Until recently, English teaching in Japan focused on giving much
grammatical knowledge to students, and paid little attention to
communicative competence, 'competence as to when to speak, when not,
and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner'
(Hymes 1971: 277). However, nowadays, the importance of
communicating with foreign people for mutual understanding is often
pointed out, and communicative competence is gradually receiving more
attention in English teaching in Japan. Grammatical knowledge is not
sufficient for making students communicate well, and in addition to
grammatical knowledge, the knowledge of appropriate use of the
language is necessary for effective communication. Furthermore, as a
part of communicative competence, 'social competence', the knowledge
and ability to create and maintain a harmonious atmosphere in social
interaction, should be given more attention in order to allow
students to communicate with English speaking people harmoniously and
effectively.
Although a number of teachers have noticed the importance of
communicative and social competence, such competence is not taught
sufficiently in Japan. One reason for this is that, with few
opportunities to communicate with native speakers of English in
Japan, teachers themselves do not know well the communication
patterns of English in actual situations. To develop students'
communicative competence, Japanese teachers of English need to know
the cultural patterns in English, and to see what kind of problems
could occur for Japanese students. It is intended that this field
study will contribute a small part to the growing understanding of
the cultural patterns in English and Japanese.
Before considering the possible problems especially for Japanese
learners of English, three possible causal factors of communication
problems for non-native speakers are discussed:
(1) lack of linguistic competence
(2) transfer of native cultural patterns
(3) false stereotyping.
As a basis for considering the problems in terms of politeness
strategies, in particular, Brown and Levinson (1978)'s 'face theory'
is introduced, and some characteristics of Japanese cultural patterns
which may cause some politeness problems are discussed. Based on the
discussion, some hypotheses are built up about Australian and
Japanese communication patterns, and an investigation has been
conducted, focusing on two request situations:
(1) asking a lecturer to lend a book
(2) asking a friend to lend a book.
Four Australian native speakers of English and four native speakers
of Japanese were asked to role-play in each situation, and their
results were compared with each other. These results were also
analyzed in comparison with the results of four Japanese speakers of
English and four Australian speakers of Japanese.
Although this is a preliminary study and has some limitations in
the investigation, the results show that, although politeness is a
universal phenomenon, it is expressed differently in English and
Japanese, and they indicate some possible problems in politeness
strategies for Japanese speakers of English and for Australian
speakers of Japanese.
As to the implications of the results for English teaching in
Japan, three points can be considered:
(1) the need to make students aware of the cultural patterns of
English
(2) the need to teach students sufficient variety of
expressions
(3) the need to give students enough practice.
In terms of these points, some weaknesses in English teaching in
Japan are discussed. For example, teachers do not have enough
knowledge of communication patterns in English, materials used in
class do not give enough information about the target culture and
actual use of English by native speakers, and the amount of time
spent on English in the school curriculum and the number of students
in one class cannot be considered desirable for the purpose of giving
enough practice to each student.
These problems are not easy to solve, but it is possible to find
ways to improve the situation. In the final chapter, some practical,
though tentative, suggestions are made in the hope that English
teaching in Japan will be improved to help students to communicate
well with people in different cultures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219378 |
| Date | January 1986 |
| Creators | Tanaka, Noriko, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Noriko Tanaka |
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