Promoting Critical Reading in an Advanced-Level Japanese Course: Theory and Practice through Reflection and Dialogues

要旨

What is the nature of the reading ability that teachers of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) aim to develop among students at a college or university in North American contexts? The study reported here was prompted by a JFL teacher’s questions as to what ideally should be the goals for advanced-level reading courses. Frequently articulated goals may be developing students’ ability to comprehend written texts accurately (i.e., ability to retrieve accurate information from texts) and improving their fluency (i.e., ability to read at a relatively fast pace without stopping to look up words too often). However, some scholars who specialize in foreign language reading, such as Alderson and Urquhart (1984) and Kern (2000), have begun to question teachers’ tendencies in foreign language classrooms to excessively focus on literal comprehension and to use written texts as materials merely for language exercises through which students learn new vocabulary, expressions, and structural patterns. There is a commonly-held assumption that the development of reading and writing skills in JFL requires a great deal of time and work; therefore, there may be a tendency to spend much of the class time on language exercises that emphasize literal comprehension and learning of vocabulary and kanji in JFL classrooms. Not only does the Japanese writing system use an entirely different orthography from English (the language that many students in the United States are most familiar with), but they also utilize reading and writing conventions that are very different from English (e.g., no spacing between words; vertical writing still commonly used in books, newspapers, and magazines). Hence, JFL teachers who are involved in intermediateand advanced-level language instruction

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