[Feature: Thinking about English Education] Yusuke Wakazawa: Creation, Transformation, Synthesis—Toward the Original Landscape of Reading English Texts Together

2025/05/08

The universe of English language learning is vast and diverse. The freedom, joy, and creativity of teaching English are hidden in the process of defining the framework of "English"—what materials to use, what activities to perform, and with whom and where to head. The core of Faculty of Letters English is "reading English texts"*1. This can be seen as an ideal very characteristic of the Faculty of Letters, but it also has a slightly old-fashioned ring to it. With the spread of social media and e-books, the media surrounding the act of reading have changed significantly. We live in a world where artificial intelligence can summarize content or translation software can replace it with another language without us even reading the text ourselves. The traditional format of "reading English texts"—holding a paper book, looking up words in a dictionary, and thinking about the content—has rapidly begun to lose its meaning.

Traditional assumptions about reading have grown old. Traditional tools and training methods for reading have also grown old. However, this does not mean that the act of "reading" itself, or dealing with "reading" in the context of university English education, has itself become obsolete. We can positively interpret these environmental changes as an opportunity for a different kind of value in the act of reading to emerge*2. There are five key points.

(1) Reading is a collaborative effort; through the medium of the text, students get to know themselves and their classmates. A classroom where English texts are read is a "place of encounter" where mutual understanding is born.

(2) Reading is more than an information-processing process; there is hidden value in the way one struggles in front of things that cannot be understood or are nonsensical within an English text.

(3) Reading involves not only understanding the writer's opinions and perspectives but also "discovering" one's own thinking style and a process of "transformation" where the reader changes through the interaction between writer and reader.

(4) Reading is a full-body exercise that is not limited to simple movements of the eyeballs or fingertips; we use ourselves "from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes" to interact with language.

(5) Reading an unknown text inspires one to want to speak or write something themselves, or to hear the reactions of others, creating a chain reaction of other actions. In other words, the act of "reading" is an act of "creating."

Depending on the approach and application, an English class centered on the act of "reading" can transform (perhaps) from a relic of the ancient past into an entity racing across the current frontier.

The author specializes in the history of British thought, majored in ethics as an undergraduate, studied British regional culture in graduate school, and after studying abroad in the United States, obtained a doctorate at a British graduate school—making me a somewhat unique English teacher (within the English department of the Faculty of Letters). Based on this background, I would like to retell my daily experiences in the classroom regarding how the meaning of Faculty of Letters English, which places its core in the act of "reading English texts," can be "verbalized in terms of value."

Generally, gaps are seen as something to be filled. This is because if there is a gap, one might trip and get hurt. However, tripping can also lead to realization. Like missing a step on a staircase, a "discrepancy with expectations"—where something you thought "should be there" is not, or something you thought would not be there is—is the source of thinking and trial.

While English classes in the Faculty of Letters are diverse, the fact that a "certain number" of classes adopt literary works or "original English texts from various fields" in the humanities and social sciences can be cited as a unique characteristic*3. The texts used in Faculty of Letters English are not necessarily all intended for "Japanese university students who have just graduated from high school." This is the essence of the gap. Among the texts used in Faculty of Letters English, there are introductory books intended for university students in English-speaking countries, and original English texts in the humanities written by 18th or 19th-century writers for readers of their own time. In university English classrooms, students experience receiving "words and thoughts that were not originally intended for them" (regardless of whether they can fully achieve this).

When original English texts are used, it is uncertain whether "everything can be understood" with English proficiency at the high school completion level. Conversely, in English classes that use such texts, it is not necessarily required to understand everything; through the experience of not understanding "everything," students are encouraged to verbalize their own words, thoughts, and the specific "?" they harbor. Regarding the use of Dickens' novels or Russell's philosophical essays in university English classes, there will always be reactions like "This is an English class, not a class on English literature or the history of philosophy." However, these original English texts provide students with a vivid experience of being lost and thinking "I don't get it," more than just providing knowledge of a specific field. They confront texts that they don't quite understand or cannot immediately judge how much time it will take to comprehend. They simply stop in front of a text sent from a different time and space and call out to it. Not understanding something or a text that seems nonsensical at first glance does not necessarily bring discomfort to the reader. Realizing that "not understanding is interesting" through the shared experience of reading English texts is also a benefit of using original English texts.

In this way, despite having the same name "English," the meaning and content are different to some extent, or entirely, between high school and university. This surprise actually leads to the core of cross-cultural experiences. Even though they are supposed to be the same "words," simply replacing English sentences with Japanese at the word level does not make them Japanese sentences. Through the back-and-forth between the two languages, students are made aware that English has its own logic, rhetoric, and flow of narrative/storytelling, and Japanese has its own. Realizing that two (or more) worlds with organic connections exist—this process of discovery overlaps with the experience of the gap between high school English and Faculty of Letters English, and between the linguistic culture of English and the linguistic culture of Japanese.

The experience of an English class where "what we are doing is somehow different" from high school, despite having the same subject name, can also be considered in the broad context of general education for first-year university students. Upon entering university, the academic map in a freshman's mind is based on high school subject classifications. After entering university and going through the course registration process, it is important for them to learn new subject labels like Regional Culture Studies, Logic, or Cultural Anthropology, and to update the overall picture of knowledge in their minds. Along with encountering new subject names, it is also important to experience the "transformation" of the referents of familiar subject names and the meaning of labels they thought they knew. In the process of "transformation" through general education, the shock experienced through English subjects takes on further meaning within the overall structure of learning at the university.

Since fiscal year 2024, based on the "Faculty of Letters English Forum" (a place for exchange among full-time and part-time faculty members teaching English in the Faculty of Letters, held every March), I have had opportunities to interact on an individual level with high school teachers from within Keio affiliated schools (currently Keio Senior High School, Keio Girls Senior High School, and Keio Shonan Fujisawa Senior High School) to hear about the challenges in high school English education and what they expect from university English classes. When it comes to exchange between high schools and universities, the focus tends to be on forming institutional common indicators and evaluation standards, or ensuring continuity in textbooks and lesson content. However, as the organizer, I am emphasizing the opposite. Instead of creating new systems or devices, I am unearthing "already existing, hidden connections between high school English and Faculty of Letters English" that would not be noticed without knowing each other. Rather than bringing university systems to high schools or transplanting high school methods to universities, I am exploring whether we can form a "complementary collaborative relationship" between high school English and Faculty of Letters English by positively reinterpreting each other's heterogeneity and discontinuity—doing in high school what can only be done in high school, in university what can only be done in university, in high school what cannot be done in university, and in university what cannot be done in high school.

Good English texts invite us readers into a "creative silence." Imagine a student reading an English text in a classroom. Even if they scan the text, they cannot immediately summarize what is written into a nice phrase. Although they cannot verbalize it well, a lingering haze remains in their heart, and they decide to read the English text one more time. The first time they read through the text quickly, but the second time, they get curious about mysterious words or encounter strange phrasing, stopping their eyes here and there to think, "Oh?" It's not clear, but something is accumulating inside them as they read. The student becomes curious whether others reading the same English text are concerned about the same points or are tripping over completely different things. Or perhaps they are reading smoothly? The student feels like talking to those around them. Using the mysteries of the English text as seeds for conversation, keywords and images that form the core of understanding the text suddenly emerge. They feel like writing something themselves. If they write something first in Japanese, but then try their best in English, will they get a response from an unexpected place? In front of a mysterious English text, the head and heart swirl, the words uttered from the mouth and the characters spun with fingertips struggle, and various companions gather as if caught in that vortex. This series of learning images is the landscape of connections born through the medium of English texts, the form of a collaborative reading classroom.

Modern social environments and learning spaces seem to rarely give both teachers and learners the opportunity to "be silent." It feels awkward to remain still and silent when a topic is brought up or an opinion is asked. One feels that they must say something "immediately," and not being able to speak feels like failing to contribute to the setting, or even makes one feel guilty. However, is being able to give an immediate, witty response (while wonderful) something that should be idealized in all situations? Words that come out of the mouth immediately are often words someone else has already said, or words that have become settled after saying them several times in the past. Responses that use one's own new expressions or savor what is in front of them take time and sometimes create a lag. Silence contains a creative chaos for producing something new. When facing a difficult text or listening to a classmate's comments, what is being practiced there is the practice of "waiting" and "trusting the other person" to make the silence comfortable. If the reliability of "I won't feel awkward thinking slowly in front of this person (or these people)" can be secured in the classroom, then we have succeeded. Let's try saying something slowly for now.

Furthermore, the act of reading English texts is an exercise using the whole body. Beyond silent reading, if one imagines reading a text aloud or performing a play, that full-body nature might be more felt. How to hold the text, what posture to use when speaking, where to direct one's gaze, and so on. Moving away from the framework of Faculty of Letters English, at Keio University's Hiyoshi Campus, research and education projects concerning "embodied knowledge" have been conducted since around 2005, primarily by English teachers, based at the university's Keio Research Center for the Liberal Arts*4. The purpose and results are summarized in the final chapter of Hiroshi Muto's "'Lady Chatterley's Lover' and Embodied Knowledge: From Close Reading to Learning the Movements of Life" (Chikuma Shobo, 2010). It is noteworthy that capturing the act of reading within movement mediates students' rewriting of texts, performances, and creative activities. In critical thinking, reading is thinking, but focusing on these full-body movements reveals that "reading is creating."

Furthermore, when illuminated from the perspective of embodied knowledge, reading English texts (or the act of reading in general) can be expressed as heading toward "becoming healthy / being healthy." Reading together and reading while moving is also about setting aside anxiety, feeling the texture of words, and feeling oneself becoming energetic / being energetic / growing energetic.

The framework of an "English" class should be (one of) the most free and vast areas among the diverse subjects at a university. Ultimately, as long as it is written in English, it can be an object of "reading" in an English class. University faculty members each have their own specialized fields, but the subject framework of "English" takes the faculty member outside of their specialty. In teaching English rather than English literature, or English rather than British philosophy, what kind of texts the instructor reads and what they talk about—by internalizing the two roles of "researcher and English teacher" within one person—the faculty member also changes.

In terms of faculty members "opening themselves to change," having two or more faculty members teach one class as a team should also bring new dynamism to the field of university English practice. To begin with, in the liberal arts of Keio University, attempts at collaborative teaching have a history of nearly 20 years. At the Hiyoshi Campus's Keio Research Center for the Liberal Arts, "Academic Skills," where research techniques are learned under the charge of multiple faculty members, has been offered since 2005. While this class is conducted in Japanese, its English version was also operated by a staff of three to four people from 2011 to 2018.

From fiscal year 2024, the university's Center for Global Interdisciplinary Courses (GIC) has been implementing classes at the Hiyoshi Campus where "two or more faculty members from different fields conduct classes in English within a single classroom"*5. When such attempts are considered in connection with the aforementioned liberal arts research and educational practices, the comprehensive positioning of English education within general education, or the act of reading English, becomes visible. As the phrase "learning while teaching, teaching while learning" (hangaku-hankyo) suggests, by reading English, not only the students but also the faculty members become "subjects of transformation."

(Notes)

*1 Refer to the Foreign Language Education home on the Faculty of Letters website. English: [Keio University Faculty of Letters]

*2 It is also possible to discuss this in the broader context of "reading books," not limited to English. For that direction, refer to Yusuke Wakazawa's "How to Walk the Republic of Letters: A Collection of Keywords for Strolling Through Bookshelves" (Keio University Press, 2024).

*3 Please take a look at the online course syllabus. Keio University Syllabus and Timetable

*4 For example, see the introduction page of the Keio Research Center for the Liberal Arts. Keio University Keio Research Center for the Liberal Arts | Embodied Knowledge

*5 There is an explanation on the Center for Global Interdisciplinary Courses website. About GIC | Keio University Center for Global Interdisciplinary Courses