Tension in a Japanese Language Classroom: An Opportunity for Critical Literacy?

This paper presents one example of moments of tension from a yearlong ethnographic study conducted in a college intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom (Kumagai, 2004 Kumagai, Y. 2004. De Mystifying the literacy practices in a foreign language classroom: A critical discourse analysis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Unpublished doctoral dissertation [Google Scholar]). I define moments of tension as those moments when conflicts arise between an instructor's teaching agenda and students' learning agenda. Conducting critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992 Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and social change, Malden, MA: Blackwell. [Google Scholar]) on such moments revealed that the moments of tension manifest interplay among textual representations, students' identities, and the instructor's discourses. Far from being seen as negative incidents to be avoided, moments of tension provided students with an opportunity to challenge the truth claims presented by the text, and to nominate and set a learning agenda that was relevant and significant, yet not a part of the instructor's original lesson plan. I argue that such moments present rich opportunities for conducting critical literacy practices in a foreign language classroom, helping students deepen their understanding of the sociocultural implications of language use.