Sessions

The Impact of CLT on Teacher Beliefs in Japan

The promotion of communicative language teaching (CLT) in Japan by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) can be traced back to the 1989 Course of Study in which it was stated English should be taught for the purpose of communication. To determine whether MEXT’s 30-year endorsement of CLT has been successful, we need to examine the beliefs and practices of the teachers responsible for interpreting those policies. I researched teachers’ level of approval of CLT activities and the factors that influence their implementation through a questionnaire responded to by 21 Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) and 29 assistant language teachers (ALTs) at junior high schools. The results indicated that while teachers approve of CLT activities they tend to rely on the audio-lingual method and yakudoku, a translation-based method. The factors influencing teachers’ classroom practice vary between JTEs and ALTs, with JTEs reporting entrance examinations and students’ expectations as highly influential, whereas ALTs were concerned with the students’ speaking ability and the class size. By comparing these results to Gorsuch’s (2001) study it can be concluded that though CLT activities are viewed more favorably than 20 years ago, the factors limiting their implementation remain largely the same.