November 2011 in Denver

I would like to report my continued participation in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Convention, which, held on November 18-20 at the Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado, hosted more than 6,500 language teachers and administrators and offered more than 600 program sessions and workshops, as well as over 225 exhibits. It was very nice to meet and talk with Ms. Edith Beard Brady, World Languages Specialist of Heinle/Cengage Learning (note that Cengage Learning has been a continued supporter of FLANC).

In addition to the excitement surrounding the ACTFL Convention (which I will later describe in detail), my trip to Denver turned out to be a memorable journey because it gave me a chance to reminisce my cross-country travel in my youthful days. More than thirty years ago when I was a 21-year-old college senior, a friend of mine and I travelled across the United States by Greyhound bus. We started our journey from Los Angeles early August, and we visited many places including Washington DC, New York City, and Niagara Falls. We then visited Toronto, travelled back to the West Coast through Canada by train, and finally arrived in San Francisco in early September.

Earlier in that trip, we travelled from Salt Lake City to Denver. When we arrived in Denver, my backpack, which should have been stored underneath in the baggage compartment, was missing. I was stunned when I was told at the Denver Greyhound bus terminal (which was not very clean, typical of downtown bus terminals in those days) that my backpack must have gone to Omaha, Nebraska, and it would take at least a couple of days for me to get it back! While waiting for my backpack to be sent back to Denver, I spent my time visiting nearby places including Red Rocks Amphitheatre. I saw large, tilted, disc-shaped rocks there, but at that time, I, a naïve young man, was so concerned about my backpack (which had virtually everything) that I could hardly enjoy the natural wonder! This unfortunate incident gave me some trepidation about visiting the Mile High City. More than three decades had passed since then, and this was the very first time for me to visit the Mile High City! This time, once again, I went to Red Rocks, which made me feel reminiscent or even nostalgic, and this time I really enjoyed it. I also visited the Denver Greyhound bus terminal, but its surrounding area seemed to have completely changed into a clean, urban neighborhood!

Let’s move back to the ACTFL convention. The invited speaker of the opening session was Dr. Milton Chen, Senior Fellow and Executive Director Emeritus at The George Lucas Educational Foundation. Dr. Chen’s speech was entitled “Empowering Language Educators Through Collaboration.” According to him, 32% of K-12 students are learning foreign languages, although ACTFL’s most recent enrollment survey reports that only 18.5% of all K-12 “public” students were enrolled in foreign language courses from 2004-2008 (see Volume 5 of Connections, p. 49). Furthermore, only 8% of college students are learning foreign languages. You may be surprised at these low percentages and may doubt the accuracy of these low figures. According to a nationwide survey conducted by the Modern Language Association (MLA), however, as of the fall of 2009, of the students in approximately 2,500 colleges and universities, almost 1.7 million students were enrolled in non-English language courses — almost identical to the figure reported in Dr. Chen’s speech.

However, do not lose hope. In the mid 1960s, nearly double the aforementioned share of college students (16.5%) studied foreign languages. But in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, universities began dropping foreign language studies as a degree requirement. This decision led the percentage of students enrolled in foreign languages to drop to a low of 7.3% by 1980. From a long-term point of view from the 1960s to the 1980s, therefore, a declining trend continued. Luckily, studying foreign languages is now rebounding. More American students are studying foreign languages, particularly non-European languages such as Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese.

One of the highlights of the convention was Mr. Yo Azama of North Salinas High School (Salinas, CA), a Japanese language teacher, being named the 2012 National Language Teacher of the Year. Because the Teacher of the Year is chosen from a field of five regional winners from around the United States, the award is arguably the most prestigious one in the field of foreign language
education in the country. “The world needs a deeper understanding of each other. One student, one colleague, one friend at a time, we are changing the world,” Mr. Azama told the teachers gathered at the Colorado Convention Center during the opening session. He also thanked his students for inspiring him every day and said that he would keep his promise “to make them sushi next week.” The National Language Teacher of the Year award is sponsored by ACTFL and publisher Holt McDougal. As a spokesperson for language education over the coming year, Mr. Azama will deliver presentations at foreign language conferences, meet with policymakers, and appear at events to promote language education. He will thus spend the next year as an ACTFL ambassador, promoting the significance of
foreign language education, and getting involved in many other advocacy
activities on behalf of foreign languages, not just the Japanese language alone.

Mr. Azama
is the very first teacher of Japanese language to win this award, which was a memorable event indeed. I am proud of him not only as his countryman but also as a language instructor who teaches the same tongue. Again, I felt that it might be a good idea to ask Mr. Azama to write something for Connections or even to invite him to give a speech on foreign language teaching. This is why I wrote earlier that my journey to Denver turned out to be a memorable journey in more ways than one.

Summer 2011 in Japan

Almost every year I spend early June in Japan. Because I recently published a book entitled “Telling Stories in Two Languages: Multiple Approaches toUnderstanding English-Japanese Bilingual Children’s Narratives," this summer I gave a series of lectures on the new book at prestigious universities in Japan, such as Nagoya University, Hiroshima University, and Kwansei Gakuin University (near Kobe). In addition to those lectures, of course, I enjoyed staying in Japan. I visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park for the first time, for example. The Peace Memorial Park, which is adjacent to the A-Bomb Dome (the skeletal ruins of the former Industrial Promotion Hall), is not only for memorializing the victims, but also for keeping the memory of nuclear horrors and advocating world peace. I also enjoyed the Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, a Japanese savory pancake containing a variety of ingredients such as squid, octopus, and even cheese, in addition to noodles that are used as a topping with fried egg. In June, unfortunately, the majority of areas in Japan are in the midst of a rainy season, the so-called tsuyu (or baiyu), which literally means “plum rain” (because it coincides with the season of plums ripening). Hiroshima was no exception. But the dark, rainy scenery of the Seto Inland Sea and small islands that I saw through hotel windows are beautiful like Indian ink paintings. 

Summers seem to be the optimal time not only for faculty members, but also for students to apply what they have learned through books as well as in classrooms by doing independent research. At San Francisco State University, in addition to undergraduate courses, I teach graduate-level linguistics courses: (1) a sociolinguistics seminar, which covers such areas as cognitive semantics, pragmatics, geographical linguistics, dialectal geography, cultural anthropology, and multicultural psychology, and (2) a second language acquisition seminar, which covers such areas as psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, and language education. In the second language acquisition seminar, for instance, I often ask for graduate students’ opinions about what I have encountered in my undergraduate Japanese classes.

Perhaps you have asked yourself pedagogical questions such as, “Is the task with which I am providing students in the classroom meaningful?” or “Do students need to interact in the target language in order to accomplish the task?” Language teachers’ vital concern is students’ progress in the target language. As educators, we tend to consider language learning as a conscious form of knowledge building, which includes learning grammar and rules. As a result, we are likely to believe that we should teach students grammar and vocabulary explicitly. Furthermore, we may view students’ errors negatively. Students’ difficulties in conveying their messages in the target language, however, may relate to the development of interactional competence, which is achieved through interactions with peers and teachers within the classroom setting. In one way or another, L2 acquisition is similar to L1 acquisition, and language learning is a developmental process that involves a great amount of error, which should be seen as a sign of reorganizing knowledge. We should always bear in mind that language learners are active participants rather than passive observers of classroom activities, testing their own hypotheses about the target language, even if they fail to provide an audible answer or raise their hand in the classroom.

In Japanese there is an expression “tabi no haji wa kakisute,” which in translation is “The freely moving traveler can easily abandon feelings of embarrassment incurred on the journey.” Applying this expression to the classroom, then, we may be able to say “kurasu no haji wa kakisute,” which in translation is “When in the classroom, abandon all embarrassment and focus on learning.” We should keep in mind: (1) the importance of pragmatic development, which, unfortunately, is not always emphasized in traditional classrooms, and (2) the importance of co-construction among peers and teachers (the collaborative construction of sentences in conversation through which different individuals become co-creators of a turn at talk).
In Japanese there is an expression “tabi no haji wa kakisute,” which in translation is “The freely moving traveler can easily abandon feelings of embarrassment incurred on the journey.” Applying this expression to the classroom, then, we may be able to say “kurasu no haji wa kakisute,” which in translation is “When in the classroom, abandon all embarrassment and focus on learning.” We should keep in mind: (1) the importance of pragmatic development, which, unfortunately, is not always emphasized in traditional classrooms, and (2) the importance of co-construction among peers and teachers (the collaborative construction of sentences in conversation through which different individuals become co-creators of a turn at talk).

The advantages of being bilingual are well recognized. Being able to think in two languages has intellectual/cognitive benefits. You can possibly communicate with about twice as many people. But learning a foreign/second language may be arduous, handicapping, and even fraught with problems. Overall, however, what is important is the fact that language proficiency develops through the process of internalizing the language of social interaction. Students should enjoy this process, and teachers should make this process enjoyable.

On the “Cultural Reaffirmation” Effect

I want to talk about the “cultural reaffirmation” effect (which has been documented in cross-cultural studies) among multicultural individuals living in multicultural societies such as the United States. I have a Japanese friend, Master Baisho Matsumoto, who has performed shamisen for almost four decades. Shamisen (or samisen) is a three-stringed musical instrument resembling a banjo or guitar. Master Matsumoto has traveled extensively not only throughout Japan but also internationally. He has performed overseas such as China, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Singapore, and the United States. Since 2004, Master Matsumoto has appeared every May at the Hakone Festival in Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California. Master Matsumoto performs not only Japanese songs but also Western songs playing different types of shamisen and shakuhachi (a traditional Japanese bamboo flute). His performance is so energetic and exciting. He continuously conducts shamisen performances overseas for the purpose of introducing Japanese culture to school age children. When he came to the United States for the first time, he believed that Japanese people abroad and Japanese Americans must have experienced great hardships and gone through tough lives. Instead, he found that those Japanese and Japanese Americans had enjoyed cheerful lives and maintained positive attitudes retaining their cultural traditions or even their original cultural identity. Master Matsumoto said that he had received amazing “energy and confidence” from those people.

At San Francisco State University, I teach graduate-level linguistics courses: (1) a sociolinguistics seminar, which covers such areas as cognitive semantics, pragmatics, geographical linguistics, dialectal geography, cultural anthropology, and multi-cultural psychology, and (2) a second language acquisition seminar, which covers such areas as psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, and language education. One of the topics that I often take up in these seminars is the “cultural reaffirmation” effect. Studies on multicultural psychology have shown that the culture that a group of immigrants (e.g., Asians) have brought with them and which they have cherished in the United States is more traditional or even collective than their original culture. To understand that immigrants are more traditional than those in their motherland, we have to analyze the following issues: First, when people migrate, they also bring their culture into the United States. Their genuine culture is crystallized in their psyche so that their cultural model is transmitted to the next generation. The majority of immigrants maintain their cultural identity while learning how to survive in the new multicultural environments. They eventually find that their original cultural identity is the one they should respect and even be proud of. Because of this belief, they are able to live in a new land and admire their cultural traditions, customs, and heritage. To maintain their identity in the new culturally diversified society, therefore, they need to recognize their cultural background.

One of my students in San Francisco State University has a middle name, Otojiro (note that the second “o” is elongated and pronounced “oo”). I heard from him that this was a pedigree name succeeded from his grandfather, to his father, and to him. In Japan, however, “Otojiro” is no longer a common name these days, and I believe that today’s Japanese parents rarely name their sons “Otojiro.” This example testifies the fact that immigrants tend to transfer what they believe to be their genuine culture to their next generations. On the other hand, the culture in their motherland is constantly changing.” Even if their motherland’s culture changes, their authentic culture in the new land stays relatively unchanged. As I wrote above, we can easily speculate that when immigrant groups arrive in the United States, they bring with them the culture of their native group at that time. The immigrant group crystallizes their culture — the one that they brought with them at the time — and it is this psychological culture that is communicated across generations of immigrant groups. As they are immersed within a multicultural society, the stress from multicultural life in a different world contributes to the cultural reaffirmation effect. As time passes, however, the native culture group may actually undergo cultural changes, while the immigrant group is transmitting the original cultural system they brought with them. After some time, if you compare the immigrant group with the native cultural group on cultural values, you are likely to find that the immigrant group is more conforming to the original cultural stereotype than the native group is, because of the crystallization of their culture over time while the native culture has changed. Therefore, immigrants’ culture can be more traditional or more authentic than their original culture; or, the immigrant group is more conforming to the original cultural stereotype than the native group.

“Fossilization” is a linguistics jargon used in the field of second-language acquisition. This jargon refers to a process in which incorrect features become a permanent part of the way the second or foreign language learner speaks or writes the target language. The history of Japanese immigrants began in the 19th century. They built Japan towns in the West Coast and some other states. The city of San Francisco is also home to 12,000 Japanese Americans and Japantown, their former enclave. The year 2006 marked the 100th year anniversary for the Japantown in San Francisco, and since then symposia were held regarding the identity change of Japanese Americans. According to the discussion in the symposia, Japanese Americans obtained their civil rights by proclaiming the distance between Japan and themselves and promising loyalty to the United States. Nevertheless, their culture was based on the old Japanese culture in the Meiji era (1868-1912), which is described as “fossilized” culture, according to some presenters who appeared in the aforementioned symposia. In this case, the term “fossilization” does not necessarily connote any negativity; however, it still implies a situation in which no matter how much input and no matter in what form the input is provided, the person does not learn. Therefore, it may bother some Japanese people. Actually, in the field of second-language acquisition, the usage of the term “fossilization” is now avoided; a new term, “stabilization,” is used instead. Leaving aside the argument over these terminologies, we are able to see the issue that Japanese immigrants are more traditional — crystal of traditional Japanese culture — than people in their motherland.