Craig Gamble

TL;DR: The authors examined Japanese university students' perceptions of their responsibility and ability of autonomous English learning and what they can do inside and outside the classroom, and found that highly motivated students tend to perceive themselves as being capable of being more involved in their own learning than unmotivated students.

TL;DR: In this article, the status of communicative language teaching (CLT) in Japan was surveyed by examining the beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes of students from three private universities. But the results showed that students have become positive towards CLT methodology in general, and teachers may want to educate students on some of the uses of English proficiency in the modern economy.

Abstract: Abstract To counter the misunderstandings that students from East Asian countries like Japan are less autonomous than learners from other cultural backgrounds, this exploratory research examined Japanese university students’ attitudes toward their own responsibility and ability to study English autonomously. Student motivation was observed specifically to determine how students perceived their learning inside and outside the classroom. In this study, 958 students from 12 universities across Japan participated in a 24-item adapted questionnaire on learner autonomy. Based on the data collected, slight to not significant differences were revealed regarding students’ perceptions of responsibility to perform autonomous learning tasks. However, with regard to perceived ability to perform autonomous learning tasks, there were significant differences as motivated students demonstrated a far greater confidence in their capacity to be involved in their own learning than unmotivated students, yet they did not necessarily act on their ability to do so. These findings and their implications are explored and discussed.