendance at the conference was part of this learning curve that I am slowly working my way up.

As a regular participant at conferences in Japan that usually feature a more mixed collection of teachers from different types of schools　（private language schools, jr and sr high, colleges, and universities), and sometimes participants concerned with research more than classroom teaching, and usually a wide range of nationalities, I was sort of surprised to see such uniformity of participants. That is not really meant by me to be a  criticism. Though thinking about it, it might something that puts the group at a disadvantage if they fail to realize how building bridges with other similar organizations in other countries could be a real advantage. Certainly I think it feels safe to say that if there is indeed not much inclusion of different perspectives, this could lead people to spend a lot of time tweaking the system as it is rather than making more fundamental structural changes that might be necessary, changes that might have been accomplished elsewhere with improved results.

The thing that impressed me most about the conference was the obvious amount of  preparation that had gone into making both the 90-minute presentations I saw. The structure was possibly responsible for this. Each presenter was paired with a mentor teacher who helped coordinate the content and added a little overview to the topic. Both presenters were active high school teachers and both mentors were experienced teacher trainers. I thought it was a great way to ensure a balanced, well-considered, and content-rich presentation, something that does not always happen at other conferences I attend. But it also seemed to reinforce a top-down, authority-driven perspective that somehow left me feeling a little claustrophobic by the time the conference ended. Each presentation was chosen as a representative for a specific prefecture and a lot of people had stake in seeing that it went off well.  In contrast to the conferences I usually attend, there was a tangible amount of top-down pressure.The presentations gave us detailed descriptions of interventions, from the planning phases to the reactions of the learners. There was also an analysis of the intervention and a description of the underlying theory to the approach. It was a lot to think about. There was, however, almost no time for audience participation. The content was all one-way. It was full-frontal information transfer.

And forgive me as I get critical here, but it seemed to me that what I saw were some presentations by people who seemed too comfortable with this type of interaction with learners. Which served to–and I am very conscious here of my opinions coloring my impressions here–remind me of my greatest criticism of how English is taught in Japan: learners are not given enough opportunity to own the language and to use it as a tool to communicate from themselves. Textbooks are chosen by someone and then the purpose of the lessons becomes learning the textbook content regardless of whether it is interesting to learners or not, and the notion that those learners have some thing to say is exploited to help learn target structures rather than celebrated and used as content for lessons. Very often teachers are also the victims of this “system.” The choice of the textbook, the expectations for their learners, the expectations of the learners and their parents, and the general shortage of time all conspiring to stifle what teachers may want to do. But lets get back to the conference.

The first presentation I saw was on using ICT in the classroom. The teacher was brilliant, seamlessly integrating laptop/projector/Powerpoint technology into his lessons. His techniques for presentation and practice were creative and effective within the how-can-we-learn-this-textbook-content-more-efficiently approach. This was technology for improving a teacher-led class. I kept thinking though that it matched junior high students better than high school learners. I came back to my same lamented question: is it really impossible for sr. high learners to be content co-creators? I wanted to ask the teacher how often a student is put in charge of the computer. But there wasn’t time for questions. I think this teacher had perfected a series of techniques for presentation and practice and they certainly have a place in any classroom. But there is so much more that learners should do, indeed need to do, to gain more proficiency.

The second presenter talked about improving motivation through using incremental tasks in a project-based activity. Her high school was low-level and she got students to make either a short composition or a short presentation  in a 3rd year  elective after devoting about 15 hour’s worth of baby step tasks.  I admired her perseverance. I think what she is doing is certainly what needs to be done at this point: hold students by the hand, and slowly introduce more student-driven and student-produced content. But the cost in time was sobering. Where can most teachers find the 15 plus hours of class time to devote to getting learners to produce a single page of composition or a 3-minute presentation?

There were audible sighs of “yes, but…” from the audience as they files out of the second presentation. Yes, yes, yes, I know. But the shift from teacher-centered let’s-learn-this-textbook-content to more student-driven content will be hardest at first, while only a few teachers are doing it and before it is institutionalized. Eventually, learners will show up with a more active learning literacy and with more expectations to be more  involved in their own learning process. But lots of attitudes will have to change along the way and certainly some major structural changes will be necessary.