How student-oriented is English language education in Japan?

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Introduction Japanese students invest a lot of time and money into English study. However, even after six years of learning English as a core subject at school they don’t seem to reach a level of communicative ability equivalent to that of other countries that often invest less time and money. “Japanese students study 3-5 hours a week or more, anywhere from 6 to 10 years, yet Japan has one of the lowest levels of English proficiency of any developed country in the world.” (Mulligan 2005: 33) Because of this problem the Japanese Ministry of Education officially placed importance on communicative ability in the late 1980s (Taguchi: 3). The course of study set out by the ministry now clearly emphasizes the importance of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) activities in the classroom (Samimy & Kobayashi 2004: 246).

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