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English language education in East Asia:

some recent developments
a

Guangwei Hu & Sandra Lee McKay

English Language and Literature , National Institute of

Education, Nanyang Technological University , 1 Nanyang Walk,
637616 , Singapore
b

Department of English , San Francisco State University , San

Francisco , CA , USA
Published online: 16 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Guangwei Hu & Sandra Lee McKay (2012) English language education in East
Asia: some recent developments, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 33:4,
345-362, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2012.661434
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2012.661434

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Vol. 33, No. 4, July 2012, 345
362

English language education in East Asia: some recent developments

Guangwei Hua* and Sandra Lee McKayb
a

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English Language and Literature, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological

University, 1 Nanyang Walk, 637616 Singapore; bDepartment of English, San Francisco State
University, San Francisco, CA, USA
This article presents an overview of the perceived importance and accelerated
spread of English language education, both formal and informal, in three East
Asian countries (i.e. China, Japan and South Korea) against the backdrop of
globalisation and emergent ideological, sociocultural and educational trends. It
begins with a review of the recent developments in English language education in
each of the countries, the ostensible reasons for English language education and
the ideological issues contributing to the recent English language education
initiatives. This is followed by a discussion and a critique of the common trends
and themes manifested in the three countries recent initiatives to reform and
improve English language education. The article concludes with a number of
policy recommendations for English language education in East Asia and other
countries, where English does not have an institutional role to play.
Keywords: China; East Asia; English language education; ideology; Japan; South
Korea

Introduction
One uncontroversial observation about English is that it has become the global
language for international and intra-national communication among people with
different national, cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds (Crystal 2003; McKay
and Bokhorst-Heng 2008). Although the dominance of English in what Kachru
(1986) refers to as the Inner Circle (i.e. the traditional English-speaking countries
such as Australia, the UK and the USA) and the Outer Circle (i.e. countries where
English is not traditionally the native tongue but has an institutional role to play) has
no doubt contributed immensely to the diffusion and power of English (Phillipson
1992; Schneider 2011), it is nonetheless the ever-accelerating spread of the language
in the Expanding Circle (i.e. countries where English is learned as a foreign language)
that has made English a truly international language (Crystal 2003; McKay 2002). Of
the numerous Expanding Circle countries/regions, three populous East Asian
countries
China, Japan and South Korea
are important players in the global
spread of English because of the great inroads that English has made into their
educational systems (Choi and Lee 2008; Crystal 2008; Silver, Hu, and Iino 2002;
Song 2011).
In this article, we present an overview of the perceived importance and
accelerated spread of English language education, both formal and informal, in
the three East Asian countries against the backdrop of globalisation and emergent
*Corresponding author. Email: guangwei.hu@nie.edu.sg
ISSN 0143-4632 print/ISSN 1747-7557 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2012.661434
http://www.tandfonline.com

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G. Hu and S.L. McKay

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ideological, sociocultural and educational trends. First, we review recent important

developments in English language education in each of these countries, the ostensible
reasons for English language education and the ideology driving the recent English
language education initiatives. We then move on to discuss and critique the common
trends and themes manifested in the three countries recent initiatives to reform and
improve English language education. We conclude this article with a number of
policy recommendations for English language education in East Asia and other
Expanding Circle countries, where English is taught and learnt as a foreign language.

English language education in China

Recent developments in English language education
Of the three East Asian countries, China has the largest scale of English language
education because of the huge and diverse student population in the school system
(Hu 2002a; Wang and Gao 2008). Ever since the late 1970s, when mainland China
started to open up and reform, English language education has been high on the
central governments modernisation agenda (Hu 2005a). Tremendous public and
private resources have been invested in English language education (Hu 2002b; Niu
and Wolff 2003). Into the twenty-first century, demands for English proficiency have
been escalating, and efforts have been stepped up to expand English language
education and improve its quality (A.E. He 2011; Hoare 2010; Hu 2005b). In this
section, we summarise the important policy initiatives and ground-level developments that have been staged in the last decade for the expansion and/or improvement
of English language education in mainland China (hereafter China).
The expansion of English language education in the past 10 years or so has
occurred mainly in three sectors of Chinas educational system. While over two
decades of policy effort starting in the late 1970s saw the universal provision of
English language education in the secondary education sector, with about 80 million
students learning English (Hu 2002a), a far-reaching directive from the Ministry of
Education (MOE) started a new wave of expansion of English language education in
the primary education sector at the beginning of the twenty-first century. On 18
January 2001, the MOE issued a mandate on the compulsory provision of English
language education in primary schooling and the grade level at which to start
formal primary English instruction. The mandate (MOE 2001a) required that
primary schools located in cities and county seats progressively start offering English
classes in Primary 3 from the fall of 2001. The implementation of the policy initiative
was to be rolled out to primary schools run at the township level in the fall of 2002.
Given that formal English language education had previously started only at
Secondary 1 and because primary students numbered 130 million in 2001
(Hu 2002a), this new mandate had far-reaching implications. According to one
estimate (Bao 2004), 70% of primary schools run at the city and county levels and
30% of primary schools run at the township level complied with the mandate in 2004,
with at least 50 million primary students receiving at least four periods of English
instruction per week.
Along with its spread in the primary sector of Chinas formal education system,
English language education has also been expanding in the higher education sector.
On 28 August 2001, the MOE (2001b) issued a ministerial directive for improving the
quality of undergraduate programmes which required that within three years 5
10%

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347

of undergraduate courses offered by tertiary institutions be conducted in English or

other foreign languages. The long-term goal was to have at least 20% of undergraduate courses conducted in English (Wang 2006). Furthermore, the Director of
the Higher Education Department of the MOE announced that the number of
English-medium courses offered would be an important consideration in the
assessment of institutions of higher learning (see Huang 2004; Y.X. Zhang 2002).
Driven by these policy initiatives, Chinese universities, especially the top-tier ones,
were vying to offer courses conducted in English. Within the space of three years, for
example, 48 English-medium courses at Fudan University, 164 at Zhejiang
University and 216 at Wuhan University sprang up (Huang 2004; Zheng 2004).
Apart from the expansion of English language teaching in the public
education sectors, there has been a fast-expanding private English education
sector in China as well. Capitalising on more and more parents hopes to give their
children a head start in English learning, numerous private kindergartens have
started to offer English or bilingual classes (Feng 2005; Hu 2007). There has also
existed a brisk private English teaching business catering to the needs of older and
adult learners, in particular, their needs to pass various high-stakes English tests.
Y.P. Zhang (2003) reported that there were 1000 English language centres in
Shanghai alone. A thriving English language centre could attract as many as 2300
fee-paying learners and charge as much as an equivalent of 900 US dollars for a
48-hour course (Hu 2009). According to Jiang (2003), the largest private English
language school in China
the New Oriental School in Beijing
had an annual
income of 25 million US dollars in 2001. Today, the business of the private English
teaching sector is just as brisk, if not more so, as a decade ago. An estimate based on
the National Educational Development Statistical Bulletin and published in China
Daily (N. He 2010) puts the market value of English training in China at a staggering
3.3 billion US dollars.
In addition to policy efforts aimed to expand English language education in the
educational system, there have also been reform initiatives focusing on improving the
quality of formal English language education (Hu 2002a, 2005a). One initiative is to
increase curricular time for English as a subject to alleviate the problem described by
Baker (2006) as drip-feeding language teaching. For example, the nine-year
compulsory education curriculum standards issued for schools in Shanghai raised
contact time for English from 668 hours in 1998 to 1224 in 2004 (Curriculum and
Teaching Materials Reform Commission 1998, 2004). Another quality-improving
initiative is to develop curriculum standards at both the national and local levels
(Zhang and Hu 2010). For example, the national English language curriculum
standards (MOE 2003a) set down the benchmark that pre-university English
language education is tasked to achieve. Still another initiative is to develop teaching
materials which are more aligned with international developments in second
language teaching (Hu 2002a). Often, the development of new teaching materials
has taken the form of collaborative efforts between Chinese and overseas materials
writers/publishers (Hu 2002b; Zhang and Hu 2010).
Compared with the aforementioned policy efforts, a more fundamental reform
initiative is the top-down promotion of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), a
high-profile teaching methodology of Western origins that is based on a sociocognitive psychology different from, and perhaps even antithetical to, the one
underlying time-honoured Chinese culture of learning (Cortazzi and Jin 1996; Hu
2005c). The effort to promote this methodology started in the 1990s and intensified

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G. Hu and S.L. McKay

in the opening years of the twenty-first century. An extension of this pursuit for the
most effective methodology is the current promotion of Task-Based Language
Teaching, an updated version of CLT, as the desired pedagogical approach. Existing
research (e.g. Hu 2005c; Nunan 2003; Zhang and Hu 2010), however, indicates that
the efforts to promote and transplant the Western pedagogical practices have met
with only limited success.
The most controversial quality-improving initiative, however, is the drive for
Chinese-English bilingual education at the primary and secondary levels (A.E. He
2011; Hoare 2010; Hu 2008). While this is not a policy initiative promulgated by the
central government, it has gathered considerable momentum and made significant
inroads into the school system because of local governments enthusiasm and
support (Hu 2007, 2008). The so-called Chinese
English bilingual education
involves the use of English to teach a non-language curricular subject (Cheng
et al. 2010; Feng 2005; Hu 2008), and the extent of use of English as an instructional
medium varies greatly, from an exclusive or predominant use of English for
instruction to the restriction of English to routine expressions in classroom
management and simple translations of basic concepts and definitions (Hu and
Alsagoff 2010). The great majority of English-medium programmes currently
available, however, adopt a more even division of labour between Chinese and
English as instructional languages. English-medium instruction was initially
promoted by the municipal government of Shanghai as a curricular reform to
address the problem of costly and ineffective provision of English as a school
subject (Hu 2007). Subsequently, it quickly spread to schools located in coastal
metropolises and other socioeconomically advantaged areas. Today, there is Englishmedium instruction for a variety of subjects (e.g. information technology, chemistry,
mathematics, geography and music) at all levels of the school system (A.E. He 2011;
Hu 2007).

Ostensible reasons for and ideological underpinnings of English learning

In the last decade, one ostensible reason for English learning consistently
promulgated in official language education policy has been the paramount role
that English proficiency is perceived to play in Chinas revitalisation and integration
into the world systems (Wallerstein 2004). English language education is viewed as a
public good (see Hu and Alsagoff 2010) that is crucial to Chinas modernisation and
increasing participation in globalised cultural, economic and political activities, as
reflected in the following excerpt from a recent English syllabus for junior secondary
education (MOE 2000, 1):
In the modern world of today, scientific progress, represented by developments in
information technology, advances by leaps and bounds. The informatization of social
life and the globalization of economic activities have made foreign languages, English in
particular, an increasingly important tool to facilitate Chinas opening up and
interaction with other countries. (Our translation)

In the same vein, the latest English curriculum requirements for institutions of higher
learning stress that to develop students English competence is a strategic move to
meet the national and societal demands for talented personnel in the new era and to

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respond to our countrys need for social development and international communication (MOE 2007, 1).
In addition to linking English learning to national development, policy rhetoric
also portrays English learning as a process of cultural enrichment and intellectual
development for individual learners. As propagated in the English curriculum
standards for general senior secondary schools (MOE 2003b, 1
2):
English is a major subject on the senior secondary curriculum. Learning English can
facilitate the intellectual, emotional, attitudinal, and ethical development of senior
secondary students and enhance their all-round cultivation. Furthermore, competence in
an international language creates favorable conditions for learning the advanced culture,
science and technology of other countries and for engaging in international interaction.
Thus, English language education contributes to raising the quality of Chinese citizenry,
facilitating Chinas opening up, fostering Chinas international communication, and
strengthening Chinas comprehensive competitiveness. (Our translation)

Similar discursive constructions of English learning as personal enrichment and

development can be found in other language education policy documents (e.g. MOE
2000, 2003a).
In contrast to the ostensible reasons for English learning summarised earlier, it
can be argued that the ever-growing demands for English language education and the
aforementioned various reform initiatives have been driven in large measure by selfvested interests and the widespread sociocultural perception of English proficiency as
the most valorised symbolic capital (Hu 2009; Pan 2009). Put in another way, English
proficiency has acquired the paramount role of gatekeeping access, opportunity,
status and power (Hu 2005a; Hu and Alsagoff 2010). As Cheng (2008, 17) points out:
Apart from English as an academic requirement, English skills are tested for all those
seeking promotion in governmental, educational, scientific research, medical, financial,
business and other government-supported institutions. . . . In reality, being successful in
the various English tests and examinations is the key to the success in life for many in
China. . . .

Thus, English proficiency has become a highly valourised form of cultural capital
with strong exchange value in China. That English is the language of social and
economic prestige is clearly illustrated in Hus (2009) analysis of the aforementioned
English-medium instruction initiative in light of Bourdieus (1986, 1991) sociological
theory of symbolic capital and related conceptions. Hu demonstrates how the
various stakeholders capitalise on this form of English language education to
consolidate their position of distinction, to aggrandise their self-interests and to
accrue or reproduce symbolic capital through promoting and/or partaking in
English-medium instruction as a legitimate and prestigious form of English language
education. Thus, he contends that there are ideological underpinnings of English
language education that are deeply embedded in self-interests.

English language education in South Korea

Recent developments in English language education
Many of the recent developments in English language education in South Korea
parallel those in China. Like China, South Korea is committed to the promotion of

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G. Hu and S.L. McKay

the English language. Young Koreans, for example, are now required to start learning
English at a younger age (Flattery 2007). In fact, the South Korean government
keeps lowering the age of introducing English, so that as of 2011 English language
education starts from the third grade onwards (Choi and Lee 2008). Presently, the
Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) requires 68 hours of
instruction a year for third- and fourth-grade students and 102 hours for fifth- and
sixth-grade students.
Along with an increasing emphasis on starting English early has come the
promotion of an English-only classroom. Currently, the MEST is promoting a
Teaching English through English (TETE) policy which establishes English as the
main language of communication between students and instructors (Kim 2002). Kim
(2002, 2008) has undertaken several surveys of teachers views on TETE. Many
teachers reported that they experienced anxiety in implementing TETE, with high
school teachers showing the greatest level of anxiety and those with more teaching
experience having more anxiety. However, the majority of the teachers believed that
the use of TETE would be beneficial for developing learners English proficiency.
Hence, there has been little questioning of the policy, although Choi and Lee (2008)
note that most teachers do not actually implement TETE in their own classrooms.
Not only do young Koreans start formal English learning at an early age, but
there are also more opportunities for private English tutoring in South Korea. In
2006, Korean parents spent over 20 trillion won or approximately 20 billion US
dollars a year on private education
three times more than the amount spent in
Japan (Chun and Choi 2006)
over half of it on English language education through
extracurricular lessons such as cram schools (hagwon), private tutoring (kwaoe),
English camps (yeongeocamp) and language training abroad (haewoeyonsu) (Park
2009). South Korea is one of the few countries that is promoting the relatively new
idea of English villages where life in an English-speaking environment is simulated
with everything from English-speaking post-offices to English-speaking doctors and
nurses. Here, young and old Korean speakers have the opportunity to interact all day
long with native speakers of English (Song 2011).
South Korea is also unique in the number of young Korean children who study
abroad, primarily for English acquisition. According to a report by the MOE and
Human Resources Development, in 2006, more than 35,000 elementary and
secondary students went to study abroad for a full academic year, half of them
being elementary students. Even more went abroad for short-term language training
in English-speaking countries. As of November 2000, early study abroad programmes for elementary- and middle-school children were technically illegal;
however, this has not stopped the trend for more and more young children to be
sent abroad, either with no parent or with girogi umma, a wild goose mother, whose
husband stays in South Korea to support the family. Needless to say, this has become
a major social concern in South Korea (Park 2009).
Ostensible reasons for and ideological underpinnings of English learning
Why has there been the recent interest in learning English in South Korea? Park
(2009) contends that there are three major reasons: government policies, social and
economic changes and the increased influence of communicative teaching methods.
The South Korean government has implemented a variety of programmes to
encourage the learning of English. Perhaps, the most significant policy in terms of

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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promoting English was the policy, as mentioned earlier, that required all elementary
schools to introduce English learning, beginning in 1995. In addition, the
government added a listening component to the KSAT English test (Choi 2008), a
core part of the national college entrance examination, which was closely tied to an
English-only trend in higher education (Choi and Lee 2008).
Social and economic changes also fuelled an interest in English learning.
According to Park (2009), globalisation and the 1986 Asian Games and the Seoul
Olympic Games made South Korea aware of globalization, and the Korean financial
crisis of 1997 made Koreans realize how much English was valued (52). These social
and economic changes spawned by globalisation have led many Koreans as well as
the Korean Government to perceive English proficiency as a resource, and English
language education as a public good, which is essential for South Korea to compete
successfully in a global economy. Finally, perhaps not a cause but rather a
consequence of increased interest in English teaching in Korea, there has been a
focus on CLT as the most efficient and effective pedagogical approach to increasing
students English proficiency (Flattery 2007; Li 1998). Because of the popularity of
this pedagogical approach in both English-speaking and other countries, the South
Korean Government has followed this trend and begun to put far more emphasis on
developing students oral and listening skills, as evidenced in such policies as the
inclusion of oral English-based test components in the national college entrance
examination (Choi 2008). Recent investigations into the classroom implementation
of CLT (see Flattery 2007), however, have revealed considerable resistance by
teachers and students alike to the teaching methodology partly because its underlying ideology and pedagogical practices do not mesh well with the South Korean
EFL context.
Whereas these governmental, social and educational factors clearly contributed to
the current English frenzy in South Korea, others consider more ideological reasons
for this situation. Song (2011), for example, reflects on why this obsession or frenzy
has come into existence in South Korea now, leading some to advocate English as the
sole or one of the official languages of South Korea. Song argues that:
English language education must be recognized as part and parcel of the primary
mechanism of elimination designed, under cover of meritocracy, to conserve the
established social order in South Korea. Thus, English has been conveniently recruited,
in the name of globalization, to reproduce and rationalize the hierarchy of power
relations. (2011, 36)

Song (2011) points out that South Korea is basically a monolingual community
(though this is changing somewhat with rural marriages involving Chinese, Thai and
Vietnamese women) and most Koreans are rarely in contact with someone who
speaks another language in their daily life. Song contends that the reason for
promoting English then is not a practical one but rather impersonal bilingualism,
that is, the use of English for appealing to the publics positive feelings, not for
practical communication (37). Given the lack of practical reasons for learning
English in South Korea, Song questions why there is such widespread acceptance of
the assertion that it is necessary for all children to learn English in order to take part
in a global economy. Would it not suffice if a small number of Koreans were to
achieve a high level of proficiency in English in order to carry on global trade? Yet,
not only is English promoted for all children from an early age, but English

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G. Hu and S.L. McKay

proficiency is also required for many jobs within South Korea, although in fact
English is rarely used on these jobs.
Song (2011) argues that knowledge of English in South Korea is one of the
mechanisms for maintaining or sustaining inequality as it is already structured in
South Korea (42
43). South Koreas hierarchical structure of power relations is far
more rigid and less changeable than in many other developed countries. Tradespeople, for example, in South Korea earn considerably less than professionals, live in
entirely different geographical areas and rarely marry children of professionals.
Furthermore, the hierarchy of power relations is sustained largely through the
medium of education. Students who excel academically are able to enter one of the
first-class universities and ultimately gain access to the world of the elite. Tests are
one of the primary factors in gaining access to a first-class university, with English
being a central component of all tests. In this regard, Choi (2008) notes that English
language education in Korea has been heavily impacted by an array of high-stakes
standardised EFL tests, the KSAT English test in particular, which are gatekeepers
of successful graduation and employment.
Seth (2002) makes a similar point, noting that traditionally South Korea has
always been concerned with the pursuit of formal education as a way of achieving
status and power and as a means of self-cultivation (9). In a similar vein, Park
(2009) points out that currently, owing to the collapse of the traditional class system,
there is a belief that virtually any Korean can advance himself through his own
efforts (50). He further observes that education is seen as the most powerful means
to achieve upward mobility and economic prosperity, and many Korean parents
believe that they can help their children succeed by emphasizing, and even imposing,
education for their children (50
51). (For a well-documented account of how
mothers of various economic classes struggle to manage their childrens English
education, see Park and Abelmann 2002.)
Whereas on the surface it appears that South Korea is equalitarian in the sense
that entrance to a top university can be attained through hard work, commitment
and academic ability, Song (2011) argues that this meritocracy is more apparent
than real in South Korea (much more so than in other countries), since in reality
educational attainment depends on how far parents wallets can go to meet the cost
of childrens good education (45).
While highlighting the importance of the role of meritocracy in South Koreas
English frenzy, as well as the interests of South Koreas economic elite to preserve the
social order, Song (2011) does recognise the importance of globalisation in the
spread of English. As he says:
Globalization is real and here to stay. English is inextricably interwoven with
globalization, because it is the language of the major drivers of globalization. . . .
However, globalization is not the only cause for the importance of English and, at least
in South Korea, it is not as much a cause as it has been widely claimed to be. When
English in South Korea is discussed, the ideology of merit operating in South Korean
society and what it does should not be lost sight of. (48)

English language education in Japan

Recent developments in English language education
English language teaching in Japan differs in various ways from that in South Korea
and China. In Japan, English was not a compulsory subject in elementary school

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

353

until April 2011, although making it a required subject had been a constant issue in
curriculum reform. In fact, South Koreas compulsory early English language
education is continually reported in the Japanese media as an example of what Japan
should be doing (Mikio 2008). In its latest Course of Study for elementary schools,
the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology (MEXT 2011) has made
English instruction compulsory, beginning with Grade 5.
In 2002, as part of Japans recent reform of foreign language education, the
MEXT implemented the New Course of Study, which aims at introducing English
from the third grade and beyond. According to Butler (2007), this reform has created
a strong push for local governments and individual schools to conduct foreign
language activities with the purpose of promoting international understanding and
preparing students for a global economy rather than to necessarily increase their
English proficiency. However, the top-down policies do not provide clear guidance as
to how such foreign language activities should be implemented; rather, they expect
the local administrative bodies and individual schools to develop curriculum and
provide the resources for language activities.
Although in 2004 more than 90% of the elementary schools in Japan indicated
that they had implemented English activities (MEXT 2005, cited in Butler 2007,
137), inadequate pre-service teacher training and unobtainable in-service training
appear to be common to most of the elementary schools, resulting in a sense of
frustration and inadequacy in elementary school teachers daily teaching experience
(Fennelly and Luxton 2011; Matsuhata et al. 2006; Rapley 2008; Yagi and Igawa
2010). A number of Japanese teacher surveys indicate that many teachers have a high
level of anxiety and very little or no confidence in teaching English. Fennelly and
Luxton (2011), for example, conducted a survey of 147 Japanese English teachers
attending a teaching seminar in Tokushima. They found that 72% of the survey
participants felt that their English ability was not sufficient to teach English, and
69% of them felt they did not have enough knowledge of how to teach English
properly.
Another survey given to 54 elementary Japanese English teachers attending a
professional development course at Shitennooji University also illuminated a high
level of teachers anxiety in teaching English (Yagi and Igawa 2010). Almost 97% of
the survey participants did not have confidence in their own English communication
skills and were particularly concerned about their English pronunciation. Other areas
that were reported as problematic for Japanese English teachers are too many
students in a class, a lack of knowledge of curriculum and materials development and
classroom assessment (Hojo, Watanabe, and Kumai 2002; Matsuhata et al. 2006;
Yagi and Igawa 2010). Whereas many teachers acknowledge that they need
additional in-service training as well as English oral fluency practice, inadequate
pre-service training (Hojo, Watanabe, and Kumai 2002; Rapley 2008), insufficient inservice training (Butler 2007; Rapley 2008) and their extremely busy schedule (e.g.
Matsuhata et al. 2006; Rapley 2008) all prohibit teachers from obtaining such
professional development opportunities.
In general, Mikio (2008) contends that English teaching in Japan has not been
highly successful:
Many elementary schools attempt to organize English experience activities utilizing a
comprehensive learning hour implemented in 2002, but they are not systematized for
raising the English ability over a span of years. In this way, though a plan to make

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English compulsory in elementary schools is discussed here and there, and some public
elementary schools in the Special Zones for Structural Reform have started offering
regular English classes, profiting from decentralisation and flexible curriculum reform,
English education in public elementary schools appear to be getting off to a bad start
in Japan as a whole. (392)

Whereas Japan, unlike South Korea, has not been highly successful in starting
English early, Japan shares with South Korea a structured programme to get native
English speakers into the elementary and secondary school classrooms. In the late
1980s, as part of globalisation, the government launched the Japan Exchange and
Teaching (JET) Program and has been sending English-speaking foreign nationals to
select elementary and middle schools as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs).
However, the number of ALTs is not sufficient due to budgetary constraints, and
hence, they are shared among many elementary schools or nearby secondary schools
(Butler 2007). Furthermore, there has also been a growing concern regarding the
quality of the team-teaching between Japanese English teachers and ALTs. In fact,
more than 30% of the teachers in the survey conducted in Fennelly and Luxton
(2011) expressed concern that their team-teaching classes were not going well due to
their inability to communicate with ALTs and lack of time to prepare for the teamtaught classes.
One area in which Japan exhibits significant differences from China and South
Korea is parental support for English training. Whereas Japanese parents generally
support their childrens development of English ability, especially for the college
entrance examinations, they do not seem to have the obsession that many Chinese
and Korean parents have for promoting their childrens English learning. While some
Japanese parents do send their children to study abroad, the number is small.
Furthermore, as Mikio (2008) points out, the situation is not one where the
expenditures on English learning impacts on the national budget or even family
finances as compared with Korea (392).

Ostensible reasons for and ideological underpinnings of English learning

Kubota (1998) contends that one of the primary reasons for the promotion of
English language education in Japan has been internationalisation or korkusaika.
When in the 1960s and 1970s Japans economy began to surge ahead and friction
began to occur between Japan and its trading partners, Japanese leaders began to
believe that the learning of English was an important way to enhance Japans
international communication. English learning thus became one important strategy
in Japans goal to internationalise the nation. For this reason, English language
education is seen as a public good that can benefit the country and, consequently, its
citizenry.
The prevalence of this idea is evident in the following government document
called Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate Japanese with English
abilities (MEXT 2003):
English has played a central role as the common international language in linking
people who have different mother tongues. For children living in the 21st century, it is
essential for them to acquire communication abilities in English as a common
international language. In addition, English abilities are important in terms of linking

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our country with the rest of the world, obtaining the worlds understanding and trust,
enhancing our international presence and further developing our nation.

This goal underlies not only English being a required subject in public secondary
schools but also the testing of English in university entrance examinations (Choi and
Lee 2008), a fact that leads many young Japanese and their parents to be concerned
about English learning.
Unlike South Korea, English language education in Japan and social class issues
do not seem to be intertwined. Instead, some argue that Japan has a love/hate
relationship with the learning of English in that while the acquisition of English is
seen as a sign of modern Westernisation, at the same time, by becoming part of the
new globalised world, some believe that the Japanese may lose their unique identity
(Kubota 1998; Tsuda 1990).
The need to preserve the uniqueness of Japanese culture is evident in Rinji
Kyoiku Shingikai, the Ad Hoc Committee for Education Reform, which advocated
the need for a broad and deep understanding of Japan, as well as for the promotion
of Japanese history, culture and traditions to the international community. As part of
this promotion of things in Japanese, the MEXT has mandated the use of the
national flag and anthem at school ceremonies, even though some teachers and
citizens consider them as symbols of Japanese militarism and colonialism (Kubota
1998).
At least in its public rhetoric and school policies, Japanese then appear to have an
ambivalent attitude towards the teaching of English: on the one hand, the value of
English is recognised as important for Westernisation, globalisation and trade; on
the other hand, both Westernisation and globalisation seem to threaten the Japanese
peoples sense of identity and the uniqueness of their culture and traditions.

Trends and issues in English language education in China, Japan and South Korea
Our overview of English language education in the three East Asian countries reveals
six common trends and attendant issues. One common trend is the constant lowering
of the starting age for formal English language education. In China, the starting
grade has been moved down from Junior Secondary 1 to Primary 5 to Primary 3 in
the national curriculum for primary schooling. As a matter of fact, in major cities
like Shanghai, English is introduced in Primary 1 in almost all schools (Hu 2002b).
Similarly, the official starting age for English instruction in South Korea is Grade 3.
Even in Japan, where English was not a compulsory subject in elementary schools
until April 2011, the latest national curriculum prescribes compulsory English
language education from Grade 5 onwards. The increasingly early start of English
learning is apparently based on assumptions that there exists a critical period for
foreign language learning and that younger learners are superior to older ones (Hu
2008; Park 2009). However, recent comprehensive reviews (e.g. Scovel 2000;
Singleton and Ryan 2004) of empirical research bearing on these assumptions
suggest that there is scant empirical evidence of a critical period for foreign language
learning, that younger learners do not have a global advantage over older ones and
that age differences reflect differences in the situation of learning rather than in
the capacity to learn (Marinova-Todd, Marshall, and Snow 2000, 8). In light of the
conclusions from these reviews, Hu (2005a) argues that policy decisions on the

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G. Hu and S.L. McKay

starting age for foreign language education need to take into account a large number
of contextual and resource factors (18).
A second general trend we see in the recent language education policy in the three
countries is the increased prominence of English as a curricular subject. The
promulgation of English education as a compulsory subject by the latest Course of
Study in Japan is the most recent indicator of this trend, following earlier examples
set by South Korea and China. The trend, however, is the clearest in China. As
explained earlier, the contact hours for primary and secondary English teaching have
been increased significantly. For example, the hours increased by over 80% from 1998
to 2011 in Shanghai (Curriculum and Teaching Materials Reform Commission 1998,
2004). In addition, there is English-medium instruction in non-language subjects in
many schools in urban centres and other more developed regions. It is important to
note that the greater prominence for English has often been achieved at the expense
of other curricular subjects. For example, in order to accommodate to the
introduction of English in Primary 3, primary schools in China were required to
reduce one class hour of Chinese instruction from Primary 3 onwards and to allot
some flexible curricular time to English (MOE 2001a). Such reallocations of
curricular time raise a question about the possible negative impact of English
language education on literacy learning in the mother tongue and, in the case of
English-medium instruction, non-language subject learning in China (Hu 2007).
A third trend revealed by our earlier overview is that the governments in all three
countries have been unsatisfied with the traditional approaches to English language
education and faced with mounting criticisms of ineffective pedagogical practices
(Butler and Iino 2005; Hu 2002b; Li 1998; Park 2009). Their responses to the
criticisms have similarly been characterised by a new orientation towards developing
students practical competence in using English for communication. The preferred
strategies have also been similar, that is, turning to high-profile teaching methodologies of Western origins and promoting them in a top-down fashion through the
introduction of new syllabuses, textbooks, test formats and so on (Hu 2005a; Nunan
2003; Park 2009). Both the Chinese and Korean educational authorities have
undertaken to promote CLT and its outgrowth
Task-Based Language Teaching

intensively and on a large scale (Hu 2005c; Li 1998; Park 2009). Although the MEXT
has not explicitly embraced CLT, it has nonetheless recommended communicationbased English teaching and a pedagogical focus on practical English (Butler and
Iino 2005). It should be noted that the endeavours to transplant Western language
teaching methodologies without giving due attention to the local pedagogical
ecology have not met with the expected success (Flattery 2007; Hu 2005c; Li 1998;
Nunan 2003; Zhang and Hu 2010). These reform initiatives have raised significant
issues concerning contextual and cultural influences/constraints on pedagogical
practices as well as the appropriate stance to adopt towards pedagogical reform.
A further similarity identified by our overview concerns the common movements
in the three countries to provide students with some form of immersion in English or
opportunity to use English for communicative purposes. Whereas such immersion or
communicative opportunities are created mainly by means of English-medium
instruction in the Chinese school system, they are provided through TETE, English
camps and English villages in South Korea (Kim 2002; Park 2009), and immersion
programmes in limited schools and native English-speaking ALTs in Japan (Butler
and Iino 2005). Although they have increased learners exposure to communicative

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357

use of English, these strategies have also given rise to a wide array of issues with
respect to:

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pedagogical effectiveness, e.g. lack of rigorous, longitudinal research evidence

concerning their pedagogical effectiveness and their impact on other curricular
subjects (Hu 2008);
resource constraints, e.g. availability of the required financial, material and
human resources (Hu and Alsagoff 2010);
teacher education geared towards English-medium instruction (Choi and Lee
2008; Hu 2007);
allocative efficiency, e.g. lack of principled costs-and-benefits analyses of the
expenditures on the aforementioned strategies (Nunan 2003);
unintended sociocultural outcomes, e.g. inequality in access and deepening
social stratification (Park 2009); and
ideological influences, e.g. spread of Western ideas, attitudes, and values (Hu
2002a; Kubota 1998).

All these issues have consequential implications that have not been given due policy
attention in the three countries.
Still another similarity shared by the three countries concerns the gatekeeping
role of English proficiency. In all three educational systems, English is a core
component of high-stakes assessments such as high school and university entrance
examinations (Butler and Iino 2005; Cheng 2008; Choi 2008; Hu 2002b; Song 2011).
As a matter of fact, there is even a Japanese term juken eigo which means English for
the purpose of entrance examinations (Butler and Iino 2005, 28). Outside of the
educational systems, English proficiency also carries high stakes in the workplace in
each society. In Japan, for example, many companies base recruitment and
promotion decisions in part on (prospective) employees scores on standardised
international tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC (Butler and Iino 2005). Similarly,
promotion for professionals in China depends crucially on their English test scores
even when their jobs require no use of English at all (Hu 2009; Jiang 2003). As
regards South Korea, Choi (2008) notes that Korean companies require their
applicants to submit an EFL test (e.g. TOEIC) score report and consider it an
essential prerequisite for employment (41). Such valourisation of English in
educational, professional and social life undoubtedly has contributed to the
dominance of English competence as cultural and symbolic capital, the perpetuation
of existing social inequality and the creation of English-knowing elitism.
Finally, although the educational authorities in the three East Asian countries
publicly promote the teaching of English and English-speaking cultures, there are
undercurrents of trepidation about the loss of cultural identity in their policy
statements. Whereas a knowledge of English-speaking cultures can help students
learn and use English more effectively, as Hu (2002b) points out, culture-specific
values and beliefs may clash with values and beliefs espoused by a language learners
native culture and . . . may threaten cultural identity and integrity and produce
consequences of which the native culture does not approve (37). Thus, the
curriculum standards for junior and senior secondary schools in China (MOE
2003a, 2003b) emphasise the importance of teaching about English-speaking cultures
on the one hand and promote pedagogical efforts to deepen students understanding
of Chinese culture and tradition on the other hand. In the same vein, language

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education policy in Japan advocates the development of international understanding

as well as a sense of being Japanese and cultural nationalism through English
language education at the same time (Butler and Iino 2005; Kubota 2002; MEXT
2011). Flattery (2007) reports similar concerns in South Korea: that English is
associated with antagonism to traditional Korean values and that there are
nationalist sentiments regarding the spread of English and considerable ambivalence
towards English as a cultural force in Korean society. There is clearly a tension
between recognising cultural learning as integral to English language education and
guiding against undesirable effects of cultural diffusion. In all three countries, the
ambivalence towards cultural issues in English learning is likely to persist in the
many years to come.
Policy recommendations
By way of conclusion, we offer three interrelated policy recommendations regarding
English language education in the three East Asian countries and, for that matter, in
other countries where English is taught as a foreign language. To begin, our earlier
overview and discussion of English language education in China, Japan and South
Korea have shown that in response to criticisms about ineffective English language
education, the educational authorities in the countries have all taken an autonomous,
technological perspective on pedagogical reform and resorted to implanting CLT
and/or its latest methodological realisation (i.e. Task-Based Language Teaching) in a
top-down fashion. Such a perspective is underpinned by the mistaken assumption
that a methodology appropriate and effective in one sociocultural context will also
work well and lead neatly to expected outcomes in another one (Hu 2005c; Tudor
2001). Because of the failure of the technological perspective to take into
consideration the fundamental impact on the language classroom of the economic,
social, cultural and institutional context in which it is embedded, we argue that it is
more productive to take, instead, an ecological approach to pedagogical reform that
gives full recognition to the ideological nature of pedagogical practices (Hu 2002b).
Sensitive to the social, cultural and historical context in which teaching takes place,
an ecological approach jettisons the assumption about the existence of a universally
appropriate and effective methodology, values pedagogical choices that are grounded
in a solid understanding of various macro and micro contexts and promises to foster
a socially sensitive pedagogy (McKay and Bokhorst-Heng 2008).
Second, English language education has been treated mainly as an educational
issue by the governments of China, Japan and South Korea. However, we argue that
because it is characterised or perceived first and foremost as a public good in all three
countries, it is imperative to take a public policy perspective on policy-making
regarding English language education. According to Grin (2003, 2005), such a
perspective requires policy-making to be guided by the principles of moral justice,
practical feasibility, allocative effectiveness and distributive fairness. In the context of
language education, moral justice consists in upholding expressive and instrumental
language rights as human rights. Practical feasibility, on the other hand, concerns the
availability and allocation of material and non-material resources needed to
implement a policy option (e.g. the lowering of the starting age for formal English
instruction). Allocative effectiveness has to do with the efficient use of scarce
resources for maximum gains in aggregate welfare and involves a principled analysis
of a language policy options benefits and costs at the societal level. Distributive

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justice addresses the issue of fairness and requires that the sharing of costs and
transfers resulting from the implementation of a policy initiative (e.g. Englishmedium instruction in China or the JET programme in Japan) be provided for. We
believe that due attention to these important principles is needed both to address the
extant policy blunders and to formulate new English language education policies that
are morally justifiable and instrumentally viable (Hu and Alsagoff 2010).
Last but not least, in view of the serious sociocultural problems arising from the
gatekeeping role of English proficiency, we recommend that English should not be
made part of high-stakes educational assessments in general and university entrance
examinations in particular in China, Japan, South Korea or other countries that
resemble these East Asian countries in important ways. While all students are
entitled to study English as part of their curriculum, their educational prospects
should not be contingent on their competence in a foreign language. This policy
option can go a long way towards redressing various forms of educational inequality
that arise from differential access to English language education (Hu and Alsagoff
2010; McKay and Bokhorst-Heng 2008). In a similar vein, English tests should not
be used in the workplace to make hiring and promotion decisions for jobs that
require no substantial use of English. A policy rejection of the gatekeeping function
of English, we hope, will contribute to a significant retreat of the language from its
current position as a foreign tongue of social and economic prestige, and prevent
lack of proficiency in it from becoming a liability in the meaningful participation in
public institutions and democratic process (Rubio-Marn 2003, 56) and the equitable
enjoyment of social and economic opportunities.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Ritsuko Iyoda, Mami Orikasa and Jeongyeon Park, graduate students at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa, for their assistance in researching the language policies of
Japan and South Korea.

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