野村 和之

Research has shown that Japanese language learners in Hong Kong are affectively rather than instrumentally motivated. Put simply, they tend to learn Japanese because they like people or things associated with Japan(ese). To better understand their affection for Japan(ese), I explore how Japanese language learners’ imagined target language communities shape their symbolic investments in Japanese and Japanese-speaking cultural identities in contemporary Hong Kong. To this end, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 18 ethnic Chinese Hong Kong learners of Japanese. After data analysis, three main themes emerged: “symbolic investment”, “perceived marginalisation”, and “voluntary peripheralisation”. My findings suggest that these Japanese language learners make diverse and personalised symbolic investments in exchange for valuable intangibles, particularly security and well-being. While they perceive themselves as marginalised from imagined Japanese-speaking communities, they also tend to remain voluntarily on the periphery of such imagined Japanese-speaking communities to construct positive Japanese-speaking (but non-Japanese) cultural identities and to secure their imagined “Japan” as a safe haven from the difficult realities of Hong Kong. These learners of Japanese thus see their “Japan” as imagined “foreign” communities to which they do not want or need to fully belong. I conclude this paper with useful implications for researchers and educators.

In the most recent Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS2018) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the percentage of Japanese teachers who taught critical thinking (CT) and professed self-efficacy in CT teaching was by far the lowest among participating economies (OECD, 2019). This research explores the emic or indigenous understanding of CT in Japanese education through in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 schoolteachers of diverse backgrounds. Japanese schoolteachers find the nuance of CT undesirable. Yet, a particular facet of CT, namely multidimensional-multiperspective thinking (MMT), is well-received since the national curriculum guidelines, which most participants find to be their teaching foundation, lay strong emphasis on MMT. Almost all participants agree that low socioeconomic-status (SES) schools have difficulty teaching CT/MMT. Furthermore, a hidden curriculum in Japanese schools, namely valuing empathy, also affects CT teaching. Being empathetic constitutes a core value in Japanese schooling, so participants find it impossible to practice CT without teaching empathy. The findings suggest that the curricular power, whether official or implicit, is forceful in Japan. Still, schoolteachers practise indigenous versions of CT teaching and manage to keep away from the power of the etic/global model of CT teaching. This paper concludes with practical implications for educators to reconcile the etic and emic understandings of CT teaching.

教育現場で教えられる（が，学ばれるとは限らない）体系化はされていない価値観や行動規範を潜在的カリキュラムと呼ぶ。参与観察・ナラティヴを融合したエスノグラフィーを手法とし，香港の日本語教育現場でどのような潜在的カリキュラムが教えられ，香港人学習者がそれをどのように学ぶ（学ばない）のかを分析したところ，挨拶・時間遵守・美意識・丁寧さ・共感などが，教師の人生経験・ビリーフやコンテクストを反映した潜在的カリキュラムとして教えられていた。特に香港人非母語話者教師は，日本語母語話者らしさを潜在的カリキュラムとして明示的に教える傾向が強く，国民国家＜日本＞とは異なる，香港人のアイデンティティを反映した＜日本＞を学習者と協働して構築していた。一方，香港人学習者は自律性が高く，自らの価値観が潜在的カリキュラムと食い違うと無関心・抵抗を見せた。更に，近年では教室で政治的な話題を避ける行動規範も広がりつつある。

千葉大学国際教育センターでは、2021年度前期に日本語教育プログラムの授業を受講した者を対象に質的インタビューを実施し、29名から回答を得た。学習者は総じてオンライン授業より対面授業を好んだ。主な要因として、オンライン授業では対面授業に比べ、学習者間のインタラクションが取りにくい点が挙げられた。一方、学習管理システム（LMS）を活用したフィードバックには高い評価が寄せられるなど、コロナ後のカリキュラム設計に有益な知見が得られた。

Fluent speakers of a target language choosing to enrol in beginner-level courses at tertiary institutes could be considered unfair. In this paper, however, based on data obtained from in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 students at a Hong Kong university, we show that fluent speakers of Japanese – a widely-spoken foreign language in Hong Kong – were motivated to engage in learning activities during beginner Japanese lessons, as those lessons constituted ‘safe houses’ in which the participants shaped subversive identities against the perceived institutional dominance (GPA-oriented system) of the university and negotiated security. Our key findings related to the participants’ L2 motivations are three-fold. First, perceived ease pertained to the participants’ motivations to enrol in the course. Second, the participants were motivated to ‘outsmart’ the university’s dominant GPA-oriented system and ‘cash in’ their accumulated effort to achieve fluency in Japanese, ‘converting’ it into good grades. Third, the participants showed motivation because they believed beginning Japanese lessons to be sites in which they could feel secure, due to being able to speak Japanese and extend their Japanese-related social networks. This paper concludes with implications for L2 motivation research and suggestions for language teachers who are faced with such fluent speakers in beginner-level language classrooms.