In this response to Sakurai, Meredith Stephens agrees that Sakurai (2015) raises an important issue of which native English speaking teachers may be unaware; Japanese learners of English typically translate into Japanese while reading English. Sakurai explained, "It is speculated that Japanese students naturally translate English into…

The paper "The influence of translation on reading amount, proficiency, and speed in extensive reading" (Sakurai, 2015) outlined the first six years of the official English education system and policy in Japan. It then discussed the efficacy of extensive reading (ER) followed by a distinction between reading and translation. Previous…

Tobin's work has been groundbreaking. Famously, he and his team put together a sophisticated comparative study of three ways of doing pre-school--in Japan, China, and the United States (1989). As such, this study has precedents in anthropology. What is unique in Tobin's work is that he got people from one place to comment on what they saw people…

Although technology was once viewed literally as a means of bringing about utopian society, its means to that end was exhausted in the minds of many when it fostered the nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945. Since then, not only has technology lost its utopian verve, but it also has been viewed by some quite pessimistically. Nevertheless, technology…