Strategies and struggles in the ELT classroom: language policy, learner autonomy, and innovative practice

Abstract

Within the Japanese English Language Teaching context and consistent with the dominant conversation role assigned to the native English speaker teacher, there exists a belief that the most effective manner in which to teach and promote multilingualism and intercultural understanding is through restricting students to monolingual practices and prohibitive pedagogies. These beliefs, whilst entrenched in ideologies of cultural dominance and linguistic imperialism, have also nourished the foundations for the learner autonomy movement to develop through the creation of numerous self-access learning centres. In consideration of these core issues and building upon earlier context-specific work, this paper documents an attempt at negotiating the contradiction created by those institutions who promote the virtues of learner autonomy on one hand, whilst enforcing strict linguistic prohibitions on the other hand. Situated within a Japanese university, 43 mixed-ability English language learners were presented with two reflective awareness-raising strategies that sought to assist them in being more able to make informed classroom language choices when faced with the demands of a prescriptive English-only language learning environment. The results suggest that the English-only policy represents an unrealistic target for the majority of learners and one which may promote a number of negative consequences.

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